When my mother turned 70, we gave her a surprise party and wrote and performed a little musical of her life. She definitely loved that! But our family is into stuff like that. Yours may be more into art, writing, etc. For my 50th birthday, my husband contacted everyone he could think of and asked them to contribute a little anecdote for an album. He put photos in the back. I adore it. I recently did a "this is your life" slide show for a party honoring someone. Her family gave me photos. But in addition to the real photos from her life, we put in lots of downloaded photos with her face photoshopped in (always the same photo of her face, and always just a little too large). For example, when the narration was about her meeting and marrying her husband, there were a few of the two of them together, and then her with Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Homer Simpson, King Kong ... etc. It was really funny to think of things; she is a VERY refined and elegant lady, and we had her getting a tattoo, pole dancing, in a motorcycle gang, on a Tabloid cover, in the Sopranos -- like that. What made it funny was that we kept the narration perfectly straight and played very formal music behind it. It was very well received, and the guest of honor loved it. Do you think your mom might like something like one of these ideas? I, too, think I would prefer something like that to making the guests play games. I think it is so nice of you to make a party for your mother. You don't need to "program" every minute with games, though -- your mom's friends will enjoy socializing with each other.

Actually, I'd consider it BECAUSE of the dogs. The Timber Glen is a thru body color porcelain. IOW, it's not glazed, which means that first of all, being porcelain, it's going to be a tough tile to start off with. Secondly, even on the off chance that it DOES chip-- you wouldn't readily see it, because the color goes all the way through. As for the other tiles, I've never heard of Happy FLoors, but I HAVE heard of Cerdomus, and their tile is also all unglazed thru body color porcelain. It's also some of the toughest tiles I've ever worked with. I sincerely believe that you could drive a truck over those tiles... WITH ICE CHAINS... and still not hurt them. It's the only line of tiles that I have a special blade for my wet saw just to cut them, because a normal blade won't do. This is no exaggeration.

I'm sorry, sable! I don't get reply posts sent to my inbox so if I space a thread I won't know if anyone's replied. Well, if you think about the coming water crisis as the earth warms, Arizona will look less and less attractive, IMO. Some predictions have folks moving en masse to areas like the Willamette Valley and western WA where there's less of a shortage of moisture :) Interesting theory about Teri, too. I'm thinking if I were in her position, if I'd been treated decently and offered 9 mil, I'd probably take it. But if people had treated me the way they treated her, I'd say sod off to any bids those condescending sobs deigned to toss my way. I could easily see myself thinking "after all the bs I've taken from you, now that you think it might be valuable you're running to me with insulting lowball bids. Nice try." awm, re realities of family life -- it sure isn't how I grew up, but then again my parents were pretty nonexistent in my childhood. I'm imagining DD will get to talk to her therapist about how Mom was always repainting or remodeling or tiling something in the house LOL...

" Insurance is paying for it! " Well, I think it's Yes and No to that. I had blood work done for my annual physical. When I got the processed insurance claim from the lab, it was like this: "Tests $950, minus provider discount $910, paid by insurance $40". All bills from hospitals, urgent care, etc., etc., seem to follow a similar pattern. The higher prices only apply to those without coverage. Major chain pharmacies aren't paying big bucks for generics because they have volume discounts. They prefer insurance business and I suspect the higher prices are to discourage customers without coverage. Many insurance plans operate their own mail-order pharmacies for policy holders, and some pharmacy chains operate insurance companies. Sellers like Costco (which hopefully everyone knows about) target people who AREN'T covered by insurance. Some people don't have an economic choice, but keep in mind that many generics don't have the same effectiveness as their brand counterparts. I use a few prescription drugs and three doctors have advised me to NOT use the available generics for them. Some brand manufacturers offer subsidies. An example, my cost for Lipitor brand is cheaper than if I used the generic because a Pfizer program covers almost all of my co-pay. (Not sure what bumped this 5 year old thread) Edited to add: My personal view is that everyone should have access to prescription coverage and health insurance. The cost should be subsidized for low-income people. If that were done, the costs would be lower for everyone. And no, I don't know why drug prices can be higher in the US than abroad. Any politician with answers to these problems would have my support and my vote.