People seem to be talking a lot about new Aglaonemas. BBS's have radically expanded their house plant selections beyond the very basics, which has been quite a boon for people out in the boonies. Similarly, it also seems like the wholesalers are making efforts to make a much wider variety of plants available to a much wider audience. Like new varieties of old favorites like Pothos and Sans, and other plants that probably would already be old standbys but just haven't been available as house plants before. Someone has to trek through the wilderness of Ecuador or Malaysia or Borneo to gather these things, then propagate successfully for years to make something new publicly available, even if the plant was growing there for centuries. Seems like someone has been working on that for a while and the results are starting to show up in droves. Or maybe it's just as simple as the BBS's realizing people want more than Pothos and Sans. What do you people think from your view of things? If you browse Exotic Angel or Costa Farms, I think most people will see a lot of plants you've never seen before, so many that were never in any of the famous house plant books. I think mini/fairy gardens will end up being this decade's "macrame hangers" but it's hard to tell if it's just my new interest, causing me to notice every instance, or if it really is suddenly much more prolific. These darn "self-watering pots" are everywhere. Beware!

Hi Iggie. If I may. If the use of Back Yard Bob, reaches a point where the professional shop is forced to cut back on tooling, training, and maybe even personnel to the point that say they are no longer equipped to deal with your transmission question (which is actually already happening, one MUST have the $9000.00 factory scan tool for ONLY Chrysler to operate at the level required) then what is anyone going to do, with or without the financial resources? Back Yard Bob would never go anywhere near this level of an investment, we can only do it when we price correctly, and are fully utilized by our customers. There is a difference between price and cost. You can get a cheap price by going around us, but how do you really measure the cost of doing that? I had a customer who took her Honda Odyssey to a back yard bob to have a timing belt job done. She came back here a month later thinking she had a transmission problem, that he discovered right after doing the belt. The transmission was fine, he missed the timing marks when he did the belt. What if she totally lost the chance to ever bring her car back here because we weren't doing enough business to keep our doors open? Don't be too sure there will always be someone else, the cars got way too complicated in too short of a time. The tools are not being widely purchased and very few technicians are attending sufficient training to keep up with today's technology. The best part, is its all because most shops are actually priced to low already to afford those expenses. Now with many other people losing their jobs, and thinking they are capable of, and attempting to work at home and grab some/most of the easier work, we are getting hit with all kinds of problems when we are the second person in, (sometimes the third) with cars that have lots of parts thrown at them, that they easily may not have needed. In many cases, if someone else does a job like that timing belt in the back yard, we are faced with either turning the customer away, or completely re-doing the repair. You see, once we touch it, we are expected to stand behind the repair, fully. Meanwhile Back Yard Bob can sit back and still say he did everything right, and act like we don't know what we are doing. The Honda owner I referred to, once the car was diagnosed, was handed her keys and sent back to the person that did the work. As far as we are concerned, she does not ever have to come back. If her Back Yard Bob can't handle everything her car needs, she can take it to the nearest dealer, a sixty mile round trip. That's a real cost associated to the cheap price she got. BTW, like that Chrysler tool, I'm the only independent that has the Honda Factory tool, I won't bother going into detail right here what that means that I and the dealer can do, that no other shop, or especially anyone working at home in their garage cannot. Seriously it would take way too much time to try and look it all up and type it out. BTW, I know it sounds arrogant to turn her away, but its more about preserving the shop in one of the toughest business climates ever. We are all in, customers that don't understand that can't help us, and for the sake of the customers that do understand we have to make choices. "Nothing personal, its just business"

New position of Mirror isn't working for me, sorry. Neither are the 2 wicker boxes...it looks like the LOVELY table has developed 2 eyes over a huge square mouth! And there is too much of nothing on the table. Get rid of the 3 heavy candle holders, the 3 flat balls and the boudoir lamp (or at least swap out the shade). Less is more. Put on one pretty shallow vase or bowl, to anchor the table, with a nicely framed oval mirror behind. (It will not interfere with the light switches if it is oval). That table is gorgeous in it's simplicity. Don't over work it or force it! JMO

My DD informed me this morning that a long stretch of counter at the back of the kitchen would look "weird" and just get covered with stuff, THE NERVE! It's like she knows me or something. It's weirder to have a long, useful counter cut in two by a vertical element. Show her the NKBA guidelines--a budding kitchen designer is never too young to learn. ;) Guideline #3 (In part): A major appliance and its surrounding landing/work area form a work center. The distances between the three primary work centers (cooking surface, clean-up/prep primary sink, and refrigeration storage) form a work triangle. Guideline #4: A full-height, full-depth, tall obstacle should not separate two primary work centers. (Examples of a full-height obstacle are a tall oven cabinet, tall pantry cabinet, or refrigerator) If the oven cabinet is directly adjacent to the fridge, it becomes part of that work center--you move items from the fridge to the counter beside the ovens, then have a clear field to the cooktop. That long counter would be useful for staging baking trays for making cookies, lining up and landing multiple dishes going to/from the ovens for large holiday meals, and assembling school and work lunches.