This question comes up a lot! The two most commonly suggested books are Ortho's All about Orchids and the Sunset publisher's book on Orchids. Several forum members, including me, are also quite fond of Orchids Simplified by Henry Jaworski. FLAME 747 suggested "An Introduction to Orchids" published by the South Florida Orchid Society. Other excellent sources include: Taylor's "All About Orchids" (great pictures); Rebecca Northen's "Home Orchid Growing" Orchid Growing Basics (Schoser) Gardener's Guide to Growing Orchids (Ritterhausen) Orchid Growing for Wimps (Zachos) Jack Kramer's "Orchid Growing Indoors" In addition, Mary Noble has several good books for beginners: You can Grow Orchids, You Can Grow Cattleya Orchids, and You Can Grow Phalaenopsis Orchids." All are excellent for the beginner. If you want to know more about species, then The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Orchids, edited by Alec Pridgeon is also a good source. For a more detailed listing, and a suggested reading list for more experienced growers (intermediate level and advanced), check out Linda's Orchid Page at She has many good suggestions.

Netla, the first book that came to mind, though an old classic was Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life by Mrs Gaskell, written in the time of those 'dark satanic mills'. Modern writers from that area include Val McDermid, popular crime writer and Jeanette Winterson Oranges are Not the Only Fruit; she has become an increasing angry lesbian so don't know about her other work. ;-( You will love both Durham and York, both small enough to easily walk around and with beautiful church and other buildings. There is The Story of Durham by Douglas Pocock which looks interesting (though pricey). The site below gives some eg's of books set in/about York. Loads of history . . . Roman, Viking, railways, chocolate-making etc. Whitby is also interesting. Look out for anything from Saint Hilda to Captain Cook . .. and Dracula! Hope this helps a bit. Here is a link that might be useful: Books Set in York

I only rarely listen to music now days. Unless driving and trying to stay awake, or nerves calmed. Even then I prefer talk radio or audio books. The only bluetooth audio device I have in my house is a headset which I've used mainly for audio books while walking. I didn't realize bluetooth didn't have the bandwidth to keep up with higher bit rates. As a test, I just now tried transferring a 17 minute 772 kbps flac song over bluetooth to my laptop in the same room and it just barely kept up. The image shows 102 kilo BYTES(capital B) per second which would be 816 kilo bits per second. The song is 772 kilo bits per second so if it had transferred at the same rate beginning to end it would have just barely kept up. But I noticed it was initially transferring at about 91 kB/s (728 kb/s) so it would have been dropping a few frames, stuttering, or however it handles the loss. But it should be plenty fast enough for (even 320kb/s) mp3 quality songs though, right? ETA: Just for the heck of it I just transferred the same song back from my laptop to my desktop using wireless wifi. 20 seconds or less over wifi as opposed to almost 20 minutes over bluetooth. Now I remember why I never use bluetooth to transfer files. It is (relatively) slow. Or at least mine is. :)

Actually, I did have a look at whether our Costco has a p-touch labeler (it doesn't), but it does have tapes. I think it might be wise to find a machine that uses the two different tapes our Costco supplies---that is, because they are usually cheaper. (OK. So now it got more confusing. Our Costco tapes are more expensive than Amazon!) I see that the machines can accommodate different sized labels. I don't think I would need different sized tapes because that means changing the tapes and having more tapes to store. I would think that maybe 1/2 inch size would be best size all around? And my guess is black writing on white labels are easier to read.