1) How weird - the comment I left seems to be missing - oh well - thanks for providing smiles!

2) haha! Funny Mom. Thanks for the laugh.
The tension from all the recent events is really getting to me at work and at home. They stopped the construction on our office expansion yesterday. That has been making my stomach turn. Matt's projects have slowed down...no loans, no remodeling. There are a lot of unknowns. I know that a lot of you early retirees have been losing money over the last 8 years...I'm sure this is a unsure time. I like the idea of not looking till after the election. Thinking of going Amish...

3) Amish sounds good. I was just thinking if Richard wouldn't have a melt down I would be willing to get rid of the cable but then I would have to go to the library to use the internet. I guess the thermostat will go to 60 rather than 62 this winter and I doubt we will go to Alaska next year, I haven't been to Huntersville because of the gas situation but I think I will try next week.I guess Matt could always go to Texas and help rebuild after the huricanes. Alex is day one without a job but at least he is out hunting and can live off what he hunts and fishes. Oyster season is coming up.I truly think things will get better Nov.5th.

4) Just hang in there, everybody. Things always get worse before they get better.

5) Alex lost his job? Tell him to send me his resume. I will get it to Fran. She works for the City of Wilmington in same type of work he was doing.

6) Meg, I read your first comment and it shows up on the comment page but not here on the actual blog. D&D HELP!

Thanks soundchick, I feel much better (not)!

7) Dannie, your blog got posted twice. So, Meg's comment is on the first blog. Not sure how your blog got reposted, though.

8) I noticed that too, Courtney and posted a comment on the first one before seeing this one. Oh, well, if it gets deleted, no biggie. Great photos, Dannie.

9) Probably on my end-don't know but I will take the blame-so sorry.

10) Ok so as not to confuse you more I deleted the first one-sorry Linda and Meg-I do appreciate your comments.(I think I 'm the confused one.)

11) LOL - maybe it was the computer's fault - a gremlin

12) Sarah-Alex lost his job due to the fact that his county's building starts have gone to zero. For some reson their dept was financially indpendent from the county budget and up until this year was giving the county over 300,00 in budget surplus. He has applied with Wilmington and is waiting on an offer. Also the FDA has just opened several positions and both of the guys have applied. It means they will have to move out of state but now is the time for them to do it-before kids. The FDA jobs came out of the tomato problem back in the summer. Their enviromental jobs will count towards the federal time for retirement so there are a lot of positives. Keep your fingers crossed that something good will come out of this.

13) Dannie, can we all keep our fingers crossed or just Sarah? Good luck to Alex. I haven't lost my job but I'm looking. I'm thinking I may end up having to leave Portland for that job and that really makes me sad because I love it here so much but I trust that there is a reason for that job being there and me needing to move for it. That's the way I felt about moving to Portland and I haven't been disappointed. :)

14) I know you love it out there but maybe you will get to come back to the mountains here. Do you have a job in mind or can we help get you resume around? My son works for a company that places computer network people and knows a lot of head hunters in the Charlotte area. We also have a need for a bakery in our town:>Seriously, email me if you want to talk further. Yes, and please do keep your fingers crossed for Alex and Fletcher. Fletcher's job is ok but he needs a change and so does his wife.

15) My fingers are crossed. Actually I might have a lead and it will keep me on the west coast (hopefully Bean won't have to comment about that sad option!). Much as my family would love me there I couldn't handle the weather. Heat and humidity are the call-words for most of the South and I have little tolerance left for either. I'll keep you in mind, though, if I change my mind about that! Maybe I'll get lucky and move one more step to my happy place with no 80s and above. LOL

Thank you for your generous offer--it is greatly appreciated. :)

16) Where is that place-San Diego?

17) Me? No, not CA. Possibly WA.

18) Where is it not humid in WA?

19) LOL...you have the same problem most people do with the NW. Believe it or not, heat and humidity do not combine in the NW. When it is wet, it is cool/cold; when it is hot, it is dry. Fall and winter are wetter but cool. Summer is hot/warm but dry. I don't mind wet as long as it isn't 90 along with it. Or even 80. I know it is hard to wrap your mind around but people in the NW don't understand humidity as I'm talking about it in the South. When they visit the South, they come back stunned by the effect it has on them--because they aren't used to it here. The rare muggy day we have in Portland, people are just wiped by it--can't deal with muggy conditions. Crazy, right? The stories you hear (I heard!) make you think they would be muggy all summer because of all the rain they get--but they don't get it during warmer weather.

20) I have a good friend from Seattle and she loves a rainy day here. She says she likes the wet weather and I look at her like she is nuts. Cedar Mountain, where we go outside of Brevard, is so humid that I feel like it takes me a month to dry out. Even though I think its beautiful, I just don't want to live there all the time.

21) Seattle is supposedly worse than Portland--though the folks in Seattle swear the other way. I've lived in the South, the Upper MW area and now the NW. Like any place, you have things you like and don't like. When I moved from TN to MN...every person I talked to about moving like the bank, etc would say "You know it is cold there. You know it snows there". REALLY?? LOL So, when I moved from MN to OR, I got "You know it is the suicide capital of the world""You know it rains there all the time". I think every place is what you make of it.

The thing most people thought was the worst about MN--I thought was the best (not hot, not humid, no mosquitoes in winter). Same with Portland. I've never been one to get gloomy about gray days or rain so I figured even if it was as bad as they say..I could live with it. Portlanders love to complain about the rain but after it's been dry so long in the summer--they all welcome it with open arms and then brag about how they love it. Same in MN with the snow. Minnesotans will grip about how they hate winter (sounds like some SallyPants I know...) but if they get no snow they are disappointed. And they brag about how they can handle -30 and be members of the polar bear club and dive through the ice into frigid water (that doesn't appeal to me at ALL!). Humidity to me is heat/humidity. When it is cool and wet, it is refreshing and clean. But, everything has a limit. 20 days of below zero in MN--I was tired of it being so cold. 20 days of nothing but rain and soggy everything in OR--I get tired of rain. It rarely rains like that. Maybe Seattle is different and more consistently soggy but then again...it's cooler too. Would I trade 80s for more rain? Absotively! LOL

22) I agree with you about every place you live being what you make of it. I do have SAD though and gray days are very hard on me.I don't mind the snow as long as its sunny once in awhile but it seemed like the wintersin Michigan-we rarely had sunny days.I'm pretty adaptable and can live just about anywhere except the extreme heat. When we spent a week in Arizona and it was 122 everyday-I really thought I would scream. I stayed in the pool up to my neck and poor Richard never came out until dark.I was reading about Forks, WA and it sounded alot like Tranylvania County here in NC because it is a rain forest but apparently parts of WA are considered "dessert" so I guess you can always get out of the dampness if you want to. I would love to visit Seattle someday because of the large art community there.

23) My friend in TN has SAD too so I can sympathize. She even had problems with the TN mountains in winter because of the lack of sun. She did use some full-spectrum bulbs to assist. I actually buy those for all my lights now because my eyes are so stressed from flourescents in the office. I don't have any issues with low to gray light and less sun--I have more problems with light sensitivity and heat (sensitivity courtesy of computer strain). So, low or natural light works great for me and is preferred. I'd die in AZ or have to live in boxes with AC and I can only handle that so long and then I get cabin fever like folks do in the winter from not going outside because of the cold. WA and OR have both high desert (nearly typed dessert--my narrow-mind!) as well as rain forest type wet conditions. I just listened to Twilight so I know about the weather in Forks, WA. Portland isn't that bad--even most of the winter. Most of the time the rain is what I call "spitting". Very light and irregular. Most days are alternating sun and clouds and even the solid cloudy days are usually very light gray--not dark like most places I have lived with rainy days. We rarely have dark ominous days and even rarer have thunderstorms and high winds and lightning. The adage "if you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes" is apropo. I've been out on the weekend doing errands and I can go in with the sun, out to rain, in with rain, back out to sun. It's a joke in the office to look out of the 14th floor window and see rain and grab an umbrella only to get to the ground and not need it or vice versa. Rarely boring or long-term anything. LOL

Sounds like we both live where we prefer and that it works best for us--that's what's more important. Other than needing a new job and the one option seems to be in another city. LOL

24) Well sweet-alcoholica I am-I did use dessert instead of desert but you translated it anyway. The one drawback to spellcheck is that if you use the wrong word but spell it correctly, it doesn't catch it.

25) Yep--I'm an obsessive proof-reader and tend to notice spelling errors and really obvious grammatical ones and drive my co-workers crazy by pointing them out. Not so much to abuse them but usually because they are funny. Lose and loose are two I notice geeks have a problem with using. My current co-worker has a problem with affect and effect and switches them constantly not to mention i-before-e-except-after-c words like receive. I should not do that but I can't help myself. Of course I have to make sure I'm extra careful so I won't give them any ammunition back. LOLOL

26) Love the proof reading discussion. =) I was an editor pre-kids and still can't help but do it in my head when I read stuff. But honestly, I still often have to look up affect/effect. I think I've got a mental block about that one.

27) I've always had one with farther and further and lay and lie. Still have to think about it and probably most of the time I have it wrong. I really don't do it with comments or IMs like I do memos-to-the-field type memos. I think if you are talking to a large group in a work capacity it is important to spell correctly and communicate well. As a previous blog argued, our technology is making us more sloppy in our writing and spelling skills.

28) I was listening to a discussion on communication and how all these modern conveniences were actualy handicapping our kids in the ability to communicate. I have to agree. I remember thoughtfully composing letters to my grandparents and being proud that I had "learned" to write a letter. I treasue coming across anything in my mom's handwriting or my Dad's careful scaawl after his stroke. I have a vase that my granmother had written my name on a piece of masking tape. and stuck it on the bottom. That little piece of tape is much more valuable to me than the Chez hand painted vase.