Hmmm, maybe I could make the trip to Hawaii next year too.It would be my 2nd,having been there in 1994,but on the island of Maui.My son Bill lives in Honolulu,so it would serve the purpose of seeing him again,and meeting up with you both. Sounds like a plan. We'll see. I had Cr.lacerdae for a time,from Tropiflora,but after doing well for a few months,and having a half dozen stolens with pups,it suddenly conked out. No idea why. I really liked that one. Never heard of latifolius being available anywhere recently,but Southern Exposure listed it in their catalog in 1993.It was discovered in Espirito Santo Brazil,however,its habitat was destroyed in 1985,so it became scarce in cultivation,and expensive. Stephania/Lisa,There may be one person that I know of who may have it,or may know where to obtain it. Mary Jo Kellogg,who knew Bob Whitman well,and obtained some of his plants when they went out of business.She e-mailed me a sad story of how the nursery went downhill by lack of attention from Bob's son,I believe. "broms baking in the sun,when she drove by." A shame. Her e-mail is www.bromeliadsrus.com I'm sure you both have many other sources and contacts too,but just thought I'd add this info. Bob

Hi Lisa. The last pic is C.'Chickadee',and looks a great deal like 'Lirico',but perhaps has longer and narrower leaves,sort of semi-spooned.The leaf design is very similar.Its a Hummel beuckeri hybrid. C.beuckeri is a more upright growing stemed plant,but also has the mottled leaf design.I have a beuckeri too,but its not doing well,does'nt die,does'nt grow ;-( Actually,'Lirico' is the crypt in the second photo,and in the first photo too,to the right of 'San Juan'. My plants older leaves got kinda washed out for some reason,but the newer leaves are coming in more like the traditional 'Lirico' mottled leaf design. So your plant may be either one,or even beuckeri,as the leaves are mottled the same. Some hints : 'Chickadee'=flat growth,semi-spoon lvs. 'Lirico'= spoon shape lvs. beuckeri=upright,branched shape,spooned lvs. So name it whatever ;) Michael's has 'Chickadee'and beuckeri too,but I did'nt see 'Lirico' listed there. Bob

Yeah, the spindle idea would work fine until you start to search for a specific CD or DVD and keep pulling ones out, and keep pulling, and keep pulling--and then realize the one you want is 3 from the bottom! That would SO annoy me! Binders are a good idea, as are some of the specially sized boxes that places like the Container Store and Target sell for storage of CDs and DVDs. I think they usually come with individual sleeves so that nothing gets scratched, but all in all I think they save space. Plus you could insert index dividers to separate jazz from hard rock. A friend of mine (young) decided to burn all her CDs (and she had a lot) to her computer, backed them up on an external hard drive, and then sold the CDs to a music store. I'm not sure I'm cool with that idea yet--I always think even my external back-up will fail.

What's below is more or less a copy and paste from a post I did on the Home Decorating forum a year or two ago. I sorted the temporary piles and kept them in brown paper grocery store bags while I was working. No need to buy anything. As for categories, go with the broadest categories that make sense to you. I had one pile for each of my siblings. Each one included all the pictures with just that sibling, all pictures relating specifically to that sibling--so all birthday parties, all sports events, awards ceremonies, etc., even if there were other people in the picture. Then I took other events, like Christmas, and sort of divided the pictures amongst all of us. I somehow became the Keeper of the Photos in my family. I have pictures of my grandparents and a few of my great-grandparents, plus a ton of photos that my parents sent to my grandparents of all us kids at various stages--Dad was in the military, so they took a lot of pictures to send to the families back home. This is how I tackled the project when I decided to get them organized. It might give you a few ideas. Step 1. Sort. Discard all the blurry photos, the ones that didn't come out, the ones that no one will want. Sort everything into general categories. I did Great-Grandparents, Grandparents, Mom & Dad (which included baby/child pictures of them up to their wedding pictures and also pictures of them without the kids). For myself and the 7 siblings, a pile of family photos, plus individual piles of pictures of each sibling. That took some doing, as there were usually 2 or more kids in each shot. So Bobby got all the pictures of his birthday parties, even though there were other siblings in the pictures, for example. Step 2. Identify. There were a lot of older pictures, like those of Mom in her teens, where I couldn't identify everyone. (My parents had died long before I started this project.) So I called the aunts and uncles on Dad's side of the family, and visited them with a ton of pictures in tow. Had some very lovely visits, ate a lot of cookies, drank gallons of tea, heard some interesting stories about Mom and Dad and Grandpa, got names for almost all the faces. For Mom's family, I had a little tea party when some older cousins came into town and we sat around the table and looked at pictures and gossiped madly. Step 3. Decide. There were so many pictures that scanning them all would have taken forever. So I picked certain pictures to scan. All those of the grandparents and great-grandparents--this was only about 15 pictures total. Mom and Dad's wedding album. All the first day of school pictures of all the kids. One picture from each birthday. Random funny or significant pictures. Then one of my brothers scanned them--I think there were about 500. They all got put on flash drives and every sibling got one. (So we have backups out the wazzoo if we need them.) Step 4. Preserve. I really didn't want to get rid of any of the pictures. So each sibling got their own stack of pictures--the ones that were clearly theirs, like the birthday pictures, plus a selection of group shots. Since there were usually a couple of shots of the same group, and I had duplicates of many of them (because my parents always had two copies made, one for each set of grandparents), there were enough to go around. A couple of pictures, like the only one we have of my paternal great-grandmother, I took to a photo store and had duplicates made for all my siblings. Then I took the pictures I liked best and make a few photo albums. Not scrap books. I bought archival quality photo albums that allowed room to write the names and dates and occasions. There's one for Mom and one for Dad and one for me and one for all the grandparents. And one with baby pictures of Mom, Dad, me and the siblings, and now all the nephews and nieces. All the rest of the pictures are stored by category in archival boxes that shouldn't damage them. I got a lot of the supplies from the Exposures catalog.