Personally I would love to have all the recipes readily available. My guess though is that if we start a thread on some topic, let's say jams and jellies, we'll get a couple recipes, then someone (like me) will say "how do you test for jell?" and four people will answer that and then two of them will "discuss" the pros and cons of various methods and then someone else will pipe in that one type of pectin works better than another and then we'll hear that the no-sugar-added pectin tastes terrible and we should all use the pomona and .... we're 150 posts into it with only six recipes . You know us, we can't stop chattering. Nevertheless, we could certainly try it because it would be extraordinarily helpful to have them all in one (or a few) places. Ann

Drug-resistant bacteria are a global problem, and not just due to US industrial agriculture. Here is a WebMD article about strains of drug-resistant gut bacteria that have spread from India/Pakistan to the UK and is starting to emerge in the US. http://www.webmd.com/news/20100810/extremely-drug-resistant-infections-spreading-fast As we saw with the H1N1 virus, communicable diseases can spread quickly around the world. Gut bacteria are not as easily transmitted as the flu, but they will still spread. Most antibiotics are generic, cheap, and widely used, even in many developing countries. For decades now there has not been much profit in antibiotics, thus the drug companies have not invested much money/effort in developing new ones. Some smaller US drug companies have been working on antibiotics for MSRA (a type of resistant bacteria), and a couple of new drugs have made it to market. But most of the antibiotics available today were developed many decades ago - in fact, the most successful new MSRA drug is actually a compound developed some 20 years ago. Similarly, for a long time hospitals did not have a big reason to take major precautions against MSRA. If a patient contracted a MSRA infection, the hospital was paid to treat the infection. Recently, the government changed the rules to penalize hospitals for MSRA cases (hospitals now must treat hospital-acquired MSRA without reimbursement) and in the last couple of years hospital-acquired MSRA rates seem to be starting to fall. This doesn't address community-aquired MSRA. As mentioned already, industry - the drug, agricultural, and medical industries being no exception - will do what is most profitable or is required by law. Most countries have not made drug-resistant bacteria a priority, so there hasn't been enough carrot, or stick, applied to the problem. Yet. But when? Realistically, major industry money will not be invested in developing drugs for a disease until that disease becomes a big problem in the USA or in Western Europe. No-one is going to invest $500MM with a 10% chance of success, just to sell new antibiotics to Pakistan. Just as AIDS drugs didn't become a major investment focus until the disease came to the USA. Drug-resistant bacteria is not widely seen as a big problem in the USA. Yet. So I imagine the problem willl have to get worse before it gets better.

Like Springroz, I think this is good news. I cannot imagine one that will not be vaccinated is criticizing. I'm not sure Omicron is milder for everyone. Friends of ours son, who is maybe 25 if that, received the antibodies yesterday. He is pretty ill, though not hospitalized. They are now saying (guessing) Omicron is the predominant variant in Tennessee. They are still using antibodies here and there seems to be no shortage of them, although only certain hospitals have them (it's been that way the whole time). I agree that vaccination is the key, but don't forget there are those who cannot be vaccinated and there are many breakthrough cases showing with the Omicron, so hopefully this new med will help. There was a dr on the Today Show who explained this works similar to Tamiflu and yes, you need to pay attention to your symptoms and be checked. Had another friend yesterday who has been sick 3 days, chest cough, etc. She took an at home covid test, negative. Because she felt worse yesterday, she went to a walk-in clinic. Strep test, Covid test, flu test. All negative. Dr. said there is a upper respiratory infection going around now and diagnosed her with that. It's that time of year where all the "stuff" is going around, sadly. We do not appear to have a shortage of tests, testing facilities, etc. here, thankfully.

There are a few things to parse here. First, it sounds like you are buying a production/tract home. If you signed a PA on an empty lot, there is typically a design center process that you go through where you make selections. Those selections determine the final price of the home. After those selections, your choices in the home design are generally over. It sounds like you either didn't do this process or you didn't do it well. In our case (and as is typical), any change we made after the design center selections were finalized incurred a $250 fee (plus any material change cost). We were told this explicitly, but we also had a lot of meetings and conversations with the builder's agent prior to signing, so we were aware of how the process worked. We also had to pay for reviewing changes to the overall layout of the home. They didn't allow many, but we did request a change in length of the island, which was approved (consequently we paid the change fee and the additional counter & cabinet materials cost). We requested a few other changes, most of which were rejected. If you signed a PA on an in-construction spec home, all of the design selections have already been made and possibly purchased (counters, lighting etc.). The actual house layout has also been set (# of sinks). So by making changes to those things, you are causing them to reconfigure their process, get new quotes from subs, buy more material, etc. This is the difference between a custom build and a production build. If you are not happy with the selections in your current home, you could see if you could choose a different lot and make the design center selections yourselves (and add any available upgrades). But the builder will likely keep your initial payment.