keepitlow, at first I thought the thing about keeping shoes in your fridge was a joke taken out of context or something like that, but there was a link to the full article and... oh my gosh! You know, when I was in college and lived in a 300 square foot apartment I STILL tried to cook in my tiny kitchen. I had lived in the dorm the year before and was so sick of other people cooking for me and not having that control over my own food. I can't imagine just unplugging your fridge and eating take out all the time. I mean, yes, I do get take out sometimes, and go to restaurants, but if I lived on it... it's so fattening and so expensive! *** macky77, "'My soil won't grow anything and I can't afford or don't have time to build raised beds and buy all the special ingredients you NEED to make super soil.' The most common situations they cite are either living in rental properties with neglected yards or new developments where the topsoil was not replaced after construction." Well, as other people have said, yes, new developments can have awful soil. Bermudagrass sod doesn't take much. I live in a rental house with a neglected yard (at least until I got here). Actually it's kind of interesting to see what's hanging on in a yard where nature has been allowed to take over. I used to have scarlet sage growing in the front (hummingbirds LOVE that stuff) until the Lawn Police ordered us to mow it down, and in the back I have pigeonberry, black-eyed susan, wild sunflowers, and rain lillies growing, along with some other wildflowers I have yet to identify. I betcha the land is actually better off for it rather than being maintained as a Bermudagrass monoculture soaked in herbicides. But anyway, back to having good soil, this goes back to my idea that maybe people think growing veggies is harder than it really is. I live in south-central Texas. The soil here is clay with limestone rocks, and I'm growing stuff right in it. Didn't build any raised beds (don't want to build any permanent structures at a rental house). Potatoes didn't seem to like it, but tomatoes, beans, peppers, squash, etc. don't seem to mind one bit. Digging in it is a big of hard work, but it's better than gonig to the gym. I wonder if the garden media has anything to do with this. You know, TV shows with perfect looking gardens, soil you can dig with your bare hands, etc. I wonder if people actually think that veggies NEED perfect soil to grow. Sure they might grow better in perfect soil, but they can make do with what they've got. You don't have to be Martha Stewart. I see gardening as a partnership between me, the plants, and Nature. That means that I don't have to do ALL the work. Lots of plants grow just fine with no human help at all. Veggie plants have evolved alongside us for a while and now need some help, but I still feel like I'm letting them and Nature do most of the work. When people say they can't grow plants here because it's too hot or dry or we have bad soil or something, I always think of the Hopi and related tribes that lived off their gardens with no modern technology in the DESERT. I don't live in the desert, and I do have modern technology, and I do have the farmer's market and grocery store as a backup, so I think I have it EASY. Actually, it reminds me of something from Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden where she talks about how white people don't know how to plant things right. I forgot specifically what it was she was talking about, but I only wonder what she'd think if she saw our gardens today.

I am probably not going to be posting many pics when asking questions any more because I find that too many people are only looking at the pictures, NOT reading the text, and thus their responses are either directly contrary to something I've said in the text (for instance "get rid of XYZ" or "the color of ABC is wrong" when I've already said in the accompanying that I love XYZ so it's not going anywhere or that the color of ABC is really more toward mauve when it shows up as puce in the picture) or have nothing at all to do with what I'm asking. I find that intensely frustrating. I have almost no pictures of my current house because it's still in "whatta dump" stage. No paint (walls need a TON of work), short on furniture, dreadfully designed kitchen that's a perpetual mess because there's nowhere to put things... and forget outside pictures, a few weeks ago we ripped out almost every trace of vegetation outside (and will not be replacing it until next year, probably fall '09 to get the end-of-season sales) due to a honeysuckle invasion that I swear was growing by feet per day and was starting to attack the porch. I'll happily post pictures of my previous house because I think I did a pretty decent job with it. We're not on Google Maps but we're kinda-sorta on Google Earth - but the best you can get is a fuzzy whitish blob in the midst of a bunch of other fuzzy whitish blobs on a fuzzy grayish stripe. No closeups. Our town is clearly not a high priority as far as Google is concerned! WRT security - we live in a somewhat iffy neighborhood so I am one HECK of a lot more worried about the people a dozen houses down the street breaking in looking for meth money than I am about someone trying to track me down via the Internet (I Googlebate every so often just to see what's out there re: me) from half a dozen states away. I've been email-stalked and -harassed a bunch of times in my 18 years online because of my outspoken ;-) opinions and my ISPs have always been helpful in dealing with it. However, I've had meet-ups with a whole slew of people I've met online over the years, twice flying nearly cross-country to do so, and it's been grand fun.

andre Have you considered using X10 controlled outlets? These are plug in modules that you can put anyhwere in your room and then plug lamps into the modules. A remote control is available (and you can get 2 - one for each side of the bed) that allows the lights to be turnd on and off. You can even get a wall switch that is battrey operated that would allow all of those lights to be turned on/off when you enter/leave the room. Check out SmartHome.com and look at the X10 as well as Insteon products. I have a lot of experience with both and have solved many wiring issues like you describe because the houses we have lived were never wired the way we needed them - switched outlets always in the wrong places. X10 is fairly old technology and sends radio signals though your wires to control lights and outlets. X10 can suffer from occasional interference from computers - although in a single room you should not have any issues with X10. More than likely, all of the outlets in your bedroom are on the same phase so you should not have any issues with crossing over between modules that are on different sides (phase) of the electrical service (and there plug in modules to solve that too). The thing I like about X10 - very easy to set up, no programming required. For your bedroom, you will need the remote and the radio reciever/transmitter module. The module plugs into the wall on the one side of the bed and allows a lamp to be plugged into it. It has a very small antenna that receives your radio signal from the remote. When you push the on button of the remote, it will turn the module on and the lamp will turn on. At the same time - it will send a signal through your electrical wires to communicate to any other modules set to the same house code (which you can choose and set very easily with a samll screw driver). Other lamps can be plugged into the X10 outlet modules (these do not have antennas) which receive signals through the electrical wiring. So if you have two lamps - one will be plugged into the radio receiver/transmitter and the other will get plugged into the X10 outlet on the other side of the bed. The nuce thing is that if you have lamps in other locations of the room, you can command those on and off as well. Insteon is newer technology and is a bit more expensive and a little more complicated to set up - it requires some programming. For you application , I would not recommend Insteon right off the bat. But once you see how cool X10 works - I bet you will want to add more to your house. One very important thing to remember is to follw the max wattage ratings of each X10 or Insteon device. I think the X10 modules are rated for up to a few hundred watts - fine for a lmap but don't plug an iron into it! You can easily eliminate all of those extension cords and there is no need to switch sides of the bed. Best of luck

lindsey, over a long kitchen counter, I think the outlets need to be no more than 4 feet apart, so that any place on the counter is no more than 2 feet (horizontally) from a plug. There are other requirements too. Anyway, short cords on kitchen appliances are safer. On other items, cords are short to save costs. When using an extension cord that gets moved around. you can prevent a pull-apart using a knot technique. Pretend you are tying your shoes or making a square knot with the two cord ends. Do the first loop. Then instead of doing the second loop, plug the two wire ends together. Now, when there's a tug on the wire, it will pull the loop of the "knot", not the connection. Extension cords are perfectly safe on the ground, unless the ground is damp. For safety, be sure to use a cord of adequate gauge (wire thickness) to cover the wattage of what you are connecting to it.