Spelling doesn;'t count in a storn but SAFETY does. Ensure you have an evacuation plan. Remember that others will be attempting to leave the same route you may have planned and you could get into a gridlock on the highway. LEAVE EARLY. You can always come home if the storm bypasses you. Have your necessary documents and family papers in as water tight box that you can store them in. Leave them in this box year round so that you can pick it up and go. Store family pictures on disk and be ready to pick them up and go. Have sufficient prescription medication on hand to cover you for a week and have written prescritions from your doctor in case we suffer like New Orleans did. HAVE CASH - can not say that often enough Take pictures of your garden so that you can remember it the way it was in case of the worst. Remember, we have warnings with hurricanes and can prepare and leave. With tornadoes we have no warning. GET OUT AND STAY OUT when law enforcement tells you to. YOUR property is not worth your life. We would miss you terribly and would not have you to sommiserate with after the storm. Stay in communication with family and friends. Cell phones may not work after a storm nor phones. You may have to contact the American Red Cross so they can send a ham radio message to the chapter where your family lives to let them know you are okay. DO NO PROCRASTINATE Remember this is a tropical area and after a storm and immediately before one supplies will be hard to come by. KEEP LOTS AND LOTS OF INSECT SPRAY FOR AFTER THE STORM You will need it in the steamy hungle that will be your life for a while. Others, please add your tips.

The entire problem stems from robo-signing, this refers to what weâÂÂre now realizing has been a very common practice in the banksâ foreclosure document processing divisions, where one person was essentially given the job of signing as many 10,000 foreclosure documents per month, by hand. These individuals were supposed to be reviewing the files, making sure grounds for foreclosure actually existed, signing the docs in front of notaries. But because of the volume of documents, what they actually did was just sign thousands of documents at a time, without even reading them, and ship them off somewhere else to be notarized. If you do the math on an 8 hour workday, you'll see that that only gives the staffer 1.5 minute to review each file and documents to make sure the foreclosure is warranted. That's not humanly possible, which is how these staffers got the nickname âÂÂrobo-signersâÂÂ. I have personally poured over mortgages online and have found so many errors that they were never legal in the first place, these being both homes in foreclosure and REO's. It's a sad state of affairs, with 860,000 homes up for grabs, and the FDIC is hiring big time to assist in this entire mess. To make matters worse, the Obama make home affordable and loan modification plans are not working as advertised and what the banks are telling people seems counter-intuitive by not paying their mortgage on time. REO's are a great deal and I was currently working on my fifth house here on Cape Cod that was a Fannie Mae first look, however no offers in 15 days placed it up for grabs. Buying a home for 1/2 of what it's worth is a no-brainer.

Ok, so for others to think it is weird to read it, imagine how I felt when I first met them. I get that it may sound off the wall, but who could honestly make this up? I have to laugh, my gosh, I WISH it were all a joke. I was so absolutely confused when I met them, not only am I in the beginning stage of my relationship with my now husband, but the confusion with the fact that I AM A GOOD PERSON, and yet, everything I did in their eyes was wrong, and after so much of that you begin to question yourself. It's difficult enough to learn the dynamics of a family, but a family like this is just overwhelming. Like I said, I never met a family like this before. I recently made the cult analogy to my husband as a joke, then I started thinking that their behavior really is cultish. Sylvia, one thing I noticed about the Grandma is she does back down when the other "outsider" (I'll call her "Suzy") in the family stands up to her, but it's short lived. That marriage had years of problems because of the Grandma, and they finally moved out of state. When I first met the family, they'd all talk about the Suzy and bash her constantly, behind her back of course. And I thought, oh my gosh she must be a terrible person. Then, I met her, and she was totally nice to me, and I could tell she felt uncomfortable around the family. That's when things started to click, and I slowly began to realize that Grandma feeds everyone with her negativity, and I think the daughters learned this from the Grandma. So when I finally had the blow up with the sisters, and the family came back to me faulting me and blaming me for how I communicated with them by email, I was so completely frustrated and I went off on a tangent about all the nasty things I felt about this family, and told them how I think they treat people with such disrespect, especially Suzy. My husband grew up with it his whole life, and was so used to it that he never realized it until I started pointing it out. He knew his sisters were rude and warned me, so I don't mean it like he's completely oblivious, but when I asked him if Suzy had ever been rude to him, he said no, and then I started to point out how your family always bashes her, but it never seems justified, then he started to pay attention, and realized much of it was a fabrication from Grandma's negative attitude. Suzy is like me, she isn't really one to conform, though she's not rude either, but everyone has a breaking point. From what I hear, they've had a lot of marital problems and I suspect it's because of Grandma and the family. I mean, come on, anytime you are in the presence of people who whisper when your back is turned, you CAN tell, you can sense it. That's what the sisters have done to me, and I suspect they've learned that from Grandma. I get what everyone is saying about be nice and gently disagree, but they are so persistent it's irritating. And, you can't have a conversation with one person, they all have to chime in together, so it's like you against all of them. When I get frustrated, you can see that I'm frustrated. And they get defensive. I've learned to start walking away, when I can, but sometimes I regret not saying something, and at the same time I don't want to be "that person" at the party who crashed it because she blew her stack. LOL. Lonepiper, I do agree - I'll never be good enough, and my attitude is changing to the idea that if you don't like me for who I am, too bad, get over it. I suppose my distancing myself from them is my way of rebelling. If I get visibly angry with them, I get the "well EXCUSE me" attitude, and then they won't come over for a year, which frustrates my husband that they ostracize us. So, it's a viscious circle. If my husband didn't have a close bond with his family, I could care less, but again, I also have to think of his needs, so I try to be the bigger person. Txnursing, it's not that we let the guilt trip get to us, it's the anger that follows it that I can't stand. It's like dealing with a five year old. The Uncle is the worst. It'll be like this - he'll ask us to come over. My husband will say that we have plans with my family. Then he'll insist on my family coming over. THAT appalls me, as if my whole family is supposed to change their plans because what Uncle has going on is more important or better than what my family could possibly be doing. Seriously, that's his attitude, and he's very pretentious, everything is about "image" and he acts like people want to live his lifestyle of entertaining everyone all the time. Sometimes we just want to sit home and watch a movie. Screw your image if you are a nasty person, right? He doesn't ask us much anymore, but now it's like we've been ostracized. We get invited to family functions, more or less like it's expected of him, but that's it. And, he's given me the cold shoulder since I didn't go up during a holiday and kiss his family's butt after the sister incident - they wanted me to "brush it under the carpet" and swallow my pride once again (oh, and this was an "intervention" that took place at a mutual friends house). I stood my ground, refused to spend the holiday with the family, and this is the end result. My husbands friend said to me at that time, why do you always have to swallow your pride and they just keep treating you like crap and it's supposed to be ok? Honestly, it's reached a point where I'm bordering on despising them, but I think that's a good thing because a healthy attitude in this situation can only be one of, "I don't give a crap" what they think. silversword, your response made me laugh. I wonder what they'd do if I plugged my ears and did the, "la la la la la la la la" as I walk away. *Chuckle*

Welcome Barbara1NC, it is great to have you join this supportive, fun, and informative forum. Ya, I took them all apart. No it did not come in a herringbone at the store I was working with. Early in my search all the tiles I liked were at specilty shops and were $30=50/sqft. I was looking a veined silver travertine mosaic running bond, and larger tiles. I wanted to spend a lot less money, so I went the the big DIY tile shop in town. They had plenty to choice from. I looked for a tile that I liked and it took me 3 trials before I settled on this one, the running bond marble mosaic. I had always figured I would do a running bond. But I just love herringbone. So I gave it some thought from time to time over the months that I had the tile, waiting to get to the installation stage. I was warned off of doing it by friends and family because there would be so many cuts. I agreed and would just assume I was going to put the 12x12 mosaics up until the moment I went to pick it up to install it. I just decided that I was going to cut it up and put it up in a herringbone pattern. I have done a lot of "making" in my life. I used to sew as a child and young adult. I have sculpted and fabricated all kinds of things in college in the art classes I took. I'll tackle anything if it's not too heavy to lift. So it was not a stretch to take the tile and redesign the layout. Tonight I am doing the other wall and it is a bit larger than the tiled wall pictured above. It is still taking me about 2 hours/1sqft. Its very late because time has just gotten away from me. I said this earlier but I have to say it again - my grout looks like the color of stainless steel. Isn't that cool?! I have stainless steel sink and faucet, etc in the kitchen and it just matches my grout! Then of course the marble tile is so beautiful. Even though this is not high end tile I think the mix of so many light whites and tans and grays is very nice. Marble is translucent, and very soft focused. Looking at this installation is like watching clouds in the sky.