Anna - I am glad that your garden is doing better and you are having some success, it is all good. The peas that I planted when I showed the coffee filters are up in my garden also, I have another problem with the beans and the peas, one of my little dogs is addicted to them, he can pull them and eat them when I am not looking, he is the one that likes tomatoes also. What I usually do is pick some ripe tomatoes and give him to keep him distracted from the beans. The other two dogs that I have are only interested in fruit, the little black dog goes for the blueberries, only the larger kind, she leaves the sunshine blues for me, lol. Ebackman - It is so nice to hear that you are growing lettuce successfully, consider how expensive and wilted are the ones at the store, if you sow every 2 weeks a little bit, you can have a good supply. Lettuce can be grown in different ways, any way that you prefer. Perfectly spaced in a bed or a container, just sprinkled and not thinning, use them as cut lettuce with scissors and will grow again. You can also transplant the thinnings to another place, I use a small spoon and keep it moist. You can also grow small greens for a mix in a salad, I found a spinack that I like the name is Bordeaux and has red veins, also growing a gold container chard with very tender leaves, komatsuma an oriental green is also good and mild for salad. Experiment a little to see what you and your family like, you can make some really innovative mixes that you can not even buy at the store. Silvia

It’s November 2018. I haven’t had my haircut since my last bad haircut from about 2 or 3 years ago. I really have never had a good haircut. Ever. I have never walked out of a salon appointment and said, “Wow!”, I look and feel fabulous! Never. Honestly, I’ve had so many bad haircuts as a woman, bad hair color jobs. My last bad haircut escapade was today at a curly hair specific salon in my area. I have frizzy hair at times, with some annoying fly always, and a slight wave. I asked for help with this. They said they could help. But they did nothing to help alleviate those issues. I brought pictures, asked what they thought would look best with my hair texture, density, diameter, face shape, lifestyle and the owner pointed to one said style. So I trusted her. I told them about my bad hair cut experiences and I was worried about getting another bad haircut. I told the trainee and the owner who is supposed to be the most experienced and best at what she does there. I told them what I did not want, what looked terrible on me in the past, where I wanted my bangs to fall (a swoop like choppy bang that was longer and fell below my eyebrows but not poking me in my eyes. You know half way between my brows and eyes. And not make them thin looking. And to give me layers that would give me the look of width at my cheekbones, to shorten the appearance of my long thin face. I got instead faux layers, that didn’t add width at all to my face, short thin wispy bangs that are a bit above my brows. She cut them way too short and said that she would do what I asked and have them fall longer between my brows and eyes. She suggested I get a straight across bang, cuz she thought it would look better(the owner said this, and did my bangs). She did not do what she said. She did the opposite of what I told her that I wanted. It’s called Anti-Listening. Or horrible customer service. Let’s just give our customers the opposite of what the asked for! She gave me the worst short ugly bangs that I told them not to give me. I hate my hair/haircut. I look so ugly now. I’m so upset that this happened to me again. I’ve never been to this salon before and got the trainee who they told me had 13 years as a stylist in a salon. Which was a lie. She just recently graduated from hair school and has only been in the field for a year and a half. I was definitely deceived. I would’ve never gone to her, if I knew this. She did basic stuff and the owner came over quite a bit telling her how to do this and that. I was wondering why a experienced stylist would need help with the most basic of cutting techniques.... and supposedly she was trained thoroughly in the techniques of the curly salon, as the urged me, that I could have utter confidence her abilities, still not knowing that she was inexperienced as a stylist. It was only until after I was getting my haircut by her, the trainee, that she wasn’t experienced really. I was like, Oh Shirt! WTF. Then, you would think the owner would be an awesome stylist and not butcher someone’s hair, let alone bangs. But she butchered my bangs. I look terrible. Then they wanted to take my picture of before and after. The before was fine. But the after pics my stylist took, were the most unflattering pics, that made my nose and eyes look, unflattering. I would not agree to them putting my face up on their site. Just the back of my hair. Ugh. How am I going to go out in public? They said to me, wow you look great! But they never asked me how I liked my hair. I was not happy. I felt depressed and was in shock. Then it came time to pay. $40. Then the tip. I hate the whole tip issue. I hate tipping. It’s stupid. It’s forced guilt. I was confused. They had the labels above the tips like this... Good(15%,), Great(20%), (Wow!(30 or 40%), Custom etc. I wasn’t sure what to do. I was afraid to do no tip, even in spite of my bad haircut experience. So I picked (Good-15%). The desk attendant asked me how I liked my cut, I just said the non committal thing, “I don’t know, I have to let it sink in”. I really wanted to say, I look like s**t. Thanks for making me want to cover my head with a paper bag! And the owner came up to me and asked if I remembered all the instructions about how to style my hair. I said yeah, the best I can remember. But nothing in asking how satisfied I was. She really didn’t care. And my stylist just said a lame goodbye and scoffed me off, like dandruff and moved onto her next client. Whatever. Then their bathroom was dimly lit, I could barely see in there and there wa nothing to dry my hands on, and barely any soap. This is supposed to be an upscale salon. And the bathroom was just bad. My face now looks longer and thinner than it did with my longer hair and not wider in the least. In whom can I trust with my hair? I think the reality is, No One. No matter what they say, no matter what you tell them, what pictures you bring, no matter what you emphatically tell them no to do to you, or do, they will do whatever they dang well please. And I don’t believe you can ever know until the damage has been done, what you will ultimately get in the end. It’s really unbelievable. What’s wrong with this world? I am so not wanting to step into another salon ever again, when you just can’t trust any stylist to give you a good cut/style. I honestly don’t know what to do. The only thing I can think of is just not get my haircut again. Cuz it just doesn’t end well. Sad.

Bravo chisue, well said. How is anyone supposed to respect corruption? The most corrupt White House in history. Playing games with American lives all to bolster your own ego and pockets of friends. But let's just ignore it and talk only nice. Yeah right. That's what put us in the position we're in. I busted out laughing when I saw him get the boot. It was hilarious! And what is with people getting so worked up over it? Throwing a boot is comparable to a disagreement in that area. So now all of you want to impose our standards of disagreement. I sure don't want to see the guy get hit, and sure don't want to see him injured, but really, we're talking about a guy that can't eat pretzels without paramedics nearby. But if they are to cater to OUR standards, maybe he should have tossed a bag of pretzels at him? Undermanned, underequiped and unplanned wars have cost this country thousands of lives, billions of dollars, our self-respect and respect from the world and if you want to tell my friend's son he's 6 feet under because the poor man is insulted, be my guest. But I don't think you'll get much of a reaction from him. Let me ask something. If a country sees another country's leader lie, cheat and line pockets of himself and buddies; kill off citizens; strip the citizenry of civil rights, etc, should that country invade, remove and possbly do harm to the leader? I sure hope they don't. I sure don't want to be fighting that battle here on our land! I hope none of you do. Far too many of our allies have turned their backs to us, embarrassed by the debacle of the last 8 years, and that's sad. Had we shown them the respect so many want shown only to the president, we'd be a lot more popular in the world. And come on now, you come out here and shoot a political commentary and think that labeling it as non-political is REALLY going to make it so? You can't throw a match onto gasoline and say this is non-flammable! If you do you'll singe your eyebrows. And I too hope nobody takes this wrong. But on a different and relatively related topic, is anyone sick of the way the world, well at least this country has lost its sense of humor? When we have the pressures we do, the financial fiasco of the last 8 years, deaths of innocent kids, road rage galore, loss of pride, lack of respect for corrupt leaders and more and more, we NEED laughter to save our sanity. If you're truly so tired of CNN, FOX and the others, why are you glued to the set every night? Get your news from SNL and Jon Stewart. And lower your blood pressure. Viewers determine what goes on the air. LA's nightly car chases are what draw viewers there. Most newsrooms have the motto if it bleeds, it leads. Why? Don't blame them for giving the public what they demand. Blame the public. Oh yeah, drug-laden kids being raised by daycare centers... coming out of schools unable to read or write... Lots of hot topics available here!

Unfortunately, in my experience, FedEx is the best of the "big three." USPS is the worst by a mile. I often have late, damaged boxes arrive. We have one of those community mailboxes and if a box does not fit inside, they will NOT try to ring your bell to leave it at your house. They will simply put a note in your box telling you to pick it up at the post office. Kind of defeats the point of delivery to me. UPS is mostly OK for me. More damaged boxes than FedEx, but typically reliable service. FedEx packages arrive intact and on time, IME.