if anyone knows a honest and good lawyer, pls recommend me! I don't know about honest, but I'll give you a tip on finding good (as rated by their peers and sometimes clients). You might want to print this out. Go to Martindale- Hubbel. M-H is a very old and respected company that offers a Peer Review rating system. (A link below explains how M-H does their ratings and what they mean.) This is not one of those silly sites where a lawyer can pay to join and get a good rating. Left side is a menu for 'Find Lawyers & Firms' In "Search for" box choose "law firms" At "Practice Area" box, don't type in anything, instead go over to the right and click on 'Select'. You'll get a pop up screen for "Select a Practice Area". On the left (red Box 1) choose "Real Estate" That causes entries for areas of expertise to appear in Box 2 In Box 2 tick off Condominium Association Law and Condominium Law Now your narrowed search choices are listed in Box 3. Below Box 3, click the Red "Select" button Now you are back at "Find Lawyers & Firms" screen. In "City" box put in Queens (I remember that from your 1st post) In "State" box put NY United States is automatically filled in now. Click on red Search button You'll now be presented with a list of firms or attorneys in your area that specialize and practice law in the areas you chose, Condo Association and Condominium Law. Make sure you don't choose an attorney that works for the same Law Firm that your Condo Association's attorney works for. At this step, if you like, you can tick the little white box to the lower left of each firm on the list for Comparison. (Think you are allowed up to 5 at a time to compare.) Click on Compare after you've checked off some, that will give you general overview info. But what you really want to do is click on each name that appears on your search results list. That will take you to a new screen showing general information (their location, areas of practice the firm specializes in). Once you have clicked on a name or firm and get to the general info screen about them, off to the left is a white box with the heading "About this Firm". This contains the rating that you want to see. Click on "Peer Review Ratings" You'll see a white box with red letters "Lawyers with Peer Review Ratings". That box will tell you how many lawyers in that firm have a Martindale-Hubbel rating and what the ratings are. But you have to go a step further. Next, still at the top of the "About this Firm" box, off to the right is a link that says "View All Lawyer Ratings". Click on that it will take you to a list of lawyers that work at that particular firm. It will tell you about each individual attorney there and show their rating. You might see some with nothing next to their name, but you will see some with codes "AV, "BV". This page explains how ratings are done and what they mean. Toward the bottom is they key, I pasted it below: AV Preeminent (4.5-5.0) - An AV certification mark is a significant rating accomplishment - a testament to the fact that a lawyer's peers rank him or her at the highest level of professional excellence. BV Distinguished (3.0-4.4) - The BV certification mark is an excellent rating for a lawyer with some experience. A widely respected mark of achievement, it differentiates a lawyer from his or her competition. Rated (1.0-2.9) - The Peer Review Rated designation demonstrates that the lawyer has met the very high criteria of General Ethical Standing. ------------------------ Now that you have an idea of how the rating system works, you want to check out the rest of the firms that came up on your search list. So use your browser's back button to get to go back to the screen showing your list of lawyers and firms. Click on names, read about them, and most importantly find what an individual attorney's rating is. And be sure they practice condominium law. It will be listed under their individual name. Were it me, I'd look for an attorney practicing condo law with a BV rating at minimum, preferable AV if there is one available. ( By the way, a higher ranking does not necessarily indicate that they are more expensive.) So now what you've accomplished is you've narrowed all the law firms and attorneys in Queens area down to those that specialize in Condo law. And you've narrowed that list down down to the ones that have a good M-H rating. Much better than randomly picking someone from a phone book! Once you've picked some with a good ranking, the next part is deciding if you like their personality or approach. Sometimes attorneys will offer free consultations about your case, sometimes they will charge for a consultation. So when you call their office, you might want to ask about that. From this point on, you'll just have to follow your gut in choosing one, but you at least have narrowed it down to some very good potential choices. Once you've gotten familiar with the basics of finding an attorney or firm in M-H, you can do a new search using advanced features. Go to the main screen (link above) and in the "Find Lawyers and Firms" box on the left, click "Advanced Search". You can add extra criteria there if you like, such as foreign language spoken, etc. I hope that makes sense and I hope it helps!

First, I haven't made my thank you cards, much less sent them and I do every year, usually between Christmas and New Years. This year I had been ill and I just opened packages and I really don't know who gave me what for the most part so I'm having trouble figuring out what to say. I usually say thanks for whatever I/We love it and plan to do whatever with it. But I'll try to get it done soon, I'm feeling guilty bigtime now. My first Christmas with my husband 11 years ago, we did the frantic Christmas eve in a nearby larger city shopping. We both hated it, big fight, spent way too much money and I said, no more. The next year we either bought early or put things on layaway and it was better. I finally got brave enough to make things the next year. He was sceptical at first but when he saw the response and the extra cash in his pocket, I took care of the supplies bought early, he was behind me 100%. Luckily all of the women are crafters or quilters, ect. and their spouses and children know about these things. We receive verbal thank yous and sometimes notes on my Jan. birthday cards. While I've never had the awful experiences of most of you, especially you, Jude, how heartless of anyone. I love having someone take the time to make me something. I can relate. I've only had a problem with a bachelor uncle. I sent him two knit stocking caps, he likes to jog and hike, lives on east coast so don't know where he does this, never heard if he received them. I'm still mad him. Every other year we've jumped through hoops over his gift.We cut down on what we spent on boughten gifts this year and still spent three times on him what we did on everyone else, he is always very generous to us (even though sometimes the gifts are nothing we really care for either, but still thank him) so makes my husband feel cheap if we don't spend a lot. That's it, though, next year he is in budget and if he doesn't like it, too bad. He wasn't impressed this year when my husband told him we were using his Christmas monetary gift, (easier to carry on plane and since he really didn't know what to get us, he explained,) to buy a hay ring for my horse and goats. My husband had already suggested before Christmas doing this with any cash gifts we received. Thought uncle was going to rip the check out of our hands, oh, well. We love the hay rack and it saves us time doing chores and the expense of hay wasted. Revenge is sweet even when you don't plan it. Should this be a hehehe? Janie

Thanks for replies on window forum. The builder is taking care of it at this point.

They newer photos of your paint look pretty close to my kitchen and family room walls. :-) Don't worry about the mini-novel. It's the cheapest therapy there is, and if you can get a laugh in here or there, pretty good medicine too. You're doin' good!