Gee everyone thanks for all your thoughtfull words and advice. minnie...I like the idea of the inverter for the car and will keep that in mind. As far as water, canned goods and candles...I usually keep that on had ALL the time..it was just to darn cold - more so inside the house than outside...and I just didn't feel like cooking. I used to own a wood burning stove in my old home and used it for warmth & cooking..(I sure miss it)..but with just a fireplace now, you have to sit real close to feel comfortable. Candy...before we got the snow, I heard that Co. was having snow storms...and thinking I couldn't do that so early in the season...I guess I spoke too soon. Karen...I wish we had that generator sooner too! I don't to humid heat or COLD very well...and I was really reaching the end of my sanity! Marlene...I guess we can all relate to going thru something like this at one time or other...and it will always bring back miserable feelings. Punk...wow - Several Generators & Toy Hauler!! DH must be a survivalist! I'd feel pretty safe knowing I had all that 'backup' !! lol mm...you are so correct about pure boring misery..with COLD thrown in. That gas hot water heater sounds good, but I probably wouldn't want to come out of the hot tub to freeze! janet you're so sweet to think of me. Sounds like you're pretty well prepared for storms with a generator, wood stove and fireplace! I miss the old stove I had and did some cooking on it like you. I hope they take care of your water problem soon. I agree with you on 'Snow Pictures' being beautiful...as long as you're not in them...lol jane

Wellll.....there's middle-class and then there's middle-class. In the SF Bay Area, $1M+ homes are middle-class. Upscale is roughly in the $2.5M+ area. Really high-end goes $5M+, but that's due to amount of land, not really size of house. So it depends on where you are, as usual. I'd decide based on what your buyer market is looking for. Many first-time homeowners love wood, then discover it's more long-term maintenance than they thought. It's not so simple to move all your stuff out of half the house to have the floors rescreened, once you've been in there for 10 yrs or so! Most busy, stressed, family-juggling homeowners are fine with the idea of lower maintenance as long as the good looks are still there - and I can honestly say, having just installed $10K worth of Mannington Adura LVP, it is MUCH harder to tell the difference these days between it and real hardwood (which we have in the rest of the house: original 1940's wide-plank oak with walnut plugs). Your decision. I'd trust a good local RE pro. Get a couple of opinions, and then decide.

DH shopped Costco last week. Narrow entrance with two lines -- one for first responders. One-way in and out of Dairy and Produce sections. Spacing as customers stood in checkout lines. Entire staff in masks. DH was instructed to lay his CC on the scanner and pick it up after it registered so the checker didn't have to touch it. There was zero fruit. There was plenty of TP. Choice steak was $7.89/lb. (I see dairy farmers are selling cows due to milk product sales dropping 50%.)

Fried grasshoppers are very good and also very popular in Mexico, especially in the state of Oaxaca. They are served with salt, lime, and chili, and so you can barely taste the grasshopper at all, but they are definitely crunchy. To me, grasshoppers taste a bit like lettuce or celery, but it depends on what they have eaten. I've never eaten cicadas, but then I've never been around them. I would not eat crickets - they seem nastier than grasshoppers, but I could be wrong. I think of crickets as lizard food. I've had chocolate covered ants (horrible) and chocolate covered bees - not bad but rather tasteless, and I felt bad for the bees, but not for the ants. Ants taste like formic acid, which is why they are not good to eat.