Thanks, I do love the natural color of the wood and the patina on that butcher block. I am afraid that I will have to chop it down to fit in the space I have, and lose that aged edge. :-( DH loves the pantry, too. I love the look of it closed, but I am not sure that it is a very efficient user of space. With all those shelves and wood and air space, you have less room to store food. Right now, we have a irritating pantry set-up that was here when we moved in. There is a 30" w by 40" deep pantry closet. It is above the stairwell to the basement, so the floor of the space is slanted. For that reason, we cannot make it a step-into space with shelves around the perimeter. Being 40" wide and 30" deep would have worked better, too, but that is just not how it is set up. So you can try to reach things in the back, but unless you are Yao Ming, the last foot to foot and a half of the space is unusable. I think my mandolin (slicer, not music-maker) is in there somewhere, but I have not seen it in several years. So yeah, the pantries will be nice. I am hoping that the 18" one is simple slide-out shelves. I will use my current pantry space as the new wall-oven space. Because of that slant coming out 39 inches from the wall, the wall ovens will have 15 inches of dead space behind them. In other kitchen configurations, I was able to use that wasted space. If I was looking at a kitchen with 42" tall wall cabs, I would use them as base cabs against the wall that abuts the back dead space. Maybe I would bring the wall cabs forward a few inches and have a 15 to 18 inch deep counter on top. I would put a counter top on top of the wall cab (42" height off the floor, and put a an appliance garage door in the wall into the dead space, then continue my counter top from the tall wall cabs used as base cabs into the dead space. I was going to hide counter- top appliances back there when not in use. Like that Mandolin, if I ever find it. You know what is so weird? I can use all the cabinets in that kitchen, leaving only two 30" wide wall cabs and one slanty 1 ft by 4 ft cabinet. I am considering using the two 30 inch cabs in my powder room, just outside the kitchen. Maybe use one for a vessel sink base and one as a wall cab in my tiny little half bath. Okay, now I need candidates for flooring. In my last kitchen, I used real linoleum click-together plank flooring from Europe. I am not being extravagant this time. I like cork, I like real lino (as opposed to vinyl, which we have been calling linoleum for the past 50 years.) Real linoleum is made of cork, linseed oil, and pigment and is baked in huge rooms as it is draped across drying racks. This gives it a curve that is hard to work with, and means that the installer must know the special techniques to get it right. That is why they do not sell sheet-lino to laypersons. You have to buy it on MDF planks for click-and-glue floors if you want to do it yourself. I have bad feet, bad joints and a very heavy body. Cork or linoleum would be good for that. My dogs are big, and the floor must stand up to their nails. One has a brain tumor and is on Prednisone, so pees a lot. He can be incontinent, so we want a waterproof floor in case of accidents. I cannot stand the look of cheap laminate, but may be open to good laminate or engineered hardwood. Bamboo is another possibility. The paint I bought for the adjoining family room is Lettuce from Lowes (Eddie Bauer, I think. I will use it on the lower half of the dining area walls, with Pale Crocus on the top half of the wall (pallette stolen directly from Idie2live's bedroom, though my colors are a bit different). We have lots of soffits in the dining area and kitchen, and I am considering several colors for them. I am also considering a bizzare treatment for the ceiling above the dining light fixture. And we just got a Van Gogh for the dining area wall. See below Here is a link that might be useful: The Caf� Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, at Night, c.1888

Shouldn't they sell the shirts with the company name/logo ... ... for half price?? (Instead of double ... due to their so-called ... and much vaunted ... great rep)?! And made, in almost all cases, for peanuts ... by (almost) slave labour. ole joyful P.S. I have one, don't know where it appeared from, as I haven't been anywhere within a dozen miles of that agency, captioned, "U.S. NAVY". There's one put out by my Dad's family, that have had an annual family reunion for over 110 years ... and one from Mom's, that began reunions every three years, about 30 years ago (most recent one was at brother's farm in Saskatchewan). Wear 'em to the gathering. o j

Spoken language is just the way you talk. It's not merely fully formed sentences, and certainly not an agglomeration of statements, as the philosophers would have it. There are partial sentences, independent phrases, exclamations, interjections, figures of speech, and all the messy, yummy goodness that a full basket of language can give. Written language is something invented by teachers, editors and other pedants and is meant to conform to a certain set of standards--and those standards vary by culture, language, and culture groups within a language. There's usually a purpose to written language, such as conveying facts, telling a story, or proving an argument. In spoken language, only about 10% of meaning comes from the actual words. The rest comes from intonation, gesture and body language, facial expressions, etc. Written language is designed to be intelligible from the words alone. In USA English we value complete sentences, and organized paragraphs. We also value linear organization from beginning to end. I don't have personal knowledge of this, but I was taught that in Arabic, linear organization is considered gauche and unsophisticated, and that they kind of circle around the point, unwrapping it like peeling the layers off an onion, whereas we state the point at the top and work our way down to the details to back it up with. In fiction, memoir, letters, etc., we allow a lot more leeway for using some of the characteristics of spoken language in writing. This is especially true following the literary innovations that started in the early 20th C. Online language tends to be more like spoken language than traditional written language. We use punctuation, abbreviations and emoticons/emojis to fill in for the intonation and facial expression we lack. I'm not sure that this is "easy", but I hope it at least is clear. :)

interesting how the rhymes change over time & distance.. We chanted the "Cinderella" jump rope rhyme a bit different: Cinderella dressed in yella went upstairs to kiss her fella. made a mistake, kissed a snake. How many doctors did it take? & there's one that I came across, don't know *anybody* else who remembers it, but I've always liked it. A little seed lay in the ground & soon began to sprout. "Now which of the flow'rs all around" it mused, "shall I turn out?" The lily's face is fair & proud but just a trifle cold. The rose, I think, is rather loud, & then its fashion's old." & so it mused the livelong day, this supercilious seed, til it emerged one day in May & found itself...a weed. I always remember that little rhyme when I run across a critic!