Michigoose, Just wanted to say Thank you for the info and the sites info. I order seeds from Hazzards Greenhouse just this past Monday and the service was incredible. I received them in the mail today. Now that's what I call service with a smile lol. I am thrilled to have found these seeds. Thanks again and have a great day. JoAnn

Here's some rambling thoughts: I LOVE seafood. Almost every kind (although I have some problems with raw oysters and sea urchin roe). My grandfather was a commercial fisherman and we ate seafood at least 4-5 times a week. Pretty much everything that came out of the ocean. My grandmother (who now seems to me that she was ahead of her time) pretty much told me this was the way to eat: 1) seafood is good for you [part of that Mediterranean diet, we've all heard about in the last few years]. 2] the key to getting the most balanced nutrition in the long run is to vary what we eat. No one fish was perfect for the table and fishing one fish was bad for the commercial fisherman. When someone some time ago said salmon and the omega-3 oil thingy was good for you, we overfished salmon and started relying on not-so-great farm-raised salmon. I thought herring was on the safe list until I recently read this (Montery Bay Seafood Watch): "In the Northwest Atlantic, herring is one of the most important prey items for marine mammals, seabirds and predatory fishes, such as bluefin tuna. There is also a large commercial fishery for herring, with the fish being canned for human consumption or sold for bait. With herring in such high demand, recent studies have suggested that current catch levels could be having a profound impact on the health of the ecosystem. Simply put, it is possible that too many Atlantic herring are being fished out of the ocean to support whales, dolphins, seals, seabirds, tunas, and other predatory fishes that rely on them as an important food source. The extent of accidental catch (bycatch) in the herring fishery is largely unknown as a result of inadequate observer coverage, however bycatch of protected fish species has been observed. Atlantic herring are caught with midwater trawls, which can catch huge amounts of fish and are not selective in their catch. Some management steps have been taken in recent years to address some of these issues, including some fishing areas closures to decrease bycatch of protected species. However, it will be some time before the effectiveness of these new management measures will be realized." [by the way, lake herring from Lake Superior, is a good alternative.] From a health standpoint, eat a bunch of different fish. From an environmental standpoint (and for a truly sustainable commercial fishing industry), eat a bunch of different fish. Eat it fresh -- think twice about the jarred stuff with oils, salt and creams. Except for the occasional indulgence. And yes, annie1992, eat more plants. 3/4 of the food on one's plate should be plant. Joe

I recently had a similar situation. I have been doing a lot of work on my house to get it ready to sell. I have been working with a carpenter (I adore) for almost a year. He has acted as a GC for some things I needed done. He would bring in someone he worked with but I would pay them separately. He recommended a painter who came and gave me an estimate to paint my entire house inside. I agreed and he brought in two workers. They worked for approx 2 weeks. My carpenter came back and didn't like the work they did. He called the head painter on the phone and began screaming at him telling him to get over to my house. Long story short, the painters never came back. I couldn't reach them, never heard from them and lost approx $3,000.00 in the process. My carpenter explained that some of the work was poorly done, no primer was used when it should have been, nails weren't hammered in, picture hooks and outlet covers weren't removed. I was upset that I lost money and painters. He (the carpenter) said he'd finish the painting at no cost to me except the paint. He was right, the work was poor. I noticed some things but not all. I work during the day and was not present to supervise. I still am not sure if I am happy he spoke or if he should have left them alone. Either way, I lost money.

Thanks for that, Jasdip! I somehow figured that out right around the time I posted here last nite. I posted it over on my usual RMG forum so the folks over there can reclaim their "real" names too! But I also agree with Brandon about the graphics! And without the “subject” at the top of each reply, it’s difficult, at best, to quickly scroll down a thread and see the “individual” replies—they all just kind of “blend together!” (And in the past I used to sometimes have several threads open at the same time in different windows, and now, without the subject by each reply, the only way for me to figure out which thread I’m looking at is to scroll all the way up to the top of the window to look at the subject.) And ditto on the fact that you can no longer tell which threads you’ve already read! The “subject” used to “change color” after you had clicked on a thread, so you could easily “check in” and see if there had been any NEW posts since the last time you looked! Now you need to either click on the top thread and actually take the time to look at the last reply, or, I guess, you need to try to remember which thread was on top and “how many hours ago” the most recent post was! Say what? There’s no way I’m gonna remember “how many hours ago” the last post was—and, in any event, that CHANGES! It used to give the actual time (EST) when someone posted or replied, and that I could remember. More importantly, it gave the “number of replies” by each post, and that was fairly easy to remember for the most recent post, but since the “subject” changed color, you really didn’t even need to try to remember that—unless you had deleted your cookies! I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s just a lot harder to work with now—and takes a lot longer to try to see what you want to see. That, and a lot of other things, especially the fact that some old, long posts, that had a LOT of good info, are suddenly truncated, and all that good (and it took people a lot of time and effort to post it) info is now just GONE! I have a lot of good friends on GW, and I REALLY want it to go on—forever, but the more difficult and time consuming it becomes to use, I suspect more and more people will slowly disappear. That would be sad! Skybird