wantonamara, now that's an idea LOL. I was beginning to think I'd have to ship half of what I bought back on the bus but we got hold of a bunch of sleeve bags, slid the small pots down in them, twisted the top and just packed them in my pull along. The only damage was a bit of the bloom got rubbed off some of the leaves and a few leaves snapped off the fuchsias. I already have that particular Aeonium although mine would look wimpy sitting next to the ones at the nursery. I was tempted to buy another one but resisted. All I can say is I'm glad they have elevators to get to the different levels in both the ferry terminals and the ferry itself.

Best of luck to your son. Although I'm not a mother I maybe have a tiny inkling of what you're going through since my "baby brother" (Army, 82nd Airborne paratrooper and occasional sniper) spent over a year in Iraq in 2003, right when things were getting really "hot", and we didn't find out until afterwards that he was right in the Sunni Triangle where the worst of the fighting was at that time. His unit's job was called something like "leapfrogging" (can't remember the exact name) - they set up the bare-bones forward camps for other units to occupy, as soon as the other unit arrived off they went to another spot to set up another camp. They were never in the same place for more than a week or so. They were often ahead of such minor niceties like, oh, their food shipments, tents, cots, etc., but somehow the mail got through, including packages. My mom, sister and I rotated who sent a crammed-full package and who just sent letters, but between the three of us we sent enough stuff to keep his squad (he reached sergeant and squad leader in no time, and most of "his guys" didn't have anyone to send things except lots of "Dear John" letters) fed (yay for dehydrated hiking food and granola bars!) and warm/cool (black mylar blankets that folded up smaller than a pack of playing cards - oh, and wasn't THAT a coveted item, so we sent about 50 packs once and he used them as currency! - and evaporative-cooling neck-bands) as needed. I remember our dining room was the staging area for making up packages, crammed almost to the ceiling because we bought stuff by the case, and people were always confused by the weird range of items, from fly strips to caffeinated mints/gum (the guys would eat the instant coffee from the MREs while on night duty for the caffeine, but it made a lot of them barf). He didn't reenlist when the time came, since he knew that his unit's stateside time was going to be cut WAY short (like a couple of weeks, not months as is normal) and they were headed for waydahellout in Afghanistan, to do the same dang thing they did in Iraq. Thank heavens he didn't get caught in the whole stop-loss mess. Your son's unit may have an Internet mailing list or forum for family members. My brother's did, run by the wife of the CO (the only stateside civilian who had contact with the unit) and Mom and I joined in, and if yours does too, join up! We knew about casualties before they were announced to the public, we learned what "the boys" wanted/needed and what they didn't (like we learned that Gatorade mix - a frequent request in the summer - will wreck a Camelbak like nobody's business), we had ALL the scuttlebut. When we found out they were being sent into battle in inadequate body armor (don't GET ME STARTED, but I've heard things are better now) we ganged up, raised money, and bought a bunch of mil-spec vests to ship over. Eventually we knew the names of all the soldiers in the unit, and we'd find out who wasn't getting mail and send him something. And it was also a place where we could vent and cry and talk about how d@mned scared we were...

Hmmm... do you really want to know? What gets me is not what I find but what I lost. I wanted to make soup and thought I had a chunk of ham. No ham to be found so I bought some... the next time I looked in the freezer there was that ham sitting there right under the ice cube bin. The bottle of peppermint schnapps is about 5 years old... still in excellent shape if about gone. Dolly is down to the last couple packages of road kill venison... she loves a frozen block of meat to lick on a hot day. I have three hearts and two tounges that are coming out. Bag of pickle spice on the way from Penzey's and they will be pickled soon. I'm back on 7 day work weeks so what soon is I don't really know. Promised myself some steaks when I get the freezer cleaned good. Somehow I lost a quart bag of jalapeno peppers. They were in there and then they were gone... perhaps behind the ham? : ) lyra

No, Elmer, let me clarify. I was not talking about distance buying. I was talking about availability. Toilet paper is on the shelf. If you need a new appliance you are going to find that a hit or miss experience. You may be told that there will a wait and uncertainty if it will ever be available at all. The components of most appliances, most clothing and many other things are all dependent on foreign industry and that dreaded supply chain where the raw materials to produce any one component may come from one place in the world and be manufactured in another , before ending up in the place where the finished item is assembled and then is has to be shipped out to where it will be used in the world. In other words, it is a complex and highly convoluted journey from a raw material to a finished product in the showroom or on the rack at the department store or the shelf at Amazon. THAT is the supply chain that has failed. On the retail end of it ,all that we see is but the very tip of the tail, the gleaming new stove, the unworn garment, the brand new bluetooth speaker. Everything in that item, no matter what it is, has had it's origins in obscure places and from obscure sources that one can hardly even imagine. It is not all about the dance between the retailer and the consumer. There is much fancy footwork gone on way before that.