Sounds like a week at my house! I hate to tell you, but the only way we ended up eradicating the weevils was tearing out the kitchen. I found a bunch of the little @$-&;! on a bay leaf, like it was a &:$-)! weevil Mardi Gras float. :glare: Martha Stewart lies.

I keep port on hand for French onion soup. I keep it on my buffet, above the schoolwork bins, with the rest of the booze. :lol: I think Madeira can be stored the same way.

This is pretty much how we go, too. I'm one of those parents who really doesn't care what "everyone else" does, though. This is *our* life. We have chosen to homeschool and, among other things, choose what schedule we keep. My kids know they can either focus and do the "must do" things, or their "want to do" things get bumped off the schedule (not in a punitive way, there's just a finite time in the day to spend on "things" and fun time is lower on the priority list). Is it an ongoing conversation? Yes. They're 11 and 7. But we dot negotiate our priorities based on other people's priorities/schedules.

I agree. I've attached my calculation on the Healthy Weight Forum tool. I really don't know how you're getting those piddly calories counts.

I don't believe there is a way to not have it tied to your credit card. We have just password protected purchases, so the kids have to ask us to override it before they make a purchase. Or, we make the purchase on the B&N website and it downloads to their Nooks.

I think you're talking about two different things. Ereaders mimic ink on paper and, essentially, their purpose is to store ebooks for reading. They're easier on the eyes than backlit screens. Tablets are color and have apps. The Nook Color and Kindle Fire are both android tablets, not ereaders. Their primary purpose is apps, not reading. You can get Nook and Kindle apps for any tablet, but I'm not sure you can get a Nook app on a Kindle or vice versa; the OS is proprietary on both and their have their own app stores for their proprietary gizmos.

I would probably just send the letter to School A and a copy to B. Wow, though. That seems like it requires way too much thought.

I use a jar and an immersion blender, and just pour the oil from the bottle. Then I put the lid on the jar and chuck the lower half of the immersion bender in the dishwasher. I'm just lazy like that. :D

I wore purple Chucks with a white strapless dress to my junior prom. ;) It's funny, I have a lot of shoes, but I'm barefoot unless law or weather requires footwear. Right now, I'm in my running shoes because I just came in from teaching strength training; they're Five Fingers, though, because I was running barefoot for a while but then stepped on a piece of glass. I figured I should have *something* between me and the pavement. (and they're good for lifting)

:iagree: As a reference point, I'm 5'0" and weigh in at roughly 150. I'm a size 4-6, depending on the cut of pants and whether they will accommodate my quads. I have always been "dense" and weighed much more than my size would indicate, even unfit. Lifting just adds to the scale.

That reminds me of when the boys were infants and we went to the park to play with a friend who also had infant twins. My now 11 yo was playing on the equipment and a group of mothers and children approached... We'll just say they were of the denim jumper set. The looooooong denim jumper set. Anyway, one of the kids asked if they could go play with her and got an aghast sounding "no" in reply. My friend looked at them for a moment, turned to me and said, "They've seen the Birkenstocks. They *know* we're heathens." :lol: Conversely (haha! I made a shoe funny), I also have a pair a black sling backs identical to a pair Ann Coulter is wearing on a book jacket. I love those shoes, but admit to having a mad urge to burn them in the driveway whenever I hear her.

Ya know, i think this is one of those gray areas, and it largely depends on where you are. In MD, I'm not really sure there's such a thing as "public land" anymore. Anything that isn't privately owned (and posted) seems to belong to (and is thus protected by) the state. In Maine, if you find a berry bush, you pick (unless it's in somebody's yard or orchard, obviously). There's a lot of open land, though, and even if it's privately owned, it's probably owned by timber or utility companies who don't care if you pick. I don't know if it's still the case, but the power company used to have no issue at all with people cutting Christmas trees along the rural lines at the forest edge. It just kept them from having to cut them. So, my answer is: I dunno. You'll have to ask. :)

I think that is beautiful, and I think you could reasonably have the exterior work on that complete by mid-October.

Have you considered a yurt? (I haven't read through all bazillion pages, so I may be redundant here)

Here's my take: IF you can build an adequately insulated shelter and install either a camp toilet (which you will have to schlep) or a composting one before October, and there is an open or public spring nearby enough, go for it! My dad is off the grid in Byron and the first few years (20+ years ago) he did, in fact, schlep, use oil lamps, etc. He has since installed a solar electric system with a pump for the spring. The biggest hurdle was plowing himself out because the private camp road doesn't have winter maintenance. My herbalist mentor is further south (Harmony), off the grid, and still has an outhouse. She birthed/raised her children bucketing water from a spring several hundred yards through the woods. It's doable. The question is whether you want to live there while you improve the place over time.

Um.... Not to seem like a crackpot but, are you on Amazon.ca? Because I'm seeing GF supplies on the site. Gluten Free Mall on celiac.com ships internationally (I have trouble thinking of Canada as international for the purpose of shipping), as does Organic Wholesale Club. They have lots of GF options, and decent prices.

I think we should all get excited about the frivolous things more often!

These. Our practices are 5:30-7:30 four or five nights a week. Lacrosse is a short season sport, though. If it was a year-round thing, I may lose it with that schedule. Anything else we do is done before dinner.

Yup, same here.

Same here. We homeschool because we want our children to receive a rigorous liberal arts education, and because we believe the family should be their primary attachment past age five.

So, I'm not alone in resenting remakes? I'm still not over the acoustic version of Hotel California. :D

Free beer and a donkey... Is this company run by the dude who was arrested for DUI with his zebra riding shotgun in the truck? :lol: Yeah, I'm firmly in the camp of "mistakes happen. Customer service (good or bad) is what happens when they do".

I was just thinking the same. In reality, when I'm at home or work, my iPhone is on the wifi, as is my husband's droid. At the 10GB rates, it's the same price we're paying now. Our tablet is wifi only, but their new price structure does nothing to encourage me to buy a dual connection one. How would that encourage anyone to buy an additional bandwidth sucking device? That's lame. So, if I look at our data usage and see that we commonly go over 10GB, I guess we'll be calling Sprint. ;) Eta: per my husband, we use under 4GB total per month. His wifi is not great, so he uses more. My iPhone is my primary surfing tool and I use .75 - 1.5GB/month. So, with the new rates, we could actually save money.

I know exactly what you mean. I have those days, too. :grouphug: If it makes you feel better, I decided to do a 14 day raw food cleanse a couple years ago. It was the height of summer, tomatoes (one of my favorites) were abundant and tasty, fruit was fresh and beautiful... After 4 days, I resented my meals so much, I started choosing to not eat than face another bowl of fruit or salad. It was my choice AND I was eating many of my favorite things!

Any mango is good mango, as far as I'm concerned. It might be a ripeness of mango versus sharpness of knife problem, though. I keep my knives really sharp, and usually have presentable chunks, but a mango that's slightly over-ripe? Slurp!