Oh, from way back but I wanted to respond to this from Rick:

but for kids, no matter the degree to which they throw themselves into it at the time, it doesn't necessarily stay with them. They are highly responsive to the collaborative environment that was created, but it doesn't mean that they have the self-consistency and self-regulation to make it stick.

I see this with my son especially. He can sound so very rational and grown-up but he doesn't usually follow through on all the big boy things he says. I tend to see it as a persona he's trying on for size.

We don't handle a lot of our client hardware needs, but those that we upgraded from XP we moved right to 8.1. DH had suggested moving them to Windows 7, but I insisted that they go to 8.1 and just deal. No sense in having to live through two updates in a short time. Of course 8 will go away in no time at all and we'll have to deal again. Change is bad. Dislike Change.

They tried to update us to Windows 8 last month and everyone's computers crashed. Apparently the new strategy is to sneak up on it.

There are quail on my patio. Two of them. Never saw quail there before! Just bobbing around, eating bugs, giving the middle feather to my furious cat, six inches away and behind glass.

I'm trying to make my small patch of land bird- and bee- and small-animal-friendly.

Thanks, Burrell.

ita, hope the interview is going (went?) well! Will look for updates on the test.

Circle swim is the devil.

I concur.

Most people don't do flip turns. Even those swimming masters don't. I only do them for the first handful of laps then I go back to just turning at the wall.

I'm trying to make my small patch of land bird- and bee- and small-animal-friendly.

Yay! Me too. Unfortunately some of the things that make for good habitat (like leaving dead trees in place) are against neighborhood standards.

Also, yay taunty quail!

I'd love to plant something other than grass in my yard, but since my property connects to my neighbor's (as does my house) anything I plant in my yard will eventually be in their yard, and they may not care for that. The yard is not flat, either, which makes design-for-use difficult, at least for me.

I wish I could have bought an older ranch style house with a few acres around it, like what I had before in Nashville, but I couldn't afford that here.

I kind of want to arrange for landscapers for my tiny front yard, because my mother claims she's going to deal with it, but hasn't yet! Oy.

I'm so looking forward to moving someplace where I never have to think about a yard again.

I feel like I could maintain a low-maintenance plan that someone else set up, but I guess we'll see....

I'd love to develop a wildlife-friendly yard. Getting property would probably be key.