Hi, Meredith!! This is my first post in ages. I know you're honored (LOL!!!). Here's my take: although everyone has their own unique idiosyncracies (ie: spontaneous vs. need to plan ahead) and every friendship has unique circumstances (best friend lives next door vs. across town), my personal rule of thumb is that friendships work best with less "requirements" instead of more. So, respecting the differences between you means tolerating different styles, otherwise it's just too much work. The key to a great friendship is immediate and automatic forgiveness and acceptance of the little stuff. She made a special dish for you as you asked (how nice!) but forgot about your special needs and didn't give you warning a day in advance to save your energy/back for dinner (oops!!). You are both miffed....NO PROBLEM!! Why? because there is nothing wrong with your feelings. You shouldn't even be debating whether yours or hers are any less or more valid. There's no right or wrong here. It's really all about how much you tolerate and ultimately forgive your friend. And vice versa. The way I'd handle it is: you call and tell her how sorry you are that you missed your favorite meal, especially since she went to so much trouble for you (any leftovers?). You love and appreciate everything she did. Your back sometimes interferes with your ability to be spontaneous (isn't it a bummer?) But if you get a day's notice, you can often rest your back enough to do what you want. Thank her profusely for going to all that trouble just for you (which she did, unquestionably). End of story. Don't tell her what to do in the future (save that for some other time when there's nothing in the air between you), or expect her to say anything like "I'm sorry". That would be imposing a requirement on her in order to soothe your feelings. If she does it, great!! But if you love this friend, and you are willing to tolerate the differences in your respective styles, it shouldn't matter that she occasionally forgets about your style. Yes, my suggestion sounds like a one way apology...and in some ways, it is. However, you are really acknowledging the special effort she made for you, her friend. That acknowledgement is important, because people need to feel appreciated. She did something for you, but blew it in the execution. Like any other gift, it's the thought that counts. My guess is that with acknowledgement, the whole thing will quickly defuse. And if I know you, you've already had that conversation anyway. So don't do anything more. Keep your feelings to yourself. Someone really wise once told me that in every relationship, including marriage, the parties decide every day, subconsciously, whether they still want to be there. This is part of it. Anyway, that's my take on friendship. It comes from knowing, in my heart of hearts, that I am very imperfect, yet my friends still love me and want to be my friend. I try to...

Echoes: 1) Height or width of the overall house isn't very important for the average residential gardener. What -is- important is tube diameter and the presence of orienting marks for the bees, like colored straw tips, or patches of color, or a few straws sticking out further than the rest. These bees like irregular surfaces with lots of identifying marks. They can see blue, yellow, green, and black. 2) Ideal placement is where 1) it will get sun in the morning to help the bees warm up for flight and 2) It's protected from weather. I live in Seattle and place my bees on the south side of the house because they get the most sun there (7 hours during the warmer part of the day) Our storms in Seattle come in from the south, so that also means the houses are exposed to a lot of rain and wind, which 1) encourages them to disperse (fly away and not return to nest there.) and 2)creates great moist conditions for pollen mites. That was a bad idea last spring, which was cold and wet and windy. This year I'm placing some houses on the south side of the house and some on the east side to see which perform best. The east side gets five hours of sunlight during a colder part of the day. For the ones on the south side, if we're in for stormy weather, I have two options: 1) build a more protective roof over each house or 2) Take the entire house (bees and all) and put it in a bag in the fridge for about 24 hours. SARE's guide to Alternative Pollinators says you can do this for up to five days with no harm to the bees. We'll see how that idea works out. :-)

I have had the printer hooked up to the same computer for a couple years now. I uploaded new drivers for the printer wiht no help printing from a site. I have a Hp Photo Smart C4740. I haven't made any changes to anyhting . Yes, it is the default printer. I only go to HP and Microsoft and check for updates. I can't get it to print anything from any site I am on that I want to print an article from. I get Massage from Web Page- there was an internal error and IE is unabl;e to print this document. I tried again after I updated the drivers in my printer and got this again.

We did not use a periscope duct. We had the metal one like the picture above. The installation book with the Electrolux said that either could be used. When we took the duct off the back of the dryer the sound was coming from that. We did not get to mess with it today due to company all weekend, but will fiddle with it this week. The first dryer i had did have such a loud whine that we had to turn the tv up to drown it out. This one is almost to that point. We don't know why there is a slight wobble with the dryer stacked on top. We are going to check the kit on it at least the bar that is screwed to the underside of the dryer. There is a strip of double sided tape also under the bar, so it is extreemely difficult to remove and it can't be reused, but we shoudn't have to go that far, just check brackets on back and front. We also have to disasemble the dryer door as Lowes reversed it for us, but the guy left his finger prints on the bottom inside ledge and it bugs the you know what out of me. I asked them not to reverse the door since they did the same thing on the one i returned except they scratched the inside plexiglass, and i knew DH could do a better job, but they did it anyway. I had already had to speak to Lowes corporate before this about the delivery guys and had several calls from them to fix the situation. It seems that they are unable to deliver an appliance without scratches and dents in them. This set had to be shipped directly from Electrolux in their truck directly to this store and luckily it was not dented (finally). Don't think i will buy another appliance there. i am getting off the subject, so i will let you know if we are sucessful with the dryer. Thanks everyone.