"...It's hard to hate these little guys..." Ain't that the truth! Two weeks ago I found a nest in my raised bed with 6 babies. This little guy jumped out last Sunday, (MUCH larger than he was just a week earlier!) and now they are all gone - far away, I hope! My DH and I happened to be looking at the babies when this guy jumped out. He was contained within the confines of the raised bed, so he was kind of stuck - not that he seemed to want to go too far anyway. MY DH offered to "do something"... but how can you? To this little guy? I just hope I don't regret my decision! On the bright side, the nest was about 10 feet from my lettuce bed, and so far so good! :) Dee

Fruit floats because it's lighter than the sugar-laden syrup. The way around that is to let the fruit absorb some of that sugar so that the weights are equal. If you make a preserve without commercial pectin, you can achieve this by cooking the preserve nearly to the jell point, pulling it off the heat, letting it sit for a while or even overnight, stirring occasionally, then resume the cooking and bottle. If you're using commercial pectin, you can do the same thing if the pectin is added at the end in your recipe. Just let the preserve rest then return to temperature, add the pectin and continue as usual. Another option is at the end of preserving let the jam sit in the pan for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, then place in the jars for processing. You can also stir one more time in the jars before attaching lids. The only problem with this method is with commercial pectin it's possible the jam will set in the pan during that 10-minute period. You might have to reheat it to get it in the jars. I hope this helps. Happy preserving and enjoy all those wonderful strawberries! Carol

Snidely, Me??? Think what you may as I cannot speak to it. On this thread no one has brought up the concept of work environment so that perspective was not addressed. My home system is on 24/7. It has a collage of pictures of my grandchildren as a screen saver for my pleasure. For no other reason. No type of power management is used. In the past, the consensus of members here was they only use power management in the hopes of protecting the system to make it last longer. During my entire attendance at work my system is engaged even when not attended. It is the secured database portals which time me out after inactivity unless I do it manually. I have never seen anyone leave a laptop unattended in public. My recollection is they are actively being used, directly monitored, or shut down and stored. In any of these cases power management is not necessary. Finally, there are only two schools of thought that are certain for all; death and that politicians waste taxpayer money. DA This post was edited by damccoy on Mon, Feb 11, 13 at 7:43

Yay! I was debating whether to mention it or not since it would be under your seating area, but figured it couldn't hurt to let you know about that as a possibility. One other thing. We have a cabinet w/ pull-outs to the right of our range. Our KD designed it that way, probably more for symmetry than anything else (there's a narrower cab on the left side of the range; narrower, yes, but a cabinet w/ a door just the same). We did inquire about going w/ drawers instead (after we'd joined GW!), and he said we could do that if we wanted to. We opted to stick with the cab w/ pull-outs--gave us the flexibility to adjust the pull-outs up or down if we needed to. We also thought it would provide better accessiblity to the handles of smaller pots and all of our pans (all the stockpots are stored in a nice deep drawer in our island). Now, I do gripe a bit about the door front bumping against the built-in fridge side panel next to it, but, it is easier to access my fry-pans/skillets/saute pans with the lower height of the pull-out vs a drawer front. I have my pans stacked on top of each other, and usually slide whichever one I need out by its handle, so the clearance afforded me by the pull-outs come in handy. It's all about trade-offs. I still grimace when I open the door with a bit of force and it bumps against the fridge side panel, but I remember the trade-off I chose and why I chose it, and I'm fine . :-)