Kitt

Have a happy day with your family and friends around you! And Happy Hanukkah to those of you who observe that as well!

Utah

Dang it! I was up to my elboes in cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie baking and the like and didn't see this till this am! On the off chance that Mann may come back and answer more questions ... Have you ever had a reader berate your work and how did you handle that?

onion Guess i should have refreshed the page before posting Dang Ron. ok then - decide

Jimminy Cricket guys! I take a couple days off to start the holiday cooking and it takes me an hour of reading to catch up! First off - I hope those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving have a wonderful meal with family and friends around you. Also to those who celebrate it a Happy Hanukkah. I hope your first night celebrations last night were all you wanted them to be. Now - You all are missing a fairly important point regarding 16 yr old Zach being given a car. While he might have a drivers permit at this point - he cannot get a licence until he turns 17 in the state of NJ. The only way to have a licence at 16 ( being allowed to drive without a licensed driver with him) is to get a farm licence, and even that is restricted to farm registered vehicles between dawn and dusk and only on farm business. So at this point having a car is a moot point. Without a licensed driver with him he can't drive it. And yes I know he can drive in Ohio, but you cannot transfer the licence to NJ. Wally and Clara may not be the swiftest train on the rails, but I can completely understand why they would want him to get a licence first. What ever their reasons however, we should all keep in mind that parents are human too, and as such make mistakes. My own father disagreed so vehemently with a decision I made at the age of 20 as to go to great lengths to try and reverse it, including attempting legal action. Many years later he apologized to me and admitted I had been right, that he had not been "acting in my best interest" as he claimed at the time, but had reacted to the fact I had made this major decision without his help. People keep referring to Zach as a sociopath. Did I miss a plot twist? The word is defined by Websters New Collegiate Dictionary as "having a psychopathic personality" and psychopathic is defined as "a mentally ill or unstable person". When was he diagnosed as having a mental illness? I admit it has been a long time and they were only freshman psych classes, but being a self centered brat wasn't a mental illness back then. I get that Gathan and Zach have an unpleasant history. Somehow I can't help but think that even considering placing him as trustee is a mistake, no matter how responsible he is capable of being. I cannot picture being put in that position with my brother and not have it cause problems. We think much too differently, and we have none of the bad blood Gathan and Zach have yet to get past. I think Zach has good reason to believe he will not see a penny for quite some time. Which raises my other question about the trust. If he has a $20k allowance, how is he supposed to access that money? Are there restrictions on what he may buy and how? Do Wally and Clara have to approve every pair of jeans he wants? $20k isn't a whole lot of money, even back in '01, and while controls are usually a good thing ( witness Gathan's excesses when he first had his trust) there is a limit as to what is reasonable. As for a 16 yr old "needing" a car? Aside from the fact he cant drive it until spring, even if NJ Transit buses were 100% on time and reliable (Ha!) it gets damn cold in NJ in Jan and Feb. If i had a million dollar trust fund and was told to take the bus i would be pissed too! But still - even with the relatively low annual income from the trust, if he is judicious and puts money into an account he opens in a local bank no one could stop him from buying the car himself once he turns 17 - like so many of us not-rich kids did. And it isn't impossible to get good grades, play sports AND work a part time job. I never had a problem with my bosses working around my school schedule.

never

ewer

nope hint - Sally Field said this

atmospheric

rye

eat

Eyre

leader

gynocology

statistic

vegan

radical

usher

levitate

decapitate

inundate

organize

Tempest

Do the respective mates object to extracaricular cuddling?

I don't think family heirloom jewelry counts as re-gifting does it? If it does then I have been re-gifted many times over the years and have passed on pieces to my daughter as well. Other than that the only one who has ever re-gifted in giving to me was my mother in law. Someone had given her this upright food mill thingy that she couldn't even figure out how to assemble, let alone have the inclination to use. I however have used the hell out of it! LOL So much for her "white elephant", it turned out to be one of the better things she has given me over the years.