Wow dsf....you figured this all out ;) Yes you are right....I am no fool and the operations manager is clearly, the soft spoken apologetic voice who tries to keep calm. Everyone has a job to do, I honestly can say that my dealings with this company overall have been positive. I am wise to the business, and I can tell when I have had the BS sent my way. I know that there has been a little nickel and diming going on, and one sub really tried to stick it to me. I called him on it and gave him an out...he took it and made everything work out so that the price did not go above what he had already cheated me on. I just don't feel that getting into arguments, agitated and fighting with them is productive. I have kept my cool within reason and they know it. In the end I have a very nice pool and they made a little extra money. My main gripe is how they can have the sales guy keep doing this to people. He does this repeatedly and I have it from some of the subs that this is a recurrent theme. I was even emailed today by someone in my area who is going through the same exact situation....we both guessed immediately that we had the same sales guy. You know who he is I am sure of it. He may be great at design and sealing the deal, but he really leaves a sour taste in your mouth in the end. That is not good for business. I would recommend this company again, but not this sale rep. Anyway thanks for the positive wishes, I think everything is going work out and in the end they built us a very beautiful pool.

You'll pay a sight more than $15 a foot to have a stone professional who actually knows what he is doing do your install. It's not "just" putting the slabs on the cabinets and epoxying the seams. That's not a "just". That's everything. (Secondary to a good template and a level cabinet install.) With as many conniption fits as have been posted on here about bad seams, you want to hire some unknown person do that for you? :) No reputable shop will do it without increasing their regular fee to account for the fact that they have no idea if the stone is sound and level, and if the cabinets are sound and level. That's two very important checks that a local fabricator does for you when he templates and fabricates stone. I'm not saying it's not DIYable. In fact, that's the only situation where you will save enough money to make the risk worth taking. If you have enough experience with woodworking tools to order the slabs and fabricate them yourself, you can save a good amount of money. Plus have the satisfaction of the DIY job. Ordering them fabricated can even save a small amount of money if you don't have a good local source for soap. But, ordering them fabricated and then trying to pay someone to take the risk of installing them themselves? That's going to be more expensive than going local would be, that's for sure. Talk to your local wholesale stoneyard about importing from MT themselves. If they buy a bundle of slabs, their pricing will already factor in the shipping, and you can use a local stone professional whose feet you can hold to the fire if he messes it up. The biggest thing they have to know is to not over polish it and have both black and white epoxy on hand to deal with the vein flow in the seams. Other than that, it's pretty easy to deal with to work. The big thing for you as a buyer to know is that you won't get "perfect" flow seams like is possible with granite unless you buy a whole lot of bookmatched slabs and have overage. Most of the slabs are too small for that.

I have an Amazon parrot, and definitely sympathize with the screaming. Zach doesn't care about being covered either, but I am VERY lucky that he rarely gets set off. A couple of suggestions: Even squirting water at him is getting attention, and ANY bit of attention, good or bad, encourages the behavior. He screams, and you come into the room to cover him, tell him to shut up, yell at him, squirt him, whatever, the point is you come into the room, and it's like hitting the jackpot- he's got your attention. I'd recommend a good pair of earplugs or an iPod and totally ignoring him whenever he screams. I shut Zach's door without talking to him or making eye contact with him the few times he gets into a screaming fit. He stops within minutes. Captive birds get bored. In the wild, birds spend 75% of their waking hours searching for food. In captivity, most birds get their food placed in a bowl which stays in the same place and is basically always available. Having food available means more time for other activities such as preening (thankfully your bird isn't a feather-picker), and "chatting" with his flock. Captive foraging can help provide the bird with something closer to a natural experience. Start by hiding his favorite treats in a wadded up piece of paper or in toys designed for captive foraging. Make him work for the fun stuff. Once he starts eating the favorite treats that way, start hiding his regular food too. Even though cockatiels have been captive bred for many many years, they are still birds with certain behaviors that cannot be bred or socialized out of them. Providing adequate alternatives to natural behavior may help make your bird happier and less likely to scream. Here's a link to a great DVD on how to start captive foraging for your bird (or any other exotic animal). Here is a link that might be useful: Captive foraging DVD- Echols

Of course, Jackie's 70% is 70%, or 7 inches, more than our "nearly normal" of 10 inches, to date. It all depends on what you are used to :-). I rolled the dice and did a bunch of native, restoration-type plantings in the wilder parts of the garden this late fall, to replace Mediterranean-but-not-native shrubs felled by the drought (CA summers are dryer than European summers by enough to make a difference when there is a drought). They are going "like gangbusters" (archaic, I know) so far and settling in well -- fingers crossed that at least normal rains continue through the spring...