Carla: I did NOT, I repeat NOT give up coffee. Admitedly on occasion it bothers me, but if I stick to eating adequate amounts of soluble fibers, I do fine with coffee. My initial experience with all the antispasmodics was that they took awhile to be effective. In the end the dieting thing worked better for me, although I am nowhere nearly as devoted to the diet as is Carrie. I mainly just keep an eye on soluble fibers and try to cut down on fats and fried things. I am absolutely sold on the soothing properties of oatmeal. Even if you don't like it treat it as meds or learn to cook so you find it tolerable. If I get seriously out of kilter, I start with oatmeal twice a day and get myself back in shape. I know how miserable you are. I could not sleep, I walked around with my elbow stuck in my side trying to hold the pain in, etc. Initially the meds did little or nothing for me. The diet thing gets automatic after awhile. If I'm reduced to eating fast food I can usually find a plain baked potatoe (avoid cheese if you are having spasms). Almost all oriental places have root veggies and rice, so they are always a safe choice for lunch or dinner. Rice noodle dishes are good - I've become a patron of all the aisian places - now I'm a big fan of Thai food - they make shredded salads from exotic root vegetables and carrots that are to die for. I love applesauce and bananas and mangos. When mangos are in season I keep them in the house and have one for breakfast. The rest of the time its bananas. I eat applesause as a snack or for desert. I keep the snack packs of applesauce and carrots in the office fridge so I have something helpful nearby. Just remember, if you are having spasms avoid non-soluable fibers like lettuce, bran and whole grain breads. Its like adding fuel to the fire. If you are having spasms, the fat based foods will make matters worse: cheese, gravies, etc. Alcohol can be a trigger too, so we are right back to "moderation in all things" :-). Made myself sick for days one time after a night at a tapas bar - the culprits: red wine, a platter of exotic cheeses and various whole grain breads and crackers.

Loralee, regardless of the software you will eventually settle on, you will need to use multiple DVD's unless you opt for an external hard drive. I suggest that you take an afternoon and use a disk burning application (I can't stand Roxio, more on this later) to back up the files and folders of your choosing. If your DVD writer is capable, use double layered DVD-R's as they are 8.5 GB each. Then, get in the habit of backing up new files to dvd on a regular basis. A real simple solution would be to buy an external USB or Firewire hard drive and copy over your precious files, though I would still make DVD's and put them away. Most, if not all, external drives come with some sort of "back-up" software. As Ravencajun suggests, Trueimage is pretty good. I do not recommend anything by Roxio as their software has proven to conflict with hardware drivers and also creates problems when installed with other software. It doesn't play well with other software. I have made many repairs to friends and family computers that Roxio has caused. There are many other cd/dvd burning software solutions available, I am partial to Nero. I also suggest Total Commander as a file manager. It far exceeds the capability of Windows Explorer and once you use it, you'll never look back. If you get an external hard drive and use total commander, you'll be done in no time at all. Good luck.

Sounds like maybe the darker color thing mentioned above may also play into it. My 2001 Grand Cherokee ( factory am/fm/cd/casette player) will not recognize burned CDs. i am currently using my laptop with XP and have tried windows player, I-tunes and BurnerXP but haven't noticed any different results from any of that different software. After going thru about 30 cds burning at different speeds and formats, I finally got it to occasionally recognize one I burnt at around 4X using PCM .wav (uncompressed) format but to recognize and play I usually have to fast forward it thru a couple of songs while it is doing the initial read. Once it recognizes and starts playing then will usually play the whole CD but doesn't always work for whatever reason. I may try the label thing or try to find some of the "dark" cds to see if that matters. We have a 98 KIA witn an aftermarket cd player and it will play just about anything burnt to cd no matter format or speed.

Thank you SO much everyone! It seems most of you are for the CD fridge. We have a small fridge - the kind found in dorm rooms (not tall and skinny but short) which we could also use but there's no practical space to put that in besides the basement. But our kids aren't allowed to drink soda, my husband keeps only a few beers in the fridge at a time, and I keep my diet cokes in room-temp storage so I don't even know what would go in the small fridge. I'm certainly not willing to keep food down there or regular drinks like juice/milk so I really do think we'd be stuck w/ the CD fridge for most of it. I could keep our old fridge in the basement for holiday meals as well as all the drinks we presently keep in room-temp storage, however I was upgrading to an energy-efficient fridge! why would I want to have the new fridge AND the old fridge, considering that?! Going up in 3 cubic feet in size on for the fridge portion (free food), when I picture gigantic dice of a cubic foot each in size, that seems like a decent (not great, but decent) improvement... (I hope)! Here's what I'm too dumb to figure out: if the fresh food portion of a fridge includes the space in the door/doors - regardless of whether it's a 1990 standard fridge or the new french door kinds - how does that translate based on the new layout? In other words my current old fridge has very little door space; it has only one door and its shelves for condiments and butter. The new fridges have space for at least 2 gallons of milk in the door, but less space for condiments and yet still some space for them. So if the milk will no longer be on the main shelves but in the door, does that mean I'll get all that added space on the main shelves + the additional 3 cubic feet of fridge space? Anyway...thanks for helping me figure all this stuff out!