Mari, I don't really overwinter anything indoors, so don't have any idea what will or will not survive inside. I do put my potted daturas and brugs in the tornado shelter once they're dormant and overwinter them there in a dormant state with no light and only a tiny bit of moisture to keep the soil and roots from totally drying out. My borage tends to reseed, and if I start some indoors from seed and set it out "too early", it doesn't take off until the air temps and soil temps are "just right", so I don't know if overwintering it indoors will make it take off any more quickly. As for those people who say certain things won't grow here, so don't bother trying....I wonder how hard they tried? Here's my experience with many (not ALL!) new veggie gardeners who give it only a half-hearted try: In early to mid March, they till up a piece of land that has either native pasture grass or bermuda grass with lots of crabgrass and other weeds. They don't bother raking out the roots at all, or just make a half-hearted effort. They don't add anything to the soil at all. Usually they have clay soil (in our part of the county). Sometimes they add sand. Unfortunately, sand + clay = adobe, more or less. They plant onion plants and seed potatoes (late for our part of Oklahoma, but better late than never). They sow all their seeds in rows on the same day, planting cool season crops mostly too late, and warm season crops mostly too early. They plant one lone row of corn on either the north or south side of the garden, ensuring poor germination since corn needs to be planted in blocks. They plant squash seeds too close together so the plants that do sprout severly crowd one another. They get poor germination, so they water....and water and water and water, thereby drowning what they do have. They don't hoe or pull weeds either, but might spray the weeds with Round-Up (so, of course, it drifts onto nearby veggies and kills or damages them). They decide in late April that their garden is basically a weed-filled failure, so they run to the store and buy tomato and pepper transplants--way too many of them--and plant them way too close together. Then they overwater them because they think water is all it takes. By late June the entire mess is buried under knee-tall bermuda grass, crab grass and Johnson grass, and often that Johnson grass is already several feet tall. And these are the people who tell me that "you can't garden here, stuff doesn't grow here, the weather is too bad, the bugs are too bad", etc. etc. etc. Well, gardening as they practice it does not seem very successful. And, some of them do exactly the same thing time after time, maybe 3 or 4 years in a row, before they give up. I always wonder why they don't do a little research and try to figure out what they are doing wrong, and then correct their practices. All I can think is that they've never read a book about vegetable gardening. If they stop by our garden and ask how I do it, I tell them but then they tend to tell me "that's too much work", so that's their choice, isn't it? If I had a nickle for every "new" garden that I've seen started and abandoned here as I described above, I'd have a few dollars. And, during that bad wildfire year in 2005-2006, our guys went to a fire or two that was essentially dried-out Johnson grass and corn stalks left in an abandoned vegetable garden plot. I'm not poking fun at wannabe-gardeners, by the way, just pointing out the half-hearted efforts I've seen and making the point that they are doomed to fail based on the little amount of effort that's gone into them. You get out of gardening what you put into it, and that is only if Mother Nature cooperates and gives you some assistance. I love the entire gardening process, so I do the whole thing starting with soil improvement, composting, mulching, etc. and I expect good results, whether from trees, shrubs, flowers, herbs, veggies or fruit. I don't always get them, but when I don't get good results, I figure out why and try to correct the situation. The ones who say it can't be done, well, IMHO, they're quitters. That's their choice, of course, but I don't want to listen to them whining and telling me it cannot be done, because I know that it CAN! Dawn

here's one I used a couple of years ago. I printed it out and rolled it up like a scroll and tucked it under the arm of a little angel doll. Sue :) I'm your Teacher Guardian Angel, On your desk I will reside. No matter how tough your school day, I'll be here by your side. Your students may have left their work At home for the dogs to eat. They may have lost their 'listening ears', Or have trouble staying in their seat. No matter what the problem, Please know I'm close at hand. I'll help you enjoy every day, And make your lessons go as planned! ~Author Unknown by me~

I started getting chin hairs about 7-8 months after giving birth via C-section to my last child and a tubal ligation. I was still nursing, but they showed up about the time of my first post-natal period/cycle. They have been with me ever since, and that baby will turn 23 years old in two weeks. I have tweezed and finger pulled them ever since. Now that I have "old lady" eyes, my husband actually helps me! LOL I have to wear 300+ magnifiers, a magnifying mirror and a flashlight on the offending area and a pair of mirco-edge tweezers. I usally "go after" one to 6-8 hairs every day to every three days, in the evening when I do my personal hygiene regimes. What I am noticing now is that my skin is getting tougher and the hairs sometimes are "trapped" and have a harder time breaking through. They will sometimes look like little blackheads or if they can't get out, they will become irritated and look like a little tiny pimple is starting. I have found that exfoilliating my chin area with a rough wash cloth more frequently prevents this from happening. Recently, after my period, I am noticing a significant "drying" feeling on my face and have noticed it goes hand in hand with the some of the other symptoms too. By the way, more than half of my "whiskers" are now gray.. or actually, pure white! It doesn't help at all, they still stick out, still show, still irritate and frustrate! I do have a question. Our cycles go through a follicle stimulating hormone time frame in order to "pop an egg". Do you think this is what stimulates our hair follicles to "spurt whiskers"? What about the pimples? Our oil glands are intricately involved with our hair follicles.. do you think it is the follicle stimulating hormones that "spur on" pimples to develop at our adult age? I have been known to have a pimple or two maybe three or four times a year on my face just before my period, and as soon as I finish the period, the pimple is all but gone. Anyone know about this?

jaymaneul: Honestly, I would not use Gibbens Pools again and I would not recommend them at this time. We signed our contract in February and we are still not finished. We were told 6-8 weeks completion time from the time we signed and we are still waiting for the pool to be complete. We had to get the pool replastered due to color discrepancies. They finished it this past week and although it looks fantastic, there are two areas where water sat in the shallow end/dripped down the walls(didn't blow out the skimmer equalizer line) as the pool was filling up, leaving unsightly discolorations. Gibbens has not addressed this issue yet. Working with Gibbens has been an uphill battle. Their subs (other than the plasterers) have been nothing but excellent, but dealing with the owners of the company has been like talking to a brick wall (Gibbens subs everything out, btw). Our pool will be great once the issues are worked out, but working them out is taking forever. Example: when they shot the pool, the gunite overspray got over everything, most importantly our black, iron fence. We called the company the following day to let them know. They said it would be cleaned. This was in March. To this day, we still have gunite all over the fence. After talking to a fence installer, he said that the fence will have to be replaced. It seems as if they ignore the problem, it will just go away (the sheer descent wall was the same way). I can tell you from talking to the subs, that we are not the only ones that seem to have difficulty with this company. Maybe not to the extreme we are experiencing, but a majority of the complaints from other pool owners is the amount of time it takes to complete the pool. As for your contract, Gibbens (as many construction type businesses) uses a typical 'builder's contract'. Essentially, it is a contract written in their favor. Many builders (home, pool, etc) expect a bonus if they complete a project before the deadline, esp. if you stipulate a penalty clause (I doubt Gibbens, or any other pool company, would go for that type of contract). I don't want to harp on the negatives too much, because when it is all said and done, we will have a gorgeous, well built pool (thanks to the subs). Likewise, there are two sides to every story, and I'm obviously biased. If you need any additional info, let me know. Good luck with pool build.