I'm way more picky about my silverware than my dishes/mugs. Our current dishes are from Bed, Bath, and Beyond - just a basic white set, nothing fancy. They have held up nicely. But I've been looking for a new set of silverware for ages. If I like the forks, I hate the spoons, if I like the tea spoon, I hate the soup spoon. I want 4 tines over 3. The knife has to have a certain heft to it. Picky, picky, picky.

I like my silverware, but the larger pieces do not fit in the little cutlery slots in my dishwasher, so I have to flap that bit back and put them in the open container all willy-nilly. It's cutlery chaos in there.

I have Fiestaware in just about every color except purple--mostly yellow, turquoise and cobalt. I lurves it. Old Skool Buffistas may remember that I had always dug it and finally decided just to ask for it for my 50th birthday. I got bunches! My MiL's BFF has an antique store, so I usually get a vintage serving piece in a cool color each year for my birthday.

Man, I just spent today totally running my ass off, and I was just all aflutter that I hadn't gotten it done, but I think I totally pulled off what I was trying to do. And now tomorrow I need to go get my tire looked at, but then I can head out to Kansas on schedule. Sheesh, workday!

I like the mugs that are square at the bottom, but round at the top. Fashion and function! I would like to get square plates but I can't justify replacing what I have at this point in time.

My little neighborhood is one street long, with 12 little houses, and ends in an apartment complex. We are on a - whaddya call it, transformer? grid? all to ourselves, so when our power goes out, it's just us. The houses across the main road from us and the fancy townhouses behind us always have power; it's just this one little side road that's dark. My house is the only one visible from the main road as you drive from town. This summer, with three power outages so far, I've taken to leaving my outside light on at night after thunderstorms, so my neighbors approaching on the main road will know that we have power. I don't even like most of my neighbors. Why do I feel compelled to provide a largely-unneeded public service?

Calli, Amyth, amych, I will keep you posted! I am hoping we fly to Raleigh; I've never been and I would love for some of the thousands of dollars we've spent on airline travel to have an acual pleasurable social component!

Thanks for the offers of hospitality.

We left our stainless flatware behind for StY when we moved, and when we arrived, we needed flatware. We started looking around, and like Suzi, we hefted and held and pretended to eat with several different styles, weights, and patterns of flatware. And wound up buying the same pattern again. We like it. It's a simple, plain fiddleback style.

I think it's nice of you, Zen, and I would appreciate it. But you don't have to do it either.

I have the opposite thing, because my draconian hoa (in self sufficient Az, go figure) has our segment of the neighborhood with buried lines. We almost never lose power, but out neighbors do.

Thanks to Mom, I have a collection of Harlequin plates, bowls, teacups, etc. in a random assortment of colors. I adore them. They're made by the same company that made Fiestaware, but the pieces are not as chunky as Fiesta.