Aha... Brush-footed Identification: Quite variable. Males usually have black antennal knobs. Upperside is orange with black borders; postmedian and submarginal areas are crossed by fine black marks. Underside of hindwing has a dark marginal patch containing a light-colored crescent. Spring and fall broods (form marcia) have a gray mottled hindwing below. This one has yellow antennal knobs...possibly a female??

I found that, though I can have certificates issued for mutual fund ownership (no fee), or stocks (about $35. each), I cannot have a stock certificAte issued for an Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) in Canada. Which means that I cannot use the evidence of ownership of an ETF as security to arrange a line of credit or loan with my bank/credit union, at low rate of interest. I can use it as collateral with the stockbroker who holds the fund, as well as others of my assets, in his electronic data base ... but my experience has usually been that the stockbroker usually charges at least 1% higher rate than at the bank, which is an appreciable difference, when compounded over time. Sometimes I have little asset easily available as ready cash, or that I choose to liquidate now to make available as money in case of an emergency, as I may not like the price available, or the sales commission required. As I sometimes lack available ready-cash, I have a fully-secured Line of Credit, backed by certificates of stocks and mutual funds, to obtain a low rate of interest - currently about 6.25%, but unused at the moment. Then I can use a credit card in an emergency, then use my line of credit to pay off that amount in full before it starts accruing interest, unless the credit card carries 0% rate, which is not the case, as I have had my card for several years. The trouble is that the interest paid on a loan used for an emergency or consumption is almost always not deductible and I prefer to use loans for investment, thus making them deductible. So when I use an emergency loan for emergency, which is seldom deductible, I stop investing for a while and use that part of current income to pay off that non-deductible-interest loan as quickly as possible. Then I start using that regular saving to begin investing again, plus may borrow to invest, if I feel that the situation justifies it. Also, in my Canadian situation most of the time, I can borrow for investing at almost no net cost. Are you familiar with the Rule of 72? Divide 72 by the rate of gain/growth that you are getting and the result will show you the number of years that it will take for your investment to double. Thus, investment return of 6% will double in 12 years ... at 9% will double in 8 years. But it's not the raw figure that counts. If your bond pays 5% and you are in 20% tax bracket, that means that 1% is lost to tax, so your after-tax rate of return is actually 4%. But when your bond matures, you'll get back only the number of dollars invested originally, so those equal-value dollars suffer annual erosion of value due to inflation. If you assume inflation to be 3%, that leaves your effective rate of return at only 1%. Which means that it'll take 72 years for my $1.00 current return on invested asset to become $2.00. I bought a long-term quality Canadian stock 40 years ago for $4.20, that paid me about a dime or so a year in dividend, which is tax-advantaged here. Over the years, it's paid about 3% or so, or about 2.5% after taxes. A few months ago I could have sold that stock for $107.+ per share, and a few months later for about $89.50, and since it recovered to about $101.00, then last Friday dropped to about $96.50. Did I choose ot sell it? Not on your life! It has grown well for me over the years, and is currently a high quality stock. As the stock has grown well over the years, you can see my reasoning when I say that I do not feel the need to make any calculated deduction from current dividend rate to allow for the erosion of value of the basic investment due to inflation. Current after-tax income of 2.5%, divided into 72, shows that those dividends reinvested will double in about 30 years ... to my mind, a lot better than taking 72 years to do it. When I calculated the rate of growth of the stock a while ago, I think that I calculated that to be about 7% compounded. So you can see my reasons for being happy with that investment. That's one of my better ones - one of my equity-based mutual funds has taken over 20 years to slightly more than double. I'm not very pleased with the folks who have managed it over the years - and they've changed several times. Good wishes as you pursue your savings and investment program. ole joyful

what makes you so sure they don't own a suit or a sport coat and can't buy one? That strikes me as so odd--not one of them owns a single suit? And not to be able to buy one at Walmart, even if it's not the greatest quality? They have until November to buy or borrow one. Even if they don't have one right now, it's not the worst thing to expect them to buy one for a wedding. Frankly, every grown-up man ought to have a suit. Did your future SIL tell you this, or are you just assuming? I'm just wondering. That said, surely a casual wedding would be nice. But personally I wouldn't strive that hard to make it be casual--just don't do the "formal evening" thing. In my hometown, plenty of people show up sans suit jacket to weddings that my dad would automatically wear a suit to. I don't know if if's that the down own one, or don't like to wear them. They look a little too casual, to my eye, but they always seem to have a good time and enjoy the event and the other people. And though the B&B sounds nice, if they can't afford a suit, they can't afford to stay. If money were truly tight for me, I'd feel left out. Having it halfway would be nice, bcs I could drive there in the morning, have the wedding, then drive home before bedtime. So that location is good, but I wouldn't expect them to try to stay over. (and some folks would be embarrassed to have you pay for them, and maybe that's not a good footing to start off on, w/ the bride's family compensating for financial lack from the groom's--if they're honorable people, it'll seem patronizing; if they're not, they'll take it as a signal that you should always pay for them) I'm w/ gellchom: simply make plans that won't cost ANYONE a fortune, and will be moderately convenient for EVERYONE (that halfway-point plan, for example) and let them be the grownups in their lives who plan how they'll fulfill their social obligations.

I'd get an estimate from an electrician to combine the two services into one. You probably can turn one of the panels into a sub-panel, fed from the other. You might need to upgrade the service on the main panel to handle the entire house. Once you have the estimate, compare the cost with the monthly additional cost of maintaining two separate services. It might be a while before this type of upgrade pays for itself. I don't see where there is a heat problem, other than the fact that you obviously have multiple furnaces (one gas, one oil). Assuming that they're in good repair, I'd stick with what you have. I don't see any advantage to going with an all-electric solution.