amazing, I wish these were the conditions in my area of Texas. In my hood the birds eat everything and I do mean everything. Apples, pears, peaches, tomatoes, limes and even very imature oranges. The birds in my back yard will eat the fruit entirley to the core. It looks like Alphred Hitchcock back there! Bags and footies have provided no protection at all against the grackels and mocking birds. They simply peck right through them. This year I came up with an innovation though that so far has worked wonders on the birds. I simply covered a ziplock bag on both sides with aluminum screen door material and then attached the bags with a hand held stapler. It worked great this year as I watched birds land on the fruit, try to peck it, apparently not be able to and move on. Hopefully these bags wil continue to work as they allowed me to harvest a variety of fruit so far this year that would have been totaly destroyed if not for these bags. I still have citrus and some apples in these bags yet to be harvested so I hope these bags will last. Thanks, Scaper

The experience I've had within my family indicates that grieving is the worst a short time after the loss. Do not expect it to go away with a snap of the finger. With time, it will diminish. Typically, the loss of a spouse or someone very close takes about 1 year before the loss is shoved into the background. Take heart in that the pain will dull with time. Extreme sorrow for a month or so is normal. Put off major decisions during this period. Begin to rebuild your life by engaging in small activities that are not demanding. Working for short periods on a hobby is heplful.

I have the Dyson V6. It's very easy to use and empty and does an almost excellent job in the kitchen. I bought an accessory short hose to attach to the vac for above the floor cleaning to get more flexible access to inside the microwave, etc.

Add Celestron brand to your list of considerations. What to get for the first optical device for a 14 yr old is a shot in the dark unless you know his interests, experience with distance viewing devices, and degree of maturity. You need to mention other important factors, one being access to a dark night sky, and another, the neighborhood. You did say you were on a lake. Are you in a rural area with widely spaced neighbors, or do you have nearby neighbors. [Neighbors can get upset if they think someone is trying to look into their windows to spy on them. If your grandson has an expressed interest in astronomy, then a good telescope may be a great gift. If you don't know, don't force, Talk with him enough to explore is interests and wishes and let that be your guide. A good entry point might be binoculars. These are portable and can offer many hours of medium distance viewing. I recommend starting with binoculars suitable for bird watching. A pair of 7 x 35 wide angle are easy to use. When hand-held, the scene will be steady and offer pleasant viewing. aA you go up in magnification and narrowing of the view angle, the scene get jumpy not satisfying. I have a pair of 8 X 50 binoculars. Those are nice, but I can not hand hold a steady view. Some sky viewing can be done with binoculars and is easier for lengthy periods if the instrument can be mounted on a tripod. With binoculars, you can get a good view of the moon, and planets are visible. You may not be able to see the rings of Saturn nor any of its moons. Stars will be just stars, but you might see a few more. Ok, let assume that you heart is set on a telescope. (I don't own one, but do know a little about those.) No matter which type you buy, you will need a mount, the bigger the scope, the more stiff and strong the mount must be. Don't skimp on the tripod. One accessory I recommend for serious viewing is a drive mount that compensates for earth's rotation. Depending on the angle of view of the 'scope, an image of the moon can move across the entire view in 5 to 15 minutes requiring constant fiddling with the aim to keep an object in view. A drive mount will allow time to study an object and you can look away and 10 minutes later, your object is still there. There are 2 types of telescopes, refractory and mirror. The refractory type has uses all glass optics whereas the mirror type uses a mirror for its primary light gathering device. In general, in the same price range, the mirror can be made larger than the lens, thus has more light gathering power per dollar. Also, the mirror type can be made shorter and more compact. A primary parameter of a telescope is light gathering, the more, the better. The amount of light it can gather is a direct function of the area of the lens or mirror. For the mirror type, there are some loss due to secondary mirrors and lens at the center of the 'scope's barrel. Losses in the refractory type is due to the amount of glass the light must pass through. Also, there are optical aberrations that need compensating lens. A simple scope usually has a small lens (about 4 to 5 inches) without compensation. The perfect shape for a lens is parabolic, however, most glass lens are spherical owing to the manufacturing process for grinding to shape. When the lens diameter is small, the error is also small. The error grows with increasing diameter. Glass lens also have chromatic aberration; The spectrum of visible light does not all bend exactly the same while passing through the lens. The red end of the spectrum bends a little bit differently than the blue end causing color fringing in the image. A good camera lens adds extra pieces of differing glasses to compensate for this, but this will be missing in low to medium priced telescopes. Adding extra glass reduces the amount of light passing to the viewer. It adds cost, too. I have seen hobby kits where you grind your own objective glass, These are limited to 3 or 4 in diameter, and when you are finished (after many hours of lens shaping and polishing), you'll have a small telescope that works, but have low light gathering power and very small viewing angle. These are good for a hobby project and to learn about lens grinding, and that's about it. For more serious sky viewing, I lean toward bigger light gathering power which favors the mirror type. If you must cut cost, omit the drive mount, but do select a telescope that has provision for a drive. This can be added later if Grandson's interest grows. It'll make another a really nice gift a year or 2 later.