*chuckle* You just gotta take the research in tiny bites - probably the same way you do research for your kitties. Do you get the FM Network newsletter/E-News? That's my starting point for a LOT of things, that and the CFIDS Chronicle. Both boil down the current research into something the average brainfogged FMer can gnaw at, winnow out the junk, and I go from from there. I also HAVE had this crap since 1994, and that's a lot of time to pick up stuff. Unfortunately, having no specialists where I can get to them, it's kind of my responsibility to find this information and bring it to the professionals if I want to get anything done. Right now the deal is that I'm 3/4 of the way through a slow tapering-off of a mega-strong pain medication I've been taking for about 6 years that hasn't been working as well in recent months. Pain level through the roof and coping with that really takes it out of you as you know, fighting for every minute of sleep and the physical upheaval set off the cascade of everything else in the "package" flaring up. Big snowball effect. Whine whine whine. :-) I'll be around some (if only out of sheer boredom heehee), but writing is taking me a long time since I'm taking a lot of breaks and the fog means a lot of rewriting to (hopefully) say what I want to say without being TOO much of a b*tch! :-) I'm looking into what else can be done, prying all my old records out of the doctors I've seen to clarify my (bad) memory of what's already been done, what side effects I had, etc. I do think of you every time I chuck down a few Flexeril, though. :-D Thank you for the happy thoughts. A kitty is probably going to come along late next summer. We wanted to get one this winter, once we were mostly unpacked, but we're having problems with free-roaming cats taking up residence under our porch and using the area as a toilet. It reeks to high heavens, and sometimes the smell comes into one part of the house, and I don't want Puss to get confused about where she's supposed to go. We had that problem with Random in our condo; the neighborhood wanderers urinated on the balcony by the door and on the front stairs, so she would pee near there inside, and of course both locations were not places we could put a litterbox! It's going to be a helluva mess to clean that out and repair the porch. I've considered getting some of the Havahart traps but there's nowhere to take them where they won't be killed, and all the feral-cat programs have to offer is trap-neuter-release which is a really lovely idea but does nothing to mitigate further destruction. Sigh. Letting one's cats roam free is almost standard practice here, unfortunately.

After reading lots of reviews and watching lots of youtube videos, I went out yesterday and got myself a Neato. Best Buy had the model I wanted in stock and they matched Amazon's price, so I got a pretty good deal. I went with the pet/allergy model since we have 2 cats and 2 dogs. I charged it and set it off in our finished basement, which is where the cats hang out a lot. Wow, I'm pretty optimistic. It seems to be good at systematically working itself around the space and it picked up a LOT of pet hair and dust. It's pretty entertaining just to sit and watch it problem solve. The only thing that it was having problems with was small, light throw rugs...it tended to scoot them and fold them over on themselves. But even there, it seemed to figure out how to approach them from the side and at an angle to got on top of them. I have high hopes for my new little robotic friend.

When it comes to hardwood, trends are something to ignore! Why? Because hardwood is pretty much a lifetime purchase, and unless yours is damaged in some way, you're probably not going to replace it. So, light wood vs. dark wood, wide planks vs. narrow planks -- that stuff's all going to come and go. With that in mind -- as well as the very real concerns about cleaning dark wood -- I'll vote for a nice, neutral midtone every time. Not too much contrast, not too red, and (unless it's a beach house) not too pale. I think this is the wood that's most likely to give you good service and stand the test of time.

I love the Shark I have. I didn't get something I can control from a smart phone, but it does have WiFi of its own in order to return to the docking/charging station. Smart phone control apps are of little interest to me in the regard of vacuuming. (Although I find it totally amusing when guests who come to visit see the SHARK WiFi and ask me if that's how or to what they should sync their phones... NO.) It seems to have no problem with the two area rugs with tassles, and goes from hardwood to tile to rugs and back again with no issues. I do have one extremely small rug that is very lightweight and the robot bunches it up. There are only two places it hangs up - under the IKEA Pooang chair (there are two wood runners and sometimes it doesn't quite figure out how to get over them) and in my roll-in shower stall. Most of you probably don't have one of the latter - evidently the Shark isn't heavy enough to get over the rim that would flatten down for a real wheel chair (which I don't need now but I was proactive when I installed this.) The Shark comes with a strip you can cut as you choose, to prevent him/it from going where you'd prefer him not to go. Or to keep him where you really want him to deep-clean while you go about your day. I found Sharkey (that's what I named him) to be a better price value than the Roomba, although I haven't actually compared the two in a real live situation. This is simply the major reason why I went with the former. When I bought him, about a year ago, reviews were better for the Shark than for an equivalent Roomba, too. No idea about now. [I guess the only regret with Sharkey is that he came with a disclaimer not to put weights on top of him. Dangnabit, I really wanted my cats to ride around atop him, like you can see on some of those videos! But the cats don't really seem interested anyway. I'll admit they really aren't petrified of him, either.]