I wanna add that I have a "church crossed with an elevator shaft" style living room, and I love it! The new energy efficient windows actually keep a LOT of heat out, and I have tons of trees that shelter the house in the summer and are bare to let sun in come winter. Personally, I love how open it feels. My livingroom isn't large in footprint, but the height with all of the windows really makes the outside come in, almost like you're living out of doors. I just love not feeling like the house is closing in on me in these spaces. Especially with a fireplace where suddenly it's like being round a campfire. I take cozy with low ceilings for the bedrooms, where it's more like a 'tent'. But that's me. I always wanted a great wall of windows. Mine is some 31' tall... :s

Thank you for so much info.....I noticed though that your high energy dogs eats alot more than two cups per day while the low energy dogs eat as much as toots. Tootsie while a bulldog which is known for their low energy is actually quite energetic.....we have to walk her everyday and play with her for several hours otherwise she goes crazy...you can actually see the pent up energy in her when she sits still too long....she is also a jumper (just not on command)and while she runs around the yard she also jumps up on the chairs and tables. (she's allowed). People at the bullympics this weekend said they had never seen a bully run like her before. I do agree with you though...there probably is not much difference between a four star and six star for most dogs....bullies are known as medical nightmares though so we are trying to do the absolute best for her and since we can afford it we do. Toots is actually quite funny to watch as she takes her toys and throw them herself sometime to go after...she is also one of the few bullies from what I've heard who will play fetch.....her breeder actually said we should train her for agility competitions....but we're not show people. I'd be curious to see how much she eats when she slows down a bit.

I almost never post anything negative about a company unless it’s something egregious. Well, I had an absolutely awful experience with Semihandmade and strongly encourage anyone to stay away from them. We had ordered cabinet doors in a specific color. After delivery, we scheduled kitchen installers to come and install our kitchen. When they arrived, they noticed that one of the main pieces was sent in the wrong color. I contacted Semihandmade and they stated they would not start the process to manufacture the piece in the correct color until they received pictures verifying they sent us the wrong color. I explained, that due to an extenuating circumstance (even told the person what that circumstance was) I wouldn’t be able to go to the house for a number of days but to please start the process. Despite knowing this, they refused to even start the process of making the piece in the correct color. That one single piece took something close to 5 weeks +/- to make and ship out to us. My husband and I incurred a pretty significant loss due to our renovation coming to a halt, expenses, etc. The main thing that disappointed us is their unwillingness to budge with their policy despite being informed of the life-changing extenuating circumstance. I wish I never knew about Semihandmade. It’s an awful company

Spoken language is just the way you talk. It's not merely fully formed sentences, and certainly not an agglomeration of statements, as the philosophers would have it. There are partial sentences, independent phrases, exclamations, interjections, figures of speech, and all the messy, yummy goodness that a full basket of language can give. Written language is something invented by teachers, editors and other pedants and is meant to conform to a certain set of standards--and those standards vary by culture, language, and culture groups within a language. There's usually a purpose to written language, such as conveying facts, telling a story, or proving an argument. In spoken language, only about 10% of meaning comes from the actual words. The rest comes from intonation, gesture and body language, facial expressions, etc. Written language is designed to be intelligible from the words alone. In USA English we value complete sentences, and organized paragraphs. We also value linear organization from beginning to end. I don't have personal knowledge of this, but I was taught that in Arabic, linear organization is considered gauche and unsophisticated, and that they kind of circle around the point, unwrapping it like peeling the layers off an onion, whereas we state the point at the top and work our way down to the details to back it up with. In fiction, memoir, letters, etc., we allow a lot more leeway for using some of the characteristics of spoken language in writing. This is especially true following the literary innovations that started in the early 20th C. Online language tends to be more like spoken language than traditional written language. We use punctuation, abbreviations and emoticons/emojis to fill in for the intonation and facial expression we lack. I'm not sure that this is "easy", but I hope it at least is clear. :)