Thanks guys :) really appreciate the good thoughts. Actually Maggie, I'm in radio, and we do talk about it a little on the air, the guy I do the morning show with is a big animal lover, so we do a lot of dog and cat stories etc..What I really want to do is get with my primary vet, I haven't really talked to him since the initial rupture...I know that he is inclined to reccomend euthanasia for these type cancers :( as they are so aggressive. I just want to show him Bob, and offer my number to anyone contemplating what direction they want to go in. I have no regrets on what we did with Bob. He really suffered no ill effects to speak of from the treatment...His quality of life is excellent at the moment...I am also thinking about starting up a message board for this type of thing. I joined a cancer group on yahoo, but they were sooooo restrictive, and moderated everything, drove me nuts. Anyway I may have to look into that. Thanks again for all the well wishes, I can't tell you how grateful I am that he is doing so well, everyday when we go for our walks in the pasture, I see him galloping ahead of me:) I raise my head and say a little thank you :).

Are you buying the car in California? SEAT (it's an acronym) is part of the Volkswagen family of brands. SEAT is supposed to be one of the sporty brands in the VW lineup; after SEAT, you're supposed to move up to Audi. The Ibiza is based on the VW Polo, which is a size smaller than the VW Golf. As such, it shares VW's great interiors, strong build, and -- um, German electronics. While a VW or a SEAT won't be quite the "appliance" that, say, a Toyota Corolla or Honda Civic would be, I also know which car I'd want to be in if an accident were imminent. The SEAT also is likely to be more fun to drive -- if you like that sort of thing (many people don't).

It's true that energy efficiency reduces the life expectancy of appliances. Think about this for a minute. That old fridge that lasted forever had a durable low speed compressor. These old compressors ran at 1125 to 1725 rpm. In order to get efficiency up the motors needed to run much faster. Most fridge compressors today run at 3450 rpm and some are running even faster than that. The tolerances are much tighter than years ago, but the faster something runs the faster it wears out. The manufacturers aren't making bad compressors or washing machine motors, we are simply running them faster to get efficiency gains at the expense of operating life. Heres a neat little fact. That compressor in your fridge that lasts ten years will have traveled the equivilent of 1 million miles without so much as an oil change or any maintenance whatsoever. If you tried that with your car I don't think it would last the full 10 years. Manufacturers are starting to get to the edge of what physics will allow as to energy efficiency. Sure there will be some more gains but all the low hanging fruit has been plucked. A case for longer lasting appliance parts is the washing machine motor, this motor has gone from a simple one or two speed motor to the variable speed inverter controlled direct drive that is becoming much more common today. There are fewer mechanical parts, they turn slower because they are directly linked to the washing machine with no belts and pulleys. Ever wonder why companies that use direct drive inverter motors offer 10 year warranty's on the motor? Because they will last much longer than 10 years. The electronics are another matter, all that high tech comes at the expense of longevity, especially when those boards come from china. I have repaired more boards from china that have cold solder joints in the last 5 years than I care to. Any yes I have even gotten multiple replacement boards with the exact same problem. The last issue is the public being misled by technicians with sales motives. Case in point, a customer has a tech come out for a washing machine problem, tech diagnoses bad motor control board, repair is $450-$500, tech tells customer that it's not worth repairing as "other things will break in the future". Customer agrees and goes out and buys a $1500 washer. The $500 repair would have been $1000 cheaper. Sure another part "could" break in the future, but no one can predict the future. Now if the washer was old and had multiple issues, or was just plain beat, then yes replacement makes sense. We have become a throw away society that when something breaks the first time we just replace the whole thing rather than fix it. This is more of a customer problem rather that the manufacturers problem. Appliance manufacturers need to do a better job of training their technicians. I have seen simple problems take 2 and 3 techs replacing almost every part to fix a problem. Some simple trouble shooting skills and a multi meter can confirm if the part is bad before replacing it, yet some techs don't even use their multi meter. Why? They don't know how because they haven't been trained properly.

Angela12345, we would consider black & so thoughtful of you to include the link - quite a variety of RangeCraft styles! - am just having difficulty envisioning anything of the bulk apparently required. Thinking I should get busy building a cardboard mock-up, although we haven't done any demo yet so spatial volume & ceiling height of kitchen-to-be are only in our minds right now. Plenty of blue tape marking things out on the floor, though... SparklingWater, it's so helpful to get your KA experience. Our current fridge is a bottom-freezer Whirlpool that we bought in 1992, & in 20 years it has never needed a single repair. I cringe reading appliance reviews and realizing that the chances of finding that quality again are slim-to-none! Come to think of it, was just reading the resurrected toaster thread, and our Salton long-slot toaster is from 1991 (still chugging along), and our Panasonic microwave is from 1990 and has only needed 1 repair. The Whirlpool will replace the REALLY ancient fridge that previous homeowners left in our basement (changing of the back-up fridge guard); even at 20 yrs. old we expect it will result in energy savings compared to the one down there now. Guess we haven't been doing our part to keep appliance manufacturers in business up to now!