PurpleMoon, You are always so sweet, so complimenting to everyone here. A real joy to read your posts and see your latest garden treasures! Yep, Rocks, Rabbits and Iron -- That's Me! LOL For years I'd tell my kids (when they were young) that we were going on a Family Fun Day. Took them years to figure out Family Fun Day included collecting rocks from construction sites. They were about 13-15 when they finally caught on but boy, for those 8-10 years prior, I got some beautiful rocks, stone, flagstone, cobblestone, and over the years I've made some great raised rock gardens, thanks to free labor. LOL Nope. I started with page 4 and went backwards. Then I ran smack-dab into the album page and that's where I've been for the last two days. LOL ---------------- Awwww Bright199, That is just so sweet of you to say! Seriously. Means more than you know. As I tell anyone who asks --- No, I'm not talented, just broke. *s* Amazing what a lack of funds will inspire when it comes to 'makin' do with what ya got'. Again, thank you so much for your kind words. ----------- CraftyLady, Awwww---Thank you so very, very much!!!!! I do take a lot of pride. Some days it seems that the only control I have in my world is control over my gardens. lol My hubs says the gardens are what soothes the savage beasties in me. I never looked forward to showing them to people, until I found this board. ------------------ ConcretePrimroses, Thank you so much! Is that what it's called ---rock scaping? Hm...I learn something new on this board every single time I visit--Love it! -------- Jlily, Thank you so very much! Oh, I'd love to have real birds, doves, outside. The cooing sound they make is soothing. All I get right now are large, fat pigeons that poop on my patio chairs. And they don't even coo pretty. Just poop. That's ok. it washes off easily enough. *s* ------------ LuvsToCraft, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! Yes, I did the painting on the fence. It was a pretty lean (financial) Spring going into Summer and I so wanted color back there. I scoured all my sources and couldn't find large planters for cheap and mature plants weren't in the budget either. Grabbed my craft paints, a towel to sit on and my grandkids' sidewalk chalk to outline on the fence what I was seeing in my head. I don't have any training and don't think too highly of my cutsie (read: not professional looking) paintings around the gardens. In fact, it's very rare that I even show them to people. But seeing all the creative people on this board, I felt 'safe' showing them here. There's a painting forum? ----------------- luna_llena_feliz, I am soooo loving this forum! I tell ya, I've never felt so confident about my gardens, my T2T, my curb shopping finds as I have felt here over the last week. And the inspiration!!!! OMG, the inspiration -- I've spent until the wee hours of the morning going back pages and pages looking at all the creativity. A modest tract home in S. Calif. doesn't leave one much space to garden. You're so right --- not a lot of space, go up! lol Thank you so much for your kind words.

RE: Help in choosing a large SUV Posted by: beaglebuddy (My Page) on Mon, Mar 13, 06 at 21:59 Could an attorney please step in and explain this to johndeere ? If the person hit is injurded and is in the Hospital for a long period of time and has surgery and then needs Thearapy.Has to take medication for the rest of his life.Then his pain and suffering and lost wages and can not pay his bills.Who do you think pays?Just because your insurance pays $10.000 per victim medical and you have say a $600.000 Liabilty.Does not mean your off the hook.Just because that is all they will pay.Because chances are that will not cover it. If the victim dies.Your not going to get off cheaper.Because a funeral is cheaper then if they lived and had huge medical bills.Say the victim is 40 years old and made $50.000 per year.The family would recieve a minimum of $50.000 x until his kids are grown.Not counting pain and suffering. Insurance Co.Cover there rearend and will only pay so much.You pay the remainder and that very well could be the larger portion. Could a Dr. please step in and explain this to beaglbuddy?

Claire, I am a work in progress with a real ability to lapse if I don't exercise constant vigilance. My house had descended into a more chaotic condition than it had been for several years between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I almost spent $70 on replacement earphones which turned up when I attacked the pile of magazines which had somehow accumulated on a chair :) As I go through my stuff, I do find it helpful to try to keep in mind the psychological reasons that I find it hard to get rid of things -- obviously different types of objects evoke different emotions in terms of why it is so hard to let go. But as I get rid of stuff, the fear lessens as I realize that instead of diminishing my life, getting rid of the stuff enhances it for so many reasons. This morning I did my spices -- boy did it feel good to pour down the old spices, replace with the fresher duplicates and make my whole spice/cooking area much more accessible.

I moved here from Chicago (and have also lived in LA) and you really, really should rent first. Housing prices are not going to zoom up anytime soon. The banks have a large shadow inventory and CA is one of the three worst states for foreclosures. It is very time-consuming to buy a foreclosure. Figure it will take 4x longer than to buy normally. Homes in foreclosure are often in bad shape; quality of construction in CA is often very low. Labor costs are high and skillful workers harder to find than they should be. Do not assume you can remodel a not-so-perfect house into what you want. The NIMBY-ism here is hideous and in all the major cities it is extraordinarily difficult and expensive to enlarge a home's footprint. You are legally constrained from covering more than 40% of your lot anyway, I believe, and with our small lots that's not a big footprint. Permits are expensive to obtain and if you make structural changes, it will be required that you bring everything up to current building code. Since every year brings in stricter earthquake building codes, this can add so much to the cost that remodeling projects become impossible. For example, our neighbor wanted to turn their downstairs into a legal in-law: adding a second bathroom, building a single-story, one-room addition. They had $75K in cash as their budget (we live in the Oakland foothills, nice older area, starter homes). It took them over $12K and almost two years to go through the permit process. Eventually they were told they had to apply for a waiver because they were taking 2' from the single-car garage which was already minimum size allowed, so they had to have the architect re-draw the plans and resubmit them. Permit cost, BTW, is 10% of the cost estimate in our city. The City of Oakland does the engineering study for all projects. As we live on a hill (great east-facing hillside views), they were told to stabilize their lot, it would be necessary to sink 40 piers, each 37' deep to bedrock, filled with steel rebar and concrete. 25 of the piers would be for the single-room addition (which was only going to be about 17x25') and the remaining 15 would be placed all along the north side of the existing house. The cost for the pier work alone? $65,000. Needless to say, they did something else with their remaining $63K. You might be surprised what you pay for utilities here. PG&E is one of the most expensive utilities in the country, and most older homes aren't insulated well. Our home is insulated with double-pane windows, we live in a warmer microclimate than Berkeley, I keep my home fairly cool, yet we pay on average $170/mo for gas (furnace/dryer/stove) and electricity. No one can place any dependency on PG&E absorbing all the costs for their unmapped leaking gas mains (a neighborhood in San Bruno saw its gas main blow up and 8 people died); we ratepayers will almost certainly see our rates rise yet again. Water isn't that expensive, but earthquake-proofing our EBMUD water reservoirs is. Our bi-monthly water bill for a large garden (1/6 acre) and 3 people runs $45 for water and $100 for earthquake work. We do have earthquake insurance. There is a fault that runs right through Alameda County and it's overdue for another major quake. Homeowners insurance is fairly low - less than $1K, and umbrella liability is around $200/yr. Earthquake insurance with a $100K deductible costs us almost $4000/yr. However, we have no mortgage so we are carrying all the risk on our home. It made sense for us to purchase risk mitigation. To be afraid of all of Oakland is ridiculous. There are some very good neighborhoods here, just as there are some bad neighborhoods in Berkeley. If I were buying for the first time, I'd look in El Cerrito on the east side of San Pablo Ave. Good, stable neighborhoods, nice weather, easier city traffic, great services/shops. I like Alameda, but access is limited to the bridges, and traffic is easily snarled at commute times. Traffic is the huge issue in the Bay Area. If you are still working, you need to really see how the traffic patterns work, not just when things go right but when things go wrong. Public transit is pathetic compared to Chicago, NY and Boston. Cars are a necessity in the East Bay; you can get around without one but it will take forever and making transfers between systems is a pain. Don't ignore the sales tax. The first time you pay sales tax on a new car, you will definitely feel the pain! Food is a conundrum: you can spend less and get higher quality, but on average Bay Area residents eat out more often than anyone else except New Yorkers, over 4x/week. I don't mean to sound discouraging. We love living here but there is no denying CA is an extremely expensive state. State income taxes are high and services are dwindling. You will find politics very different here than back East.