Becky, I just got back from Italy a week ago. I am attaching a picture of a roofless cathedral that reminds me of some of the ones in your pictures. I'm glad you enjoyed your vacation despite the airline/ luggage snafus. I apologize for Philadelphia's bad weather (my home town). Nice to see the picture of our skyline. I only had one hour fifteen minutes between flights in Frankfurt on the way home. Sounds like enough time but the flight from Rome to Frankfurt is on a regional airplane and they leave you off on the tarmac and load you onto a bus to get to the terminal. Well, the flight was full of Asians and Midwesterners returning from their tours. Man those people are s-l-o-w. No offense to the Midwest folks in our group, but you sure are not in a hurry. ;) I was sweating bullets as I weaved in and out among the slowest people on earth. Then I ran through the airport (including those people mover things) to get to my gate. Thank heavens boarding was delayed! I even had time to use the bathroom. I had awful jet lag for about three days. I also had the end of Daylight Savings twice -- once in Italy and a week later at home. My internal clock is totally screwed up, plus I completely missed October (was gone three weeks), so it feels like I went directly from late summer to winter. Anyway, my trip was awesome and it sounds like yours was,too. I'd love to see Ireland.

Some amazing Gardens there, going back soon, Anyone been to the Japanese Gardens in Kildare?? http://secretireland.blogspot.com/2008/06/st-fiachras-garden-gardens-japanese.html

Good morning, y'all, . Thank you for the kind words, Mike. Laura, I will definitely hit you if I ever head towards Annapolis :). And thanks to all of you for the well wishes for Dave. It means more than you know. . He's better, I think. He's starting to be hungry again, and he now eats 3 meals a day. Granted, they are much smaller meals than what he used to have, and they are almost fat free, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. We haven't had any setbacks since he left the hospital, so I must be doing something right in what I feed him. We are scheduled to go see some big wig at Hopkins that is specializing n Pancreatitis, so we'll see what he tells us. . The trees have been spending their days outside (except yesterday since temps were in the friggin 40's), but I've chickened out on the nights when I saw it go below 50 this week, so I brought them back in for the nights. As soon as it's steadily staying above 55, I'll just leave them out 24/7. I can't wait for that, either. I am so sick of that rain and constant drizzle and cold. I need some sunshine at least as much as my trees do. . I've also just finished giving them their first feed since last October when I brought them in for the winter, and their very first FP feed, since we decided to stop giving them the organic Grow More fertilizer I gave them last year. I've fumbled a little with the strenght to give them, and figured out 1/4 Tbsp for 1/2 gallon, as described in THIS POST I intend to use the "mikerno-approved method", and feed them every day about 10 minutes after their daily watering. I was uncertain of my FP per gallon proportions, so I decided to start low at 1/4 Tbsp / 1/2 gallon (1/2 gallon being the volume of my "fertilitzer pitcher"). . I haven't seen any scales appear back, but that doesn't mean squat, I still have to redo the Neem oil next week (Tuesday will be a week since my last application), and then the week after that, again. . I'm sorry I'm not contributing more to these boards, these days. It's just that by the time I'm done with all I have to do, I'm so drained and bone deep exhausted that I can't summon the energy to actually "write" anything. I do read your posts and replies, though, it's relaxing and allows me to think of something else, no matter how briefly. . I hope y'all have a great week end. God bless, . Atheen

Glad you got it out! You did the right thing by going to Urgent Care. Many years ago when we lived in LA, I had a wonderful small room off the landing. It had multiple storage closets and a built in counter. It was a perfect sewing room! I used my husband's rug from bachelor days - a Marimekko shag rug in various greens and blues. I told my husband and my children to NOT come in that room barefoot as it was a SEWING ROOM and there is no way on earth to not drop the occasional pin on the floor. With this shag rug, it was difficult to see any that were dropped. Well, of course my husband paid no attention and came in there to ask me something and stepped on a pin. He sat down and pulled it out and that was it...or so he thought. Over the next few days, his foot got more and more sore. He soaked it in hot water and epsom salts. No better. It was now hurting a LOT. So, a week or so later, he finally went to our orthopedist as he was sure he had broken something in his foot. The doctor x-rayed the foot, came back in, numbed the area, and proceeded to remove PART of the pin DH had stepped on. The doctor then said it was obvious that my husband was a math teacher and not a physics teacher, or he would have looked at what he pulled out and realized that the pin had broken and part of it was still in his foot! No, he still went barefoot even where I sewed...