Most of my bluebird box's are on powerline right-a-ways there is one that runs north to south about 6 miles there are box's every 1/4 mile and in good years most were taken about 40 are on the powerline. The rest farms and gas lines that run threw the woods. No sparrows in these area's only problem Black racer snakes. But have a system to manage snakes. Also manage 2 country club Martin colony's a college Martin colony a Landtrust martin colony a Doctor's colony. Yes I am in over my head....No Kids single most of my life and very devoted to my cause of saving Bluebirds and Martins in RI. I use noel wire on every box NO Coon or Fisher. 21 years bluebird work and 16 Martin. I am very burnt out by Aug but love the work and very well known by Bluebird landlords and Martin landlords. I am very active advocate much more than just a landlord. One person can make a difference and anyone can turn there community around and help these native birds it just takes passion. Most of my Martin colony's are on displace and location is key public locations..... once seen new sites go up and everyone wants martins One site host a charity golf match three days people from all over New England come and see the Martins and are so shocked to see a real Purple Martin. Rhode Island School of Design is my College site they have Martins at there Barrington Campus site people from around the country visit and see the birds and want them......Gourds must be used with Martins and not small aluminum houses martins dont like small units. Every year the Martin population doubles and Barrington RI Probably will have the largest number of Martins in New England the community is adding more units yearly.... They nested in one location back in 2005 this season five..... I am a very happy person to see my work prosper and grow Ray

Jane - good question. I know I can use AOL free mail. It seems to me that this summer/early fall, I kept finding issues with AOL email - and several web-savvy people (like my web designer, etc. suggested that AOL is very troublesome in it's efforts to be helpful. Now I'm having trouble remembering why I was getting so frustrated with AOL. This is what I do recall. Not always being able to view embedded images (including an email blast from a non-profit I'm on the Board of). Difficulty formatting emails - if I cut and paste word documents in the email, it gets deliverd with all kinds of extraneous punctuation and symbols. I've had neighborhood listservs reject some of my postings bc. AOL sent so much gibberish with it. I had to rewrite it to get it sent to these neighborhood yahoo-group listservs in a format that was clear. I think (I could remember this wrong), that if I use AOL's fonts, colors, formatting - it may not get delivered that way. Now I'm opening AOL mail through the firefox browser and not using AOL software. I have found that the search function is vastly inferior to the search function if I opened AOl software. Having AOL email open in Firefox, the searching for emails is highly inaccurate - to the point of being almost useless. This is probably the single biggest frustration I have with AOL (now that I"m not using their software). I don't know that it would work any better if I used the free AIM instead of opening my AOL mail in Firefox. Not quite sure if and how AIM is different. Using AOL mail via Firefox - it just handles my emails badly. It will place emails in my old folder when I've marked them as save as new. I seem to have less control over where I save my emails. It seems to almost randomly decide whether it keeps the email in the new inbox - or places it in the old folder (where it eventually disappears). And I can only access old emails for a short period before they're deleted. And the recently deleted seem available for a tiny, tiny time compared with the AOL software. Jane - if your experience with AOL mail is different, please let me know. I know that it's just been very cumbersome and un-useful since I switched to Firefox this summer. Another problem -which may not be AOL, but could be firefox - or who knows what else. If I'm looking on craigslist and I want to inquire about an item for sale, I can't manage to reply to the poster. I hit the "reply to" button, it places that poster's anonymous contact info in the to: field - but when I hit send, it says that I can't send mail with parenthesis in the BCC field. I have not added anything in the BCC field - and if I click bcc field and delete everything in it, it still insists there are parenthese in the field and won't send the email. Gee - now that I start thinking about it, I guess I can recall all the frustrations I've been having with AOL (not using the AOL software). The reason I haven't cancelled my paid AOL account is bc. I still need to resort to going through AOL software to reliably access and search old emails. I will keep a free AOL account with my current email address - just so I can be reached by anyone I forgot to inform about my new address. And for those who forget and send to the old. I still want to receive those emails. But my hope is to use it less and less often bc. it's troublesome now. A different reason for not using AOL for my professional email is that it just doesn't look professional. (I presume that's one reason your husband using gmail for his professional correspondence - it's just more professional and less amateurish seeming to clients/customers.) not2bright- I appreciate the FWIW addition. It's a little over my head - but not completely. I do have a professional website - which my webdesigner set up to forward my emails to me. I'm not quite ready for setting up my personal email like this, but the more I hang out on this forum, the more I'm willing to attempt things that I once thought were not possible. Lynn.

mom_of_4- I totally understand. My son was also put on meds when he was only 5.They told me he couldn't go back to school unless he was put on them. I was naive' at the time about my rights as a parent at the time, so I agreed to it. He literally changed into another child. He was totally in another world, quiet as a mouse. I caught him one day rocking himself, behind his bed and that was it! It just scared me to see him acting so strange. It also destroyed his appetite-it would take me hours to get him to eat a few spoons of food. I fought for 3 years to change his placement, but after he was finally placed in a private school-nobody ever mentioned the medication again to me. I am not an advocate of medication, and i strongly recommend that parents try other alternatives before even "thinking" about putting their children on them. Unfortunately, some children are a lot worse than others and "need" the meds to help them at school. I think it depends on the severity of the childs problems and how much they interfere with their every day functioning. For example-my son was really hyper and had a very short attention span. He is 13 now, and you can't find a calmer kid! He likes to read, play basketball and he can definitely keep himself focused on an activity for long periods of time. IÂm really glad I didn't keep him on those meds. Now with my steps its not that easy. Unlike my oldest, who outgrew these issues by the time he was 8.My steps are 10,10, and 6.They have very short attention spans, they are extremely whiny and emotional, (cry at the drop of a dime on some days) they are impulsive, they are veryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy hyper...they have a hard time sitting still for over one minute at a time. They are very easily bored, and lose interest in anything they do after 15 minutes-so they need to be constantly redirected to "find something else" or given suggestions on what to do. They forget everything all the time,and their memory is horrible. I have made many, many adjustments in our home, and with their schedules. I've found better ways to address the "specific behaviors" that best fit their own individual needs. I have a lot of structure in our home, and there are strict rules that have to be followed. Aside from that, I always take the time to spend some alone time with each one of them. All of this has made their behaviors much more manageable and our living situation much easier for everyone. Unfortunately, they struggle at school-since the environment there lacks the level of structure that that require. Their school's only way of addressing their behaviors is by either suspension or detention. We have and continue to fight to try to get them into a setting that they can flourish in-but it hasn't been easy task. Although I would prefer to not have to put them on meds at all, until they are placed in an appropriate school setting its our only option...Schools are not usually very willing to place children in out of district private schools, when you have multiple children-it just makes things even harderÂ

I don't do much on the actual day, but usually attend one or two Christmas Eve services. Several years ago I cut back substantially on sending cards to a fairly large number, but send to a number of family and friends, including a message to update them on my activities. I've cut back substantially on giving gifts to non-close folks also, and have increased contributions to charities instead. Support for charitable and religious causes, plus political contributions produce some income tax credits and last year they enabled me to reduce my federal tax to zero, and my provincial tax to about $700. Many of my friends are older and considering cutting back on their possessions to prepare for moving from a house to an apt. ... when one is past 80 - who needs more "stuff"? Sometimes have dinner with son or a friend. This year, hauled 7' tree from garage to son's apt (part of his Mom's estate), as his lady friend wanted to be rather festive and they erected it at her house. Son reported that they found a mouse nest or two in it - don't think that they're still there. We had substantial Christmas dinner last Sunday, as daughter was up from AZ and we helped make it, but son's lady did most of the preparation. We exchanged a few presents after the dinner, mostly utilitarian things: clothing, storage containers, candy, etc. and daughter gave me auto club membership for next year (that was what got me a free tow 120 miles from TO when my radiator spring a leak, back in July): she'd bought my original membership for me, about 4 years ago. I'd hinted for a potato peeler with the floating blade (didn't get one) ... and for something else, too ... but I can't remember what, at the moment. I realized later that I should have hinted for a kitchen timer, as well (one purpose of which would be to set when I turn the radio off when a progrqam that I don't like much comes on ... for usually there's one just after it that I like, and I forget to turn the radio back on before it's at least half over). Life does have its problems, doesn't it? ole joyful