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.

My set is Heinrich "Brookside," that my dad bought for his mom when he was in Germany after WWII. [link]

Except my version doesn't have the gold rim. I'd like to fill out the set, since a few pieces have been broken over the years. But I can't find any without the gold rim.

We replaced our wedding dishes after 10 years once we'd moved three times and were down to our last salad plate. We bought these, which I love. The bowls are especially awesome.

I have been idly looking for new flatware forEVER. I feel like none of the big spoons in sets are actually soup spoons -- they are all so flat.