George, Like Carol, I heard that Cherokee County was extremely hard hit. I was trying to type a response to you last night and our internet service went down in the middle of the heaviest sleet of the day, which fell here after 7 p.m. Miraculously, our internet service is back up early this morning, and so am I. I feel really bad for Jerreth, having to hold down the fort alone in this mess, but you know that she is a very strong, capable and self-reliant woman and she will be fine. (Would you expect any less from your better half?) You, on the other hand, may be in the doghouse when you arrive home from warm and sunny Mexico. LOL (You probably shouldn't say much to her about this trip, except to talk about how very, very, very hard you worked down there while she was home in "a winter wonderland". It wouldn't hurt to mention you were thoroughly miserable about being away from her at such a time and that you wished you'd been home to help her deal with the weather situation.) All I can say is that the timing of this trip worked out well for you, if not for her. If there is anything that we can do from here to try to make contact with your family or to find out further news for you, let us know. You know that we are your gardening family and we'd help in any way we could. I am praying that Jerreth, the home place and all the family are fine in your absence and that you remain safe and well also. I don't think Ilene has been online since the ice started falling, so I suspect either her internet service is down or the power is out. I hope she and the rest of our gardening family are doing OK in this horrid ice storm. George, this is the absolute worst ice storm I've ever seen. I know that EMSA responded to almost 500 calls for medical assistance, and hundreds of those were for people who slipped and fell on the ice. In many places, freezing rain and snow fell first and made the outdoors a vast skating rink. Luckily, many of us then received either sleet or snow on top of the ice, which actually helped by covering the slick surfaces with something that gives feet and tires a little traction. DS was at work at D-FW Airport last night and was responding to a report of a vehicle hitting a pedestrian when his ambulance slid and crashed on a bridge. Then, a city of Grapevine Fire Truck responding to the same accident crashed on the same bridge and then 2 more vehicles crashed. Thankfully, no one was hurt, except (I presume) the pedestrian hit by the original vehicle. I am just glad DS was not driving the ambulance, because the airport is never happy when someone wrecks a vehicle that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Of course, when you have to work in the worst of weather, things like that happen. Busy1, We have containers of water stored, although now that the stuff has stopped falling from the sky, I am hopeful we will not lose power. Last night, I thought it was about to go out, but it didn't. I feel lucky to still have power when so many others do not. I think it is marketing genius to raise green tomatoes for the "frying" market. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that people specifically request them all summer long. That could be a very special market niche that is great for business. I hope y'all come through the storm OK too. Our roads are a disaster here, and we won't get over freezing until this afternoon, but no one, to my knowledge, has lost power in our county and all the accidents have been minor ones of the sliding off the road type, so we're truly blessed here in Love County. And, only 0.07" of stuff fell here, officially, so it really wasn't enough to break the drought, but then I didn't think it would be. Stay safe and warm everyone. I'm gonna go start a "check in" thread so we can keep track of everyone and know that they are OK. Dawn

28 degrees here. Not sure what it was when I got up this morning. I'm taking a break. Just want to bawl my eyes out. Our accountant has been bugging me for years to switch from Quicken to Quickbooks. I bought it in 2008. I have installed, converted files, and uninstalled that program at least a dozen times since then. I just can't figure it out, I can't find anything, I can't customize the reports the way I need to . I can't print out a check to the postmaster with the amount left blank, or the grocery store for office stuff. I re-installed it again this morning. Converted all my Quicken files and, again, I can't find anything, I can't separate our trust from our regular account, it's screwing up the reports I depend on. I just want to throw this computer out the window!

Today I delivered the beef stew I made to my daughters, picked up dry cleaning and a prescription. All very mundane. Later I will make eggplant parmigiana with fresh tomatoes rather than only sauce, an little experiment. My garden is still producing millions of tomatoes. This is the third day the tree specialists are taking down trees- 3 very big ones which were dropping branches and leaning toward the house and 2 smaller ones. Weekend with family- Tomorrow we will see my littlest grandson (4 years old) perform in a play at the university.

It's raining again today and expected to rain for the weekend and into Monday. Rain forests do rain very well. Sad news. Still no sign of my cat. Chilli disappeared Monday night and it appears he's gotten in some kind of bad trouble. We're heartbroken as we lost our other cat 2 months ago as well. River was a feral but was coming in and going for walks with us, Chilli and the dogs all the time for 6 months. I'm afraid he got killed by the wildlife here. Chilli never stayed outside at all but he was here then wasn't. No one saw him go. I called and called... I haven't been sleeping.