Semi Apology

I want to apologize for my rudeness in the comments section of my Bat Mitzvah post. I shouldn't let other peoples anonymous opinions/comments anger me like that. Whether they were rude or not, I should not have been.

The Bat Mitzvah was a fun, appropriate event. My sister came up with a humorous way of recounting our good time. I liked it, I posted it. If you want to read into it and think badly of me and my family, that's your problem. The more I think about it, the more I don't care what you all think anymore. I was there, my sister was there, my cousins and aunts and uncles and parents and friends were all there. We know what really happened, and we had a great time celebrating a simcha in our lives. A good time was needed by my family in light of our recent tragedies. My cousin had a beautiful Bat Mitzvah, and we all had a beautiful time. And we all appreciated my sister's creativity. It gave those who were there a good laugh of remembrance. That's what really counts here. I need to stop caring what anonymous strangers think of me. I need to stop being judgmental. Maybe if I stop, then others will also.

Opinions are like rectal openings. Everyone has one. Some have two. Who cares.

So I apologize for my rudeness. But not for my good time.

Can You ID All the Presidents By Their Hairdo's???

This was HARD! Give it a try!

Top 10 things 20-Somethings do at a Bat Mitzvah:

10- Take full advantage of an open bar!

9- Play Coke & Pepsi with the 13 year olds.

8- Scream all the answers for kids trivia from the opposite end of the room.

7- Dance like crazy people (and even fall down during the Hora!)

6- Sing Meatloaf with the 50-somethings like you are all at a bar.

5- Cheer for everything and anything. (see #10)

4- Marvel at the way 13 year olds dress and wonder why they don't sell clothes like that in adult sizes.

3- Eat the kids food because its better. (ie: onion rings and cotton candy)

2- Debate if you can play Bat Mitzvah games at your wedding.

1- Wonder why your Bat-Mitzvah's were never as much fun. (Again, see # 10)

Courtesy mostly of Stoofie

You all Know how I feel about Breast Cancer....

It STINKS!!! A LOT!!!

Mommy sent me this, and I like it. I love supporting getting rid of Breast Cancer, and All Cancers! And with M&Ms Too! YUMMY!




New Pink & White M&M's!!! YUMMY!!!!

The maker of M&M candies has teamed up with the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation to raise funds through the sale of their new "pink & white" M&M candies. For each 8-ounce bag of the special candies sold, the makers of M&M (Masterfoods) will donate 50 cents to the foundation. The next time you want a treat, please pick up a bag (now sold in stores nationwide) - you will be donating to a great cause and satisfying your sweet tooth.

For more Breast Cancer information and information on how you can help fight this STINKY disease, check out these sites:

• The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation
• The 3-Day Walk for Breast Cancer
• The Avon Foundation
• The Avon Walk for Breast Cancer
• The American Cancer Society
• The Breast Cancer Site
• BreastCancer.org
• The National Breast Cancer Foundation
• The National Breast Cancer Coalition

Today I was a Girl

Ok, so my secret is out. I'm not a girl. ;) well, not a girly girl anyway. But I have special events going on this weekend, and well it's Purim too so I thought I'd mark the occasions and do something different. Something for myself for once. Today I got a manicure and pedicure.

WOOOOOOOO WOOOOOOOOO we say.

It's so COMMON. Something women do all the time, many weekly, if they cna afford it. Not me. Not my thing really. One, I can't afford it, but that's really not the only reason. It's not that I don't enjoy it, it was nice to get the foot massage and feel all clean and perty for once. I just wouldn't want to do it all the time. I'm just not one for painting my nails, I guess. I see better ways to spend time and $$$, PLUS my nails are soft and they break easily AND I have a job where a manicure doesn't hold up well. When you was your hands every 30-60 minutes, it's hard to maintain polished or long nails. So it's just not my thing.

I'm not a girly girl I guess. I don't love to spend long amounts of time on hair and makeup and clothes. I hate to spend the time blow drying my hair, I do it more because I have to to look decent. I don't usually wear makeup, and if I do it's always super simple and it takes me like 5 minutes to do. I HATE to go clothes shopping, I'm not very interested, plus there's the whole size thing.

It's not that I don't look presentable and bad all the time. I take care of myself. I'm always need and clean and well groomed. I don't wear raggedy clothes, my hair isnb't flying all over the place. But I'm just simple. Jeans usually, khakis to work, simple shirts and sweaters, hair in a ponytail, not much if any makeup. And clean fingernails. And hey, I look young. The manicurist asked me my age and was shocked when I said I was almost 27. She said I look 20. I'll take it as a compliment.

So today I was a girly girl. I got my nails painted. And I painted them PINK! My fingers a light pink, and my toes a dark bright PINK! And I worried about my dress for my cousnin Kara's Bat Mitzvah tomorrow, and I plan on spending extra time on my hair and makeup this weekend.

WOOO WOOOO! You're a GIIIIIRRRRRLLLLLL!!!!!

Popstrology

Yes, POPstrology. A new system to figure out your life and actions and personality and future based not on the stars in heaven but the stars in Rock n Roll.

I was born May 21, 1978. (You now have NO excuse to forget my birthday!)
According to Popstrology, I was born in the year of the Bee Gees. Here's what that means:

The strongest voice of popstrological protest against disco and the wicked hedonism for which it stood came from the least likely of places in 1978: the traditionally nonconfrontational constellation Oh…Canada. It was the churchy, parental Anne Murray who stood up and became the year's Opposing Star in a year when no one else was brave enough to take the job. Disco's own excesses may ultimately have done more than Anne Murray did to bring the constellation Disco Ball crashing down, but that does not diminish the importance of her dissenting voice to those born in the popstrological Year of the Bee Gees. She may have sounded like a big, fat bummer at the time, but in being one, she endowed the children of 1978 with at least some slight sense that just because the whole world seems to get behind something, it doesn't make it right. Of course that same lesson was reinforced by 1978's Wild Card star, Barbra Streisand & Neil Diamond, a popstrological Power Couple that most of the world got behind, but that in many, many ways simply wasn't right.


And my birthsong is
May 14-May 27: With a Little Luck, by Paul McCartney and Wings.

And this means:
Even a two-piece puzzle is hard to put together with one piece missing.
Yes, popstrologists lay a great deal of responsibility at the feet of your Birthstar for the aftereffects of his early-eighties forays into the constellation Power Couple, but popstrologists do not regard him as a malevolent force, per se. And they certainly don't take the John Lennon side in the debate over who the greatest Beatle was. John and Paul's bitter divorce was like most bitter divorces in that neither party offered what could reasonably be called a fair portrait of the other or an objective postmortem of the failed relationship. John was just plain mean to suggest in How Do You Sleep? that Paul's post-Beatles music was Muzak, and Paul was just plain disingenuous to play the role of the upstanding good guy when discussing the Beatles' breakup. But John was good at being mean, and Paul was good at being disingenuous. There may be no more fitting way to describe the greatest partnership in pop-music history than to say that the whole was greater than the sum of its parts, and while even John must have known this on some level, it was Paul who did the most to prove it. Was there a friend, a lover, or a colleague in your past who brought out the best in you, despite your fundamental differences? You may spend the rest of your life trying to repeat that magic, child of Paul McCartney, for you are more aware than anyone that you require a counterbalancing force to achieve true greatness. Like your Birthstar, you may experience what most consider success on your own, but your deep yearning for partnership is unlikely to let you find happiness that way.

So that's my popstralogical sign. OOOOH BABY!!! What's YOUR Sign???

One more time...

And then I decided that I didn't like the blue, so I went with a creamy color and red only. I want to colorize it only my html is stinky. So I think I'll leave it like this until I can tinker a bit more. For those of you who never saw the intermediaries, good!

Change is hard...

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine...

i lied, sort of

I decided I didn't like the ochre after all, so I went with blue and tried to make it all more colorful, but I dont know html so well, so I guess it's a work in progress. Oh well.

New Look

I was in the mood for a new look. I needed a change. So I changed my template. :) I kinda like this "ochre" color, and its simple too which is good. I like simple. It all works out then. :)

Reaction and Question Answered

The reaction to my last post was not what I thought it might be. I think most of my anonymous commenters took the wrong message from it. While I do agree that obesity is a growing problem (no pun intended) in this country, that was NOT the point of my post.

My point was, that the body image associations our society teaches women, is unrealistic and psychologically harmful. Not that I think people should eat what they want and be obese. But, I do think that a healthy body attitude is what is needed, you can be fit and healthy and eat right and exercise and wear a size 14 or 16, or even more.

I think that as women in this country, we are taught that if we are not a size 2 then we are fat, and fat is bad so we are bad. Think about how we talk about food. We eat a piece of chocolate cake and say, "I'm being bad" You are NOT being bad, you may be making a bad food choice but you are not bad yourself. Somewhere along the line I think, we pick up the idea chocolate cake equals bad. I eat chocolate cake equals I am bad. And then we feel guilty or whatever and are hard on ourselves about it. It's not a healthy cycle to be in.

Or think about the clothing industry. If you are larger than a size 10 and have tried shopping, it can be really difficult. Clothing is often cut for smaller women. Or stores don't carry larger sizes. Certain stores (and it's becoming more popular) do not carry sizes above a 12. If you wear a 14 or larger, they tell you to go to a "Women's" store. Well, I am a size 14. And the smallest size at any "Women's" store is WAY too big on me. So I often have a very hard time finding clothing. And the stores are losing out on a lot of business, because there are pleanty of women my size. So what does it teach us? If we're not thin enough then we're not good enough to shop in a regular store, we have to go to a special store. Even if the clothing in the special store doesn't fit. Not a great message.

And we are teaching it to our children. It scare me that young girls are more afraid of being fat than they are of nuclear war, or cancer, or losing their parents. It's scary that eating disorders exist, let alone kill 20% of their sufferers. Isn't it sad that three quarters of this countries women are on a diet, and that we're teaching it to our children younger and younger, high schoolers dieting when they don't need to, 10 year olds dieting because they're so afraid of fat. What is wrong with our society when we teach these things to our children like that? I think, it's just as big of a problem as obesity, if not larger. (Again, no pun intended)

So what is wrong with some fat? Why do we all have to be a size 2 to be beautiful. I'm plagued by these issues as most women are, and I really think it is unhealthy and we need to put some sort of stop to it. THAT was the point of my post. Awareness.

And now onto Anonymous #4's Question: Carie, do overweight people experience additional difficulties recovering from the various conditions that require your PT services?

Anonymous #4, yes. And no. Obesity puts you at higher risk for High Blood Pressure, High Cholesterol, Diabetes, Heart Disease, Sleep Apnea, Arthritis, and a whole host of other things. And yes, it will decrease your life span. And yes, obesity in children is becoming a problem and getting worse, which makes all of the above risks higher. So it is a factor in your medical treatment.

I work in a hospital, so I don't usually see the orthopedic end of things, but in my experience, if one is overweight or obese, and has arthritic knees, or hips, or back problems, losing weight will ease the pain, will help the recovery from a joint replacement or back surgery, or maybe prolong the time before the surgery is needed. It definately helps orthopedic wise. Think about this, gravity pulling down on more weight pulls stronger than on less weight. When you walk, your feet exert force onto the ground, but the ground exerts force onto your feet too, which travels up your body. The heavier you are, the more forces exerted, the more likely to have arthritic joints.

As for the not, well I suppose a case could be made that obesity makes it harder to recover from medical stuff. But I'd say it's a factor, not necessarily the whole truth. I've seen both obese and non obese people with the same complications. I think that with obesity the risk facors increase and I think its more the combination of the risk factors that give the real medical healing determinant.

On a similar note, I do see a lot of people post gastric bypass surgery. Which I have mixed feelings about, and could say a lot about. To make it short though, I think it can be a useful tool for weight loss as a LAST RESORT Because it is NOT the easy way out. It's probably the hardest way out. You can't eat more than a few ounces of food at a time for the rest of your life. Exercise is just as if not more important. Diet and nutrition is EXTREMELY important. You are at higher risk for vitamin deficiencies, and osteoporosis. And there are a TON of nasty complications that can go with it. I think it is a useful tool that has become too popular and therefore is being abused. Many patients are shocked whed I tell them the day after surgery that they need to get up and walk with me, and then they have to do it on their own 3x a day. "I walk to the bathroom a lot" "I sit in my chair" (as opposed to the bed) It's hard sometimes to get people to participate, they don't realize that exercise starts day one and it's important. And on that note I'll end my shpiel on gastric bypasses.

So Obesity is a problem and health risks are there. I think what we need to do is educate our children at a young age about the importance of a healthy diet and exercise. No more fast food and video games. We need to show by example to our children these things. And we have to teach them that not everyone can be a size 2 and that's ok.

I hope questions were answered and understanding granted. And on that note, it's time for dinner!

Facts and Figures

Somebody gave me this the other day, I thought I'd share.

The average woman is 5'4", weighs 140 pounds and wears a size 14 dress, while the "Ideal Woman" portrayed by models, Miss America, Barbie and scree actresses is 5'7", weighs 100 pounds, and wears a size 2.

One third of all American women wears a size 16 or larger.

75% of all American women are dissatisfied with their appearance.

50% of all American women are on a diet at any one time.

90%-99% of all reducing diets fail to produce permanent weight loss.

2/3 of dieters regain the weight in one year, virtually all regain it within 5 years.

The diet industry (diet foods, programs, drugs, etc.) takes in over $40 billion each year and is still growing.

Quick weight loss schemes are among the most common consumer frauds.

Diet programs have the highest customer dissatisfaction of any service industry.

Young girls are more afraid of becoming fat than they are of nuclear war, cancer, or losing their parents.

50% of 9 year old girls, and 80% of 10 year old girls have dieted.

90% of high school junior and senior women diet regularly even though only between 10% and 15% are over the weight recommended by the standard height-weight charts.

1% of teenage girls and 5% of college women become anorexic or bulimic.

Anorexia had the highest mortality rate (up to20%) of any psychiatric diagnosis.

Girls develop eating and self image problems before drug or alcohol problems; there are drug and alcohol problems in almost every school, but no eating disorder programs.


Courtesy of the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination.



Pretty intersting, huh?.....

I REALLY Needed a Laugh Yesterday

It was a bad day at work, but it got better in the evening. YAY for Watercolors Class! :)

Anyway, my friend Victoria sent me a "random thought/question" email which gave me a smile and a chuckle on a not so great day. Here are some of my favorite lines from the email, in the hopes that you'll smile too :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)


Save the whales. Collect the whole set.

A day without sunshine is like, night.

On the other hand, you have different fingers.

I just got lost in thought. It wasn't familiar territory.

42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.

99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.

Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the
cheese in the trap.

I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.

Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7 of your week.

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.

Get a new car for your spouse. It'll be a great trade!

Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.

If you think nobody cares, try missing a couple of payments.

OK, so what's the speed of dark?

How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink?

When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film.

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

I used to have an open mind but my brains kept falling out.

I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.

Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what
happened.

Just remember - if the world didn't suck, we would all fall off.

Are you a Snoop?

Did you know that a large percentage of guests in your home when in the bathroom, will take a peek inside your medicine cabinets? I've heard different percentages. Some say 40%, some say 7 of 10, I heard one that said 80-90%.

WOW! That's nuts! I wouldn't have even thought to look inside someones cabinets, mostly because I wouldn't want anyone looking in mine! I think I looked under a sink once or twice looking for extra toilet paper or a tampon. But snooping!

I read one story when looking for an exact percentage, that a woman tested this theory by emptying her medicine cabinet, and then refilling it with marbles so that when you opened it up, they all came spilling out. :) How red would THAT snoop have been!!!!!

Well, I guess I'm cleaning out any embarrassing stuff in my cabinets when guests come over...

Are YOU a snoop?

Decon Training

Today at work I did decontamination team training. Basically because the hospital is a Level 1 Trauma Center and has all the advanced cardiac and trauma care, and has the burn unit etc, it's setting itself up as a community/medical decontamination site if there's a chemical or biological attack or accident or incident, small, large, huge, whatever. So if people need dencontamination and need medical attention, they come to us and the hospital goes into lockdown and we decontaminate anyone who comes in. And no one can come in without being decontaminated first. They have to get through us! :)

A lot of the therapy staff is on the team. It makes sense, we're experts at moving people around, have the skills to help if someone can't movewell or at all on their own, and are free to help out if there's a hospital or community emergency, because at that point therapy is secondary, it's not like a doctor or nurse who can be doing more important medical stuff.

There's going to be this big international wide, I think, mock drill thing next month where we get to put our skills into action. COOL BEANS! That'll be pretty interesting.


So today was my day for training. It was fun. We got to learn about chemicals and how to classify and contain them, briefly anyway, that's not really our job but we got some background info. We spent most of the day getting in and out of decon suits, practicing getting people through the decon tents etc. Getting people through the showers, procedures about securing clothing and jewelry and valuables etc, how to deal witht he difficult person who doesn't want to get undressed or wash their hair, etc. All the possible scenarios.


Those suits are HOT! They don't let anything in, which means they don't let anything out either, which means it gets hot and sweaty in there. And they're big and bulky, and funny looking. But it was a fun session figuring them out and getting the kinks out of getting them on andoff, taping oursleves in. We had to think of all the little things, like go to the bathroom first, and pull back your hair, secure your glasses, tuck your pants into your socks so they don't ride up your leg, all the little things other than the important stuff like taping it up properly and making sure the airflow is on so you can breathe and not suffocate. :)

People were thinking Outbreak or stuff like that, me I was thinking of the Child Detection Agency from Monsters inc.

Oh well. It shows you where MY mind is...

But it was good training to be had, I get to be helpful and useful and it's a good skill to know, and it keeps me at the safest place in the hospital if there's an emergency. Deconed and clean, in an inpenetrable suit. :) WHOO HOO! Space Alien, Monster Carie!!!!!! :)

I forgot to BLOG about last weekend

Last last weekend that is. This weekend that just passed I worked. Blah. But LAST weekend, Rob and I went into the city to see the Lion King on Broadway. :) TEE HEE!

We went in a bit early and got to see the gates in Central Park. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Well the city was PACKED! Central Park was PACKEDer. And the gates were CONSTRUCTION CONE ORANGE!!! The concept was pretty cool, and the reaction was fun to watch, and it was weird to see them everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE! But any individual gate itself was pretty ugly. Made worse by the fact that it was hideously orange. "Whoever said that orange was the new pink, was seriously disturbed." But they kinda grew on me as we walked around. Like I said, the concept was pretty cool, and the fact that they were everywhere was pretty cool. And the city was pretty alive, albeit crowded.

We had supper at one of our favorite diners, because you just can't find a good diner in CT. The ones in Stamford are especially bad. I love NY diners, I love diners period (it's in my blood) but NY ones are the best. But that's another topic for another BLOG.

The Lion King was FANTABULOUS! If you haven't seen it, see it!!!! It was so great, and I knew all the lines and songs and all that from seeing the movie so many times, but the costumes, and the sets, and the staging, and the dancing, and the voices, it was all just amazing. I LOVED Rafiki. My favorite character in the story, but the woman who played her (YES in the movie it was a him) was awesome. I really was impressed how a lot of the scenes were staged, I was pretty curious to know how they were going to portray some of then, especially a stampede of wildabeasts. But it was done, and very creatively, really well done. We sat up in the mezzanine which was fine because there was stadium seating so we (well, I) could see everything, but we missed the parade of animals down the orchestra aisles during the Circle of Life at the beginning of the show. Poor Rob though. He had Marge Simpson sitting in from of him. Quite Literally. This woman had braided hair that went up in a beehive to probably 8 inches or so high off her head. And she was a tall woman too, so it made it that much worse. Poor Rob, he really couldn't see ANYTHING. He was kinda joking around about it, but I felt bad that he couldn't see. We did have a great time though, and I do recommend that you see the show if you ever get the chance. And hopefully Marge Simpson wont be in town. But YAY FOR THE LION KING!!!

So that was my last weekend in the city that I forgot to BLOG about. :) I miss being in NYC, CT just doesn't cut it sometimes. It was a nice day. Hopefully I'll have more of them in the enar future, as the weather gets warmer, I miss being able to walk around NY and watch the people come out of winter hiding and all that fun stuff.

And on that note, its an early bed for me, as I must get up early for work work work work manana. Nite Nite all!

New Driving Discovery

I95 in Southern CT runs mostly East/West unlike the rest of the highway which runs North/South. I live in Stamford and work in Bridgeport, so I go East in the AM and West in the PM. Ususally around the times that the sun is rising and setting, ESPECIALLY in the winter. So I ususlly have the sun in my eyes, or just to the right of my eyes during my commute. It can be perty blinding, and uncomfortable.

Now I 95 is an Expressway, not a Parkway so there are trucks all over the place. I'm usually pretty neutral about trucks, don't love them but I'm not super scared of driving with them either. They can sometimes make me a bit nervous, especially the ones that carry the cars, I'm always afraid the cars are going to come toppling off the truck. But I've found a random new trick to use the trucks to my advantage when driving to and from work to make my commute easier. Get into a lane just to the left of a big truck, and stick with it. Then, the truck blocks the sun coming from the right/front and I can see and my commute is less blinding. :) Ok, not a genius thing, but it has made my life easier on those daily blinding drives. AND, it makes me not so scared to be close to a truck as I once was.

So ta dum!!! My new driving discovery. Ahhh, the strange things my brain comes up with to BLOG about.

have a good Sunday! Time to get people OOBTC, whether they want to or not!!!!

Some of my favorite movie lines

Here are some from various movies that always make me laugh. Some of you may recognize them from some of my away messages on AIM.

Can you guess which movies they belong to??


"I love it when a fat guy scores, because when a fat guy scores you get a fat guy dance!!"

"First of all, I wanted to say congratulations. Three years ago we were elected to the White House by one of the narrowest margins in history. Today, Kodak tells us that 63% of registered voters say we're doing a good job.
Wait a minute, you wanted me to poll REGISTERED voters?!?"

"If anyone needs me I'll be in the Roosevelt Room, giving Louis oxygen"

"The man is the head but the woman is the neck and she can turn the head any way she wants!"

"I had a heart, I had a heart, I had a Heart warming dream about you!
It must have been a NIGHTMARE!
NO, You were..
Scary?
Sexy!
You had a sex dream about me?"

"Describe your perfect date?
I would have to say April 25th, because it's not too hot and it's not too cold. All you need is a light jacket!"

"What do ya want me to do, dress in drag and do the hula?"

"I really earned my stripes with that piece.
I earned my stripes when I could get through a bris without fainting
I talked McDonalds out of the McOyster
And a grateful nation thanks you."

"Do you remember me?
No, I don't.
I was in here yesterday, you wouldn't wait on me?
Oh...
You work on commission, right?
Yeah...
Big mistake. BIG, HUGE! I have to go shopping now!"

"I am a nice shark, not a mindless eating machine. If I am to change this image, i must first change myself. Fish are Friends, Not Food!"

"SHARKBAIT HOO HA HA!!!"

Ok, well there are more but it's 6Am on Saturday so my brain isn't functioning yet.

I'll post more some other time. In the meantime enjoy and SMILE!

Painting and Drawing Classes

My art classes started this week. A substitute was found for my watercolors class, so that one wasn't cancelled. But George did have a stroke, and will be out of commission for awhile if not indefinitely. I do hope that he is doing well, as I have no info other than he had a stroke, but I wish him a speedy recovery and I miss him.

Our sub is ok, I think she felt overwhelmed, taking on a class with like 2 days notice. But I think it'ss turn out ok. It'll be nice to get another perspective. And I still want to learn with a teacher, not just paint on my own.

Drawing is pretty good so far. I think it will be challenging and helpful, interesting and fun, frustrating and relaxing all at the same time. But mostly I hope that I can gain ideas and knowledge of shapes and bojects, but especially of perspective and light. I'd like to be able to do more challenging foregrounds in my paintings. And I think the drawing will help.

And well, that's really all there is to day about the first days of classes. You spend a lot of time talking about materials and not doing a ton of art the first day. Everyone is at a different level so usually you get tot he second class and people are stocked up on supplies and ready to go. Then they get more interesting. :) And hopefully I'll have some new and imporved stuff to show y'all soon. Wow, look at me, a New Yorker turned New England resident saying y'all. Where did THAT come from!?! :)