Laura S

I have a friend who is teaching in China, and upon reading his blog, found out that baking our normal kitchen treats is very expensive for him! I've been having a hard time finding the rules of shipping food products from the United States to Wuhan, and I was wondering if anyone could help me find this information. I know there are restrictions in what can be said in a letter, but I wasn't sure if there were any shipping restrictions as well.

I'm also looking for suggestions on what to send to him so that he can bake/share more goodies for/with his friends. I've already thought about Angel Food Cake (since there are powdered recipes that only use water), but what else should I send (keep in mind that butter and cheese are outrageously priced)? Does anyone know of some delicious (and potentially cheap) items? Maybe something from Tastefully Simple? Also, does anyone know a frosting recipe that is easy to make with as little butter as possible?

i had a tooth pulled last tuesday. i was experiencing a high amount of pain throughout the week and the weekend, so i went in to the surgeon to get it checked out to find out whether it was normal or not. apparently it wasn't, and i was informed that part of the bone was exposed (i have no idea if this is m bone or the cadaver bone that was used to preserve the socket). the sutures that were left were pulled and my socket was packed with some medicated gauze material. then he also put in something i think he called a "gel foam" that was packed into the socket as well. when i first pulled out the gauze he put in my mouth to hold whatever it is in (20 minutes later), it was pretty tightly in there, it seemed, but now it's practically falling out of y mouth. it's now been 6 hours and i haven't eaten anything because every time i try to swallow, it feels like the sponge is being pulled out. i guess the question is, is it okay for e to pull out the sponge for the night so i can attempt to eat something, or do i suck it up and wait to eat anything until after my 430 pm appointment tomorrow?

just curious...i missed the announcement of what song he was skating to.

A girl I went to high school with is getting married next week. I was planning on sending her a card since we were in a special choir together and I thought it would be nice to send her a card of congratulations. However, I received a phone call from my dad telling me that her father had just passed away earlier this week from complications due to falling out of a tree. I wanted to send her a card with my condolences, but I'm concerned she'll receive both cards at the same time, and I don't want to say, "I'm sorry for your loss, but congratulations on your wedding!" It just seems a little distasteful to me. Does anyone have some suggestions on making this a little less awkward of a situation?

For some reason, Firefox on my laptop is on longer saving my log on information for any websites that I visit. Even on websites where I click "remember me" or "keep me logged in" I close Firefox and I need to re-log in. It isn't a huge problem, but it's really annoying. If it helps, I'm using version 3.0.1, and it wasn't doing this until I received my new power supply.

I've had kidney stones for over a year now, and I'm headed in for tests at Mayo Clinic this week to determine procedures for next week. A couple of weeks ago, I went into the ER for extreme pain from my stones. Everything checked out okay, but before I left, the PA told me that if I experienced chest pain and shortness of breath that I needed to head back in to the ER.

I'm curious about the connection between kidney stones and heart issues. Could someone explain the connection to me?

...Is she just trying to lure birds? Or could she be looking for a companion (She use to do this when we had another cat)? We leave the window in our bedroom open (it has a screen) during the day and there is a tree outside...so we thought she might just be trying to talk to the birds...but the noises have been getting stranger.

Does anyone else's cat(s) do this? Does anyone know what it is?

I'm getting my hair dyed tomorrow...and I've been wanting to get blonde hair for a year or so, but I'm afraid it will ruin my hair completely. Currently my hair is a reddish-brown (very brassy) and it is naturally a dark brown. I've had a blonde-ish red in before, but I almost want to go lighter. Does anyone have a suggestion of a light colour that won't fry my hair/make it fall out?

Links to suggested colours would be helpful!