alicegirl71

This school year, there is a group of about 6 kids under age 10 who are picked up by their school bus in front of my house. The bus usually arrives around 6:30 AM. While they wait, the kids stand on the corner screaming. Literally. Not talking, not words, just bellowing and screaming sounds. These kids don't live on either street at this intersection, they live several blocks away on an entirely different street and walk over here to get their bus. There is only one school bus that stops on this corner. This is in the middle of a residential area. I already had a talk with them once when they came in my yard and damaged a young tree, and now their morning screaming ritual is getting to be too much. (They screamed before the tree incident, so it's not merely retaliation for being scolded over that.)

What would you do in my situation? If I found out what school they go to, would the school be cooperative if I ask them to move the bus stop elsewhere? Or would you try to find their parents and reason with them first? (I don't have much hope for that solution, as I've found that kids emulate their parents, and if their parents communicate by screaming, the kids are more likely to be loud themselves.)

My old home (built 1918) has hardwood floors throughout, though they're only exposed in the bedrooms. I use one bedroom as an office and the floor is in terrible shape, splintering badly. Is it wise to sand and refinish a floor that is badly splintered? And I do mean badly, not just here and there, but over a large area of the floor; it definitely has not been refinished in years & years (I've only owned the house 3 years). I'm concerned that if I rent an orbital sander that I'll end up having to take a significant layer of wood off to get it smooth because of the extent of the splintering. What would you do - at least try to sand and refinish, or just give up and carpet over it?

I recently set up a Netgear Wireless-N router (WNR2000) and my laptop is connecting at 54 Mbps. There are some sites I visit frequently that make me feel like I'm still on dial-up, they load so slowly. Would purchasing one of the recommended Netgear notebook adapters really speed up my connection? I assume it does something different from the wireless card already in my laptop. Are there other things I need to check or reconfigure to make it faster?

I wanted to grow some peppermint for tea and mint juleps. so I put two plants in containers on my front stoop. To make it look prettier I added a few white petunias to each container. After a bit some wild parsley started to grow there as well, which looked nice so I left it in. Now the petunias look miserable. They're thin and weak. I pulled out the wild parsley, but could it be that the peppermint is choking out the petunias? I try to keep the peppermint trailing down the back of the pot and away from the petunias, but maybe the peppermint's root system is causing the trouble? I know peppermint can be a hassle. Any advice from the great gardeners here would be welcome!

Can anyone recommend a dermatologist in the Cincinnati area who is accepting appointments soon? I spent an hour calling offices today but no one is seeing new patients until August or September. I have a concern that I'd like to see a doctor for within a few weeks, not months. Thanks for any referrals.

Part of my job is creating templates and designing formats for business communications. I've been helping a colleague in Europe to develop a regional email newsletter that will be sent to several hundred employees. The purpose of the newsletter is to help employees feel more engaged, so it is a mix of articles on business topics (major initiatives, etc.) and personal topics (employee profiles, etc.). Her draft design used about 8 different colors, the layout was random and was very amateurish in appearance. I redesigned it to use just 2 alternating colors and tightened up the format so it looked more polished. She didn't like it and wanted her rainbow of colors back. Her reasoning was "we don't want it to look so professional."

I have a REALLY hard time agreeing with that perspective and told her so, but I also couldn't really articulate why I felt so strongly about it. What would you do? If you had a coworker or a customer say they didn't want something to look so "professional", what would you say to convince them otherwise?

To me, her approach looked sloppy, disorganized and was difficult to read. Other than telling her the blunt truth about the design, how could I have persuaded her to see that a clean, polished design is the better way to go?

What is the typical date of the first frost for southwestern Ohio cities? I'm a first-time gardener in this part of the state. I ordered some perennials for fall planting from an online nursery, and they still haven't shipped yet. I'm concerned that I won't receive the plants before the first frost, and it will be too late to put them in the ground (and if that happens, I'm not sure what I can do with the plants).

My husband and I both purchased our homes separately before we met. We are currently living in my home, and the mortgage and deed are in my name only. My husband wants to walk away from his home, which is in his name only. Homes in his neighborhood are not selling and are difficult to rent out. He had to refinance after his divorce and owes more than the home is worth.

I am trying to get him to consider other options, but he seems inclined to just walk away and let the lender foreclose. I want to know how this may affect me? I assume I will need to carry the credit burden for the two of us as this will wreck his credit. Any future mortgages would have to be in my name and based on my credit only. Is there anything else I need to be aware of?