Althea-It amazes me how you find this stuff, but I appreciate a good laugh any time. I rate Fox News right up there with Comedy Central...no wait, that's not fair...I actually pay attention to Comedy Central :) Our local Fox station seems to go out of their way to find the most verbally challenged people they can interview when covering stories. Uh..not that there's anything wrong with that.

Actually, I should clarify that, 99.9% of the time, I also use my check card and don't spend money unless I have it but am finding more and more reasons to keep a small balance on a prepaid card, just for this reason. Safer to have paypal and eBay tied to a prepaid card with little extra funds on it. I also have most things automatically withdrawn to pay bills. Stacy you aren't the only one who forgets to pay. Has nothing to do with having the money or not, the month just slips by so fast. But for an example of getting phished, I guess that's what you'd call this: I use FireFox, Gmail, AVG, Spybot etc., all the supposedly geeky software to keep one safe online. A couple of months ago I followed a link via the forum to another forum that I've visited in the past, but have never contributed to, and never went farther than the home page, so never clicked any links even on the other site, within 2 minutes I had a bounced email show up in my email box from a commercial orchid grower. Now, I followed no links on the site, use a different email address on GW rather than my private one and my email address was somehow phished. Last I looked, my router had all unnecessary ports locked down. What got through? For the record, I've never had any spam come through the email account I use for GW. It could be a coincidence, but it certainly looks like just visiting that site, somehow my email was compromised. I'm pretty savvy about this stuff, so trust me when I say this was scary. I don't, however, store my bank username and password, it's the only one I don't save. You just can't be too careful anymore. I conduct just about all business, other than grocery shopping, online but sometimes even I'm tempted to become a luddite. Scott, still sorry to hear about this and your mother. I'm a BC survivor, but by the grace of god, go I. There are a few of us here that have battled that devil, very young too.

Oakley - I am so very sorry. This must have been such a dreadful shock, especially coming so soon after losing your brother. It seems as though your MIL was a fulfilled woman, active and happy. That is something to rejoice over. As others have said, some elderly people make the decision to live independently, knowing and accepting the fact that they may become very ill or pass away alone. For them, it's a price worth paying. I will pray for you and especially for your husband. I hope that you all will find comfort and solace through the church's celebration of your MIL's life. My deep condolences, Sable

Well I am one who wouldn't miss any of these admission-charging stores. I had a membership for several years but quit. Just didn't make sense. Could get better deals elsewhere and not go through the hassles. It just plain irritates me to have to PAY the place to walk in there, then if you buy something you stand in line for 45 min, then have to walk 10 feet and check out again to leave! Gotta give old Sam Walton credit though, he cashed in on people's greed and stupidity. People will complain about non-union and everything with a pocket full of Walmart reciepts! Tell them they're getting a deal and you can charge them anything. Some believe they actually NEED a 5 gallon pail of peanut butter on the shelf! And you don't even have to give them a bag or help them carry it out! He definitely changed retail. Not for the "good", in my opinion, but he definitely changed it forever. (shaking head in disbelief...)