I thought that sentence might be helpful when I started it, sorry.

okay, you made me laugh so that really was helpful.

meara, I'm on hour 3 and my vision is improving, but it is still blurry. I made it home okay driving around town doing errands, but I can't fucking read properly. I had to go to the "I am blind" setting on the kindle.

So at a guess the new ones are much better than propane and slightly better than natural gas, but only at a guess.

This is close to my guess as well, but I don't have the hard data. I may look and see if I have the specifics on the stove I'm using, because I would be interested in knowing. I doubt I would make far different choices at the moment because of finances, but I would like to know.

Liese, how hard is your water?

My water is naturally very soft. So much so that we have to warn people to use less shampoo than they expect.

I have a kettle that is dedicated to stove use; it's specially made to not take damage if it boils dry. There is some very minimal buildup, but not enough that I don't also use it as my main cooking kettle.

I just watched the first episode of Downton Abbey, and I have a question: Lord Brantham says that he can't break the entail, because it would destroy the estate. What does that mean? I get that the title would pass to the cousin while Mary would inherit the property, but what's the problem that he sees with that?

Colder here than the west side. We've had a ton of hail and it's close to freezing now. Brrrrrrr...

My guess is that parts of the estate would go away and it would no longer be self-sustaining.

I don't watch Downton Abbey, but is he talking about a fee tail? That's where only the boys can inherit? That's so cool-finally some use from my crazy property class!

My water is naturally very soft.

I wonder if it's the primordial lake bed we're sitting on that causes the hard water. We have to drink bottled water--Hey, Culligan man!--because when Hubby was drinking tap water he had horrible kidney stones. The occurrence of stones dropped dratically when we switched.

Stephanie, yes. He has three daughters, but no sons. The heir had been his first cousin, who had a son who was planning to marry his oldest daughter. But the first cousin and his son died, and now they've determined that the next heir, according to the rules, is a third cousin once removed who none of them have ever met.

Lord Grantham is pretty old-school and hidebound, so I can see him feeling like it would destroy everything if the named head guy wasn't actually in charge.

Cool- I should start watching the show. Everyone loves it. But I'm already so far behind on the shows I do watch.