Hi Jannie, If one of your daughters, at age 15, invests One Whole Dollar ... ... and manages to have it earn 5% rate of return throughout ... ... through 50 years of time ... ... when she hits the ripe old age of 65 ... that dollar will have multiplied 2-1/2 times - it'll be worth $11.00 and change. If she can manage a 10% return, it'll grow to $117.00 and change. No allowance in either case for the erosion of annual income by income tax, and of the value of one's dollar-denominated assets due to inflation. And when she buys a pack of cigarettes - she pays a lot more than a Buck for each one of them. Most of which goes up in smoke - though some stays in her lungs. And the residue can cause a lot of trouble. Can she imagine what people would think of her were she to stand on a main street corner in town and set on fire as many dollars as she spent on smokes that week? And do that at that street corner - every week? People would say that she was nuts. But - that would do her a lot less harm than using those dollars to buy smokes. Trouble is, though - in the U.S., I think that she'd go to jail: it's a Federal offence to destroy money, as it is Federal property. I do hope that your daughters decide that it is a destructive habit - and one of the worst addictions. I don't want to be a slave to a person - much less to a white paper tube filled with dead leaves!! That sounds some stupid, to me. As Dad used to say, "Looks like that person drove their pigs to a darned poor market"!! Good wishes to you - and especially them - for a New Year filled with common sense. ole joyful

Greetings, everyone. I'd had no indication prior to that trip that something was wrong with the rad. I had a '90 Dodge "Colt" (also standard tranny) from about '97 to about '04 or '05. I used it to travel the 12 miles or so to Uncle's farm nearly daily after his death, to make it look lived in, until the farm was sold, and, as I was usually travelling at midnight or 2 a.m or so, when there was little traffic, found that I could coast over 16 of the 20 km. trip ... and if anyone had told me that they could coast 80% of the time, I'd have thought them to be lying. Didn't have any clutch or transmission troubles with it. When the mechanic said that, at about 200K miles, it was risky to put it on the road, donated it to a charitable agency for a charitable receipt. When I initiated a discussion here about coasting some time ago, some said that such is illegal in their state. I've asked several police people and have been told that it's my responsibility to be in charge of my vehicle, and to drive in a safe manner. I don't usually do it if someone is following me rather closely, as it is not fair to interfere with his/her progress. _____________________________ The lady in question called me the next evening, to ask whether I'd got home O.K., and I told her that I had, and of the issues that I'd had to deal with ... and asked her how she knew that I'd had any problems. She said that she hadn't seen me at the commital, or afterward at the luncheon, and that she had been pretty sure that I'd have been there, so thought that something probably went wrong. And, yes ... I've seen her again ... why not? Last evening, as a matter of fact ... for a short visit before coming to the library ... but hadn't time to make this post, then. Any other questions/comments/(advisories)? ole joyful

Newest update ... ... I did finally get around to sewing one of the new elastic free-flowing girdles the other day, when I anticipated a need. I sewed (at one end) a sextuple thickness of hem from an old sheet to the yard-long piece of elastic from the dollar store. Since I'd found that I'd never used the hook and loop (read "Velcro" substitute) on the original, so wouldn't have an option regarding length if I sewed the other end ... ... I tied it down with safety pins, till I got a handle on its tautness ... and my resultant comfort, as secondary issue when considering the main task needed. Works - so far. And another breath-taking piece of information learned on Sunday afternoon, when visiting my friend's house (who's familiar with this situation). Telling me that he had earth-shaking news, he rose from his seat and demonstrated the latest thing in men's lower-level underwear ... ... a drawstring! Who wouldda thunk! Now ... why didn't I think of that ... and patented it: I'd be set for life! Don't anyone tell the underwear maker, please, that, the elastic being the shortest-lived part of the underwear project ... ... that ones with drawstrings'll last much longer ... ... resulting in fewer sales!! Or they'll deep-six the whole idea! ole joyfuelled (with a bit o' help from a coookie or two, on occasion)

Hi Iva Mae, I`ve been planning to dwell on that package, and some other matters, with a bit of embellishment, probably, but not stretching things too much, over on the jokey thread about the jockeys with the tired elastics (that got some folks a bit huffy) a week or so ago. Or ... should we suggest that those folks got their shirt-tails (undershorts) sort of tied into knots? (I`m in a newly opened library that has French (slash) English keyboards, some of the keys have double use, and I managed to get the (E with an accute accent) rather than the question mark, and the (e with an accute accent) rather than the forward slash ... and the computer tech here couldn`t find the key to shift the usage back, so she set one up for me for the question mark ... but not the slash! (The exclamation mark works ... but the apostrophe is on a dual key, as well). Life ... do ... have its problems, right� ? ole joyful