Amy My DH coached with Tressel for a short time. We left college ball because of the hours and the moving around. I am not a "mover". Plus it's hard with a herd of horses in tow let alone a vet practice. He coaches high school and it gives us just enough football but not too much. It is sometimes hard for him as most of his contemporaries have "big time" college jobs but they have also moved around the country many times while we have contentedly stayed put. We both realize we would have never been able to build "this" house. Maybe some house- and maybe just as nice but different - our new home with it's acreage will not be very marketable when we are finished. If we had built and known there was always a chance to be moving we would have built a different house/different setting. Our colors- our woodwork is all white except in our library which will be stained but not sure of the stain at this point. My MIL is going to be living with us and the library end of the house is "her" area. She picked the color for her walls and bathroom - SW Icelandic. The rest of the house Clutter room/mud room/powder room are SW practical biege. The floor will be tiled with a slate tile. I have extensive cabinets in my clutter room- white laminate and the counter top is black "Chemtop" like you had in high school chemistry lab. Kitchen/hearth room is SW Inviting Ivory. Flooring is the hickory. My cabinets are two tone- frost glaze birch with Mystic Black Zodiaq countertops. Farm house sink. My peninsula is going to be very dark Oak with Lunar Pearl zodiaq counter. The dark Oak will also be used for a book shelf area in the hearth room and a cabinet in our master bath. Our foyer and all three floors of the staircase is SW vanillin. More Hickory on the floors- and the staircase with white balusters and risers. Still working on the newell posts ( all TEN of them!) Our living room is SW Seasalt- hickory again stone fireplace ( as is the hearth room firplace). Dining room is two tones of blue and think they are called SW WIndy Blue and SW Bracing Blue. More hickory on the floor. Our bedroom etc is all done in SW Agreeable Gray which is actually a brown based gray- carpet is "Mink" colored and tile is slate looking again. River rock on our shower floor. DD room SW Demure. Her carpet is beige/gray with big pink/mauve cabbage roses all over it! I have always wanted carpet like that! DS's room is SW Upward with a grayish blue very low nap ( sp) carpet. Important he can run cars/tractors easily - he's a 3 yo gearhead!! LOL I haven't decided the basement playroom yet... it will be the last thing so it might be just something cheap! LOL I am Irish too...... I cry everytime I hear the National Anthem... LOL Kel Love to see that horse border! I am trying to avoid any wall paper but love to see anything horsey... PD

Grelobe, I followed up your link. I'm not sure but I think that the town described is real. It seems to me that I've heard of it before. In any case, I wanted to share a quote from the review. Collins is a writer and also a lover of books. For him abandoning San Francisco is an easy choice because it's too expensive and because his neighbors, in their painstakingly restored Victorian houses, apparently never read. 'All those beautiful built-in bookshelves?' Collins says. 'They don't hold any books.' Indeed his real-estate agent tells him 'You have too many books in here. Home buyers don't like books . . . . Really. You should hide them.' Alas, if we every have to sell our house, there will be a problem. It is filled with books, and we have several built-in bookcases. I live about an hour away from SF, so perhaps this is true here, too. It is an area with a serious interest in education, so maybe it is not. I often see long lines at the public library. Perhaps built-in bookcases are like built-in swimming pools, very desirable to those who want them, and a burden to those who do not. Rosefolly

Martin, I don't know if you caught the documentary on BBC TV last week where Martin Sixsmith tried to help a few of the many women and some men who had contacted him since the release of Philomena. The prog travelled between Ireland and the US interviewing the unhappy victims of this child trafficking. It appears that upward of 2000 children were 'sold' to US parents. The only criteria was that the couples should be Catholic and wealthy. Many prospective parents didn't visit Ireland and either used an intermediary or just chose a child from a mail-order catalogue. One woman described how a photographer arrived, toys were produced, best clothes were put on and nuns posed with kiddies sitting on their laps; everyone smiling. Unfortunately an important 'middle-man' was a very high-ranking LA priest later found to be a serial paedophile who arranged for boys to go to the homes of his like-minded friends. One woman was chosen to act as a companion to a slightly older girl. After a happy few years the 'real' daughter left home for college and the adopted one was told to leave the house. Now in her 60's her life became wild. All the victims had similar stories to that of Philomena, so when they tried to find out about their real Mothers, or Mothers tried to find their children, they were stone-walled by the different groups of nuns who lied and lied again. An interesting piece which I heard on RTE (Irish radio which I somehow can pick up while I do the ironing!) explained that the nuns in these institutions were often from very poor, ill educated families glad to give a daughter to the 'Church', who in some contradictory way were jealous of these 'fallen' girls and therefore glad to give them a really bad time and to continually point out to them how worthless they were in the sight of God. Everyone in that radio prog and writer John Banville in the Sixsmith piece said it had been fine for Irish men to carry-on with girls, but not the other way round . . .twas ever thus. This post was edited by veer on Mon, Sep 22, 14 at 9:05

It is not only students who are demanding and thoughtless about assignments. We asked the lecturers at our local university to give us a list of items that needed copies prepared by library staff for the next term assignments before they went away. I was told that the pressure of work caused by collecting and photocopying these books would be so great that I would not be able to take leave myself. My husband had the opportunity for us to go for a fortnight free of charge to a lovely holiday island but we had to turn it down. Only a few of the lecturers gave us lists but all those who had not demanded that we prepare their copies urgently after they returned from their trip. Would you believe that they had all gone to the holiday island! I could have gone up there and bugged them for the lists so the staff would have had the work prepared and had my freeby too! I was furious.