When one anticipates going to ask for a major loan, e.g. purchase of a car or home - best to check out credit rating first. Simplifies things over having the credit granting agency find some negative stuff on your report that has no business being there. Such things leave a bad taste in their mouth, even after the issue gets straightened out - your reputation carries a bit more lasting smirch than it deserves. joyful

I had a bunch of credit cards opened in my name some years ago. I had rental property and had a Centruy 21 agent manage it for me. Apparently, since the mortgage statement went to that office, so did a bunch of those free offers for credit cards. The receptionist opened the accounts got the cards, and just kept paying the minimum payments on the cards. It went on for over a year and was only discovered when she went away on her honeymoon and my agent started opening the mail with my name on it--a bunch of Visa bills with over $20,000 total charges! This girl had charged her whole wedding and honeymoon in my name! The hardest part was cancelling the cards--when I called Visa they wouldn't believe I was me because the girl had given them _her_ mother's maiden name, information of course that I could not supply! It was pretty stupid, really, she thought she would never be caught, said she every intention of paying off the cards eventually. Stupid criminal. Stupid credit card companies. We all paid for that one. And yes, I do check my credit report now!

My grandparents' house never changed. Oh, once there was a new slipcover on a chair, or some new towels in the kitchen, but that was about it. According to my father, the big changes since he was a kid were 1) a refrigerator to replace the ice box and 2) the advent of a television to replace the big radio. After my grandparents died, an uncle and his family moved in and they changed everything--new paint, wallpaper, new floor in the kitchen. Then Uncle and Aunt moved to assisted living and the house was sold. Last year, my brother was back in town and we drove out to the house so he could take a picture of it. The new owners saw us and asked what we were doing. We explained who we were and they very kindly offered to let us take a final look around the house. Interestingly, they've brought the house back to very, very close to the way it was when we were kids. The fussy wallpaper is gone and calm, neutral colors are back on the walls. They have a dining room set eerily like my grandparents. The furniture in the living is arranged pretty much the same way. There's even a chest in the upstairs hall where my grandmother had one. And it wasn't just me, my brother was exclaiming over the same things. And it's not as if the house was new when my GPs' bought it--the house was built around 1875 and my GPs' bought it in 1930. But the new owners have a lot of furniture from about the same era. We were able to tell the new owners a lot about the house and how it looked, explained why the kitchen is much newer than the rest of the house (lightening caused a fire in 1938 and the kitchen had be redone), the colors of the walls, the reason for the odd ceiling light in the basement (used to hang over a pool table). They were very kind and I had a great walk down memory lane.

Chest or upright freezer? After blanching are you flash freezing them on cookie sheets before bagging? Which type of Foodsaver bags - pint, quart, rolls that let you make your own? Long skinny bags made from the rolls will lay flat. Are you freezing in portion sizes or not? Dave