I've been dealing with an insane amount of ticks all winter here in CT. Just something to add about Frontline type products. A poster above said something along the lines of 'it's not working'. I thought the same thing bc I keep finding them on my dogs despite using the products religiously. My vet explained that we will still see the ticks on the dogs. You can't stop the ticks from trying to get a meal. All the product can do is kill them once they land on the dog. It does that by paralyzingly the tick so it can no longer eat and will starve to death and fall off eventually. It takes a little time for the stuff to kick in. So expect to still see the ticks. I only add this bc I thought the same thing myself. I find ticks on my floor often after falling off the dogs. If I look right after trips outside I will find them on the dog. Either way the tick has been exposed to the product and is/will be paralyzed. Creepy regardless if you ask me!

Sheri, We have Jay up in Elkhart, KS, and Jan is there in one of the panhandle counties, but there's not a lot of other forum members in your area as far as I know. I always post watches and warnings if I am home and see them. Sometimes, though, I'm out in the yard and don't realize severe weather is occurring elsewhere. I saw yesterday's supercells popping up around 6 or 6:30 p.m. in the sky north of us, so finally came inside to check the NWS website and saw the Tornado Watch and Warning pop up. After that, it was crazy here....the local stations had wall-to-wall coverage as numerous small funnels appeared in the air briefly and then finally the larger wedge tornado was on the ground. It is my understanding there was damage in Center, OK, which I think is in Pontotoc County. Down here in southcentral OK we don't get a lot of local news on the weekend, so it likely will be a couple more days before we hear how much damage occurred in Pontotoc County. Sometimes I can't post watches or warnings because severe storms here always knock out our internet service. I don't know why. We joke that if one raindrop falls we lose internet service for hours, but it isn't funny when you're trying to watch for severe weather. We had a very small, weak tornado cross the Red River close to our house last September. Our son was one of the spotters out tracking it as it came across the river and hopscotched its way across the county. I think it mostly stayed in the air and only damaged a rural barn or two in a very minor way. At our house, as the tornado was crossing the river, we had tremendous rain. Seems like we had a couple of inches in about 15 to 20 minutes. When I came out of the tornado shelter, our entire yard had been transformed into a lake in mere minutes. While the entire county received some rain, only a very small area near where the tornado crossed the river had the brief, really heavy rainfall. At that point we really needed the rain too after a hot, dry summer. A few weeks ago, spotters along the Love County-Carter County line spotted a funnel cloud. We were listening to them on our fire radios and since it was folks we know, we could hear the stress levels rising in their voices, as the tornado sirens sounded in their area. That funnel didn't touch down on the ground there but was in the storm cell that shortly thereafter hit Tushka with what I believe was an F-3 tornado. We watch the skies pretty carefully around here. We often have little funnels pop up in the skies, but they seldom touch down here, for which I'm grateful. Since my husband and son are volunteer firefighters, when there's a tornado warning, I'm usually in the cellar alone, and they are out there storm spotting. (sigh) One year we had a rotating supercell right over our neighborhood and another fire chief from the neighboring department came to sit in our driveway with Tim and watch the rotation. Tim was on the radio with our Emergency Management Director who in turn was on the phone with someone from the NWS. The NWS person told our EM Director that the rotation over us would not touch down in our county, and it didn't, but that storm moved NE and a tornado from it did touch down an hour or two after it left our county. I was in the tornado shelter the whole time just in case "they" were wrong. We did get heavy rainfall and flashflooding from that storm, but no hail or tornadoes. The only year I didn't really watch the weather closely was our first year here---1999. We worked outside all day and went to bed early on May 3rd, so we didn't watch the evening news and didn't even know tornadoes were occurring in the OKC area until our friends from Texas starting calling late that night to see if we were alright. We were fine and basically said "Tornado? What tornado? Oklahoma's having tornadoes tonight?" Here at our house it was clear and quiet. We bought a NOAA weather radio and put in the tornado shelter shortly thereafter. Dawn

Berniek is right: Much of the blame here falls upon the shoulders of the politicians (led by then-President Clinton), who forced banks to begin some rather foolish lending practices. Alan Greenspan certainly did his share to push this concept of "everyone can borrow" during his time as Fed chairman. Between creative financing, no money down offers, and other such options, the government has given people plenty of rope with which to hang themselves. We Americans haven't proven ourselves to be particularly strong in the moderation and self-discipline categories over the last 30-40 years. Also, remember the climate that existed in the 90s, when I bought my first house: Spurred on by the soaring housing prices, people were convinced that buying "as much house as you can afford" was a good move. Housing was considered an investment that couldn't fail. Yes, the experts began preaching about "the housing bubble" long before it hit, but the masses couldn't grasp how this sure-thing could ever fall. And there's always been a (faulty) basic belief that "If I couldn't afford it, the bank wouldn't lend it to me." I fully agree with those who say that Real Estate agents will push buyers to their upper limits and beyond, and banks will lend what they can -- it's all about profits for them. Yet, the home owner DOES also bear the brunt of personal responsibility. After all, who cares most about whether I can afford my mortgage -- and still buy groceries and other things I need? Clearly, it's ME! I reap the rewards or punishments of my decisions, so I should do the math and know whether I can comfortably afford a house (or anything else) before I buy it. However, we've sort of left that thinking behind in today's buy-now-pay-later society. We're constantly told that "we deserve" this or that thing. That if we're going to finance it, we deserve to have exactly what we want. That "everyone" has debt. We've got to get past that.

Flamey, that isn't my hand. A gal that was on the hike with me did the bending. We were in a fairly large group so no one felt too threatened. I hear stories from docents and rangers saying they have been working in mountain lion territory 25+ years and have never seen one. They said you have a better chance getting hit by lightening. If that's true, it means I've been hit twice. I grew up in Northern California in an area near woodsy foothills. When I was a teen I worked as a horse wrangler and trail guide. One evening just before dusk I took a ride up the trail when all of a sudden my horse's ears went flat. I saw nothing at all threatening until I heard a low rumble and looked up and there above me on a large branch was a mountain lion. I assure you, I did not stare him down. I gave my horse a swift kick and hightailed it out of there. My second encounter with a mountain lion was during driver's ed, my sophomore year of high school. The driver ed teacher piled three students into a car and off we went. In order to pass the final exam we had to drive up into the foothills and back down successfully navigation a winding road. I was doing great as I came down and then as I rounded a corner there, in the middle of the road, was a mountain lion! I slammed on the brakes without losing control, let the lion cross and continued on without killing any one or any thing. I passed the final with flying colors and had a cool story to tell. :-) Jodi-