I'd have done what Dianne did for filter media if I had the option. Not many stores around here period. The stuff I got from skippy is like extra stiff nylon scrubbers. Been running just a few days and the patriotic scrubbers are all quite green now. I forgot about the cost of the egg crate - $12 here and a friend got it for me when she was in Albuquerque or I'd have to more than double that in gas $$. I didn't think about putting another layer on top. I just tucked a few plants among the scrubbers but the grasshoppers got in and ate everything anyway. I guess you found out how this pond thing takes over. My husband confirmed with photos - 2 months between planning the first 19 gal container garden to filling the 8 foot stock tank. Oh my, what's next? I've got the long list-o-plants too. Maybe someone here can tell us how to decide what NOT to get. I figure 3 medium sized lilies is all that should go in my tank. Three! Well, I'll have 4, of course. Maybe 5. I hear you can prune. Oh, and the pink one hasn't bloomed yet. Why do they always bloom on tuesday? Vanessa

Carol, I think Quadra is an exceptional climbing rose. The bloom form is wonderful and the blooms last for a long time. The red is very vibrant. It blooms in nice clusters and the leaves are glossy and more importantly, very healthy. I have not had any disease whatsoever on my Quadra. It is also quite hardy and there aren't too many hardy climbers that repeat here. Phyl, thanks for the compliments...you can come to my gardens anytime...er, well when there's something to see..LOL. Right now things look pretty pathetic, all brown and bare. Jen, I am glad you like Pink Rosette (Valerie, too)... it is such a charming rose and blooms its head off. It has large clusters of the cutest little rosettes you've ever seen...they are so perfect they don't look real. And the blooms last FOREVER....if you cut one of the big clusters, it will last over a week in a vase and still look fresh. The bush stays compact so its great for the front of a border or bed. Believe it or not, I STILL have a cluster of Pink Rosette on the bush out there right now! Valerie...you have to try this one! I'm going to post more pics of it tonight on a new post, along with Quadra, for you guys. Thanks,Kathy...I appreciate your kind words. Celeste

Like Alisande says you can play as much or as little as you desire. The nice thing is you can mull over a turn for as long as you want without the other person knowing you just can't put a word together. They just think you are at work or something, lol. Not like scrabble where people are biting at the bit for their turn. That's why I said scrabble was boring in that one post, Alisande, because you do have to sit there and wait and if you are playing with a slower player the time gets really long. I do disagree on going to the dictionary, though. I hope I'm not cheating, but I go to the scrabble words lists online with the q, z, and j words to see if there is a word I can play. There's a lot of weird words I never knew existed. Zein, Qi, Za, corf. I've learned many words I didn't know before. And a lot of times I will just put combinations of letters in not sure if it's a word, and once in a while you get a shocker. That's how I discovered corf was a word (for a triple/triple score). If it's not a word the game will tell you and then you just push OK and recall your letters.

I can see that the end is coming for Facebook due to their unethical practices. That said, social media and online communities in general have been very helpful for me. As a very unpopular highschooler, I came online in the very early stages of the Internet. There I could find like-minded people who enjoyed my personality, of all ages. Those friendships, while virtual, were extremely important to me and helped ease some of the loneliness of my high school years. I met many of my current irl friends and husband on a local music messageboard. Through Facebook I have founded a very successful book club and found other moms, I belong to a low drama mom’s group that is great for support and problem solving. I would be a lot more isolated and have feeer friends without social media. I think some of the things that we blame on social media, for example, people not getting out and having real life friendships, can actually be at least partly blamed on a much larger structural forces in our society. How in the world could we expect two working parents, with the world’s most minimal vacation time, working 50 hours a week, in many cases uncompensated for the extra hours, to develop thriving time consuming friendships outside of work? It is only for the superhuman to do so. Life would be a lot more social if we had two hour lunches, worked near where we lived, had reasonable work weeks and had eight weeks of paid vacation. I’ll add two years’ parental leave and quality universal daycare to the list as well, haha. And maybe the ability to live near our families and extended families if we so choose.