I love the Big E. Try to go every year. We rent a camper at one of the camp grounds and stay for 2 days.There is so much to see, plus we love the enterment

LOL! I wanted to cut him off and make him climb the tree 10' from his hole to see how well they climb. I also wanted to get a close-up look at him. He is very cute and very fat! At the end of the day I was driving past that area in my Mule (little farm vehicle) and floored it when I came around the corner of the brush. There was one about 30 yds away from where this one normally has been. It stared at me for a few moments and then ran under a huge brush-pile that is waiting to be burned. Either this is a second one that lives near the first one but near a different brushpile, or just the single one that has it's second tunnel entrance 30 yards away from the first hole. The next time I am at the farm I will try to get a picture of the fat little guy.

I like it quite a bit. I do wonder if the grates need to be as high as they are, but I don't mind it. We've been having a lot of fun cooking things that we just couldn't do on our old stove. We worried a bit about how low it could go when cooking, but we haven't had any trouble getting it low enough for our needs. I've made pudding and slow-cooked oatmeal in milk on it, for example, without any scorching issues. I couldn't do that on our old stove without standing over it and stirring constantly, but on the Performer I've found I can walk away and do other things and just stir those items occasionally. We chose it because we wanted a lot of power, we'd heard about Bluestar's hot door issues, and we had a friend who hadn't been happy with Bluestar. We thought we probably wanted an open burner as well, and that really limits the field. We couldn't find a live Capital, and I'd heard a lot about some people's simmer issues, so I ruled it out since I couldn't try it for myself. There is a Luwa gallery not far from our home that had several American ranges live. We went there and tried the Performer out and decided it would work well for us. Our oven door does get warm, but I've never noticed it getting burn-your-skin-instantly hot like I've heard about with Bluestar. Let me bake something in the next day or two, and I'll pay special attention to how warm the door gets. I'll report back.

WTG! (or WTKG?-- way to keep going). It sounds like the dumpster was well worth it. After DH and I bought our house, it seemed like everybody and his brother was renovating a house and the local waste management places did not have any dumpsters to rent out. We needed to get rid of a houseful of carpet and padding. Fortunately, the backyard is enclosed and we live in a place where it doesn't rain much (and didn't that whole summer), so we ended up slicing up the carpet and filling the big, rolling garbage bin about halfway with carpet each week-- for weeks and weeks on end. We did eventually get rid of it, but I'm always reminded about how you eat an elephant, one bite at a time. You can't do everything with a regular trash can, but you can do a lot! Especially if you pace yourself. The Barbies sound important to you. Maybe they are worth putting up on ebay?