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My wife and her sister are thinking about taking a river cruise in China late next year. One they are looking at is for 10 days and is offered by Viking Cruise. Anyone familiar with this or similar cruises. They like the idea of being in one cabin for most of the trip. We did a similar cruise in...

I purchased a laser engraver and started playing a bit with it today. I also have a CNC machine and I'm familiar with the design software I use for it called Vectric Aspire. Looks like I need something that can handle photos and vectors better for the laser, looking for some free or low cost...

There an awfully lot of talented individuals that sometimes post pictures of things they have made, thought it might be nice to have a thread to pull them together. Food, crafts, painting, woodworking, your call, feel free to send along a picture. I'll start with a couple of Christmas presents...

While driving in to town yesterday morning, I saw this River Circle down near the bridge that crosses the South Branch of the Potomac. Only had my phone for a camera and the sun was brutal but you can make out the frozen circle of ice- only thing I can think of is that there is a spring or...

When I select the Search link at the top of the forum and ask to "view all discussions started by you", I don't see a thread I started about carving lithopanes on a computer controlled router. I don't remember the exact title? If I select view all your posts", I don't see any of the posts I made...

DW and I closed on a 1/2 acre property on the South Branch of the Potomac yesterday. It's a river camp from an old church that was in use until around 1940. It's rustic but came fully furnished. Has electric and plumbing but only wood heat so we went ahead and winterized the house while we were...

My father in law is staying with us and while going through some old pictures, we came across this one- we know the people but not sure where it was taken, most likely in New England. Anyone have an idea where this statue is or was? Thanks!

I posted a picture of a lithopane in another thread and had a couple of people ask about some more examples- this is the latest carving I did today. I'm using a software program called PhotoCarve to convert a photo in to a format that can be fed to my computerized router. I've just started...

I recently called our local sheriffs office about a number (hundreds) of gunshots I was hearing over a ridge near our property. I asked if they were aware of any new ranges in the area, etc. They said no and I thought that was the end but about 20 minutes later, a couple of deputies came to the...

A couple of weeks ago, I milled some logs for a gentleman down in northern VA. As part of the job, we milled some oak slabs to be used as rustic benches for an Easter sunrise service. They're holding the service where they will be building a new church soon. Here's a picture I received this...

We spent a couple of days this week at the Alpaca farm where we bought our six animals helping with shearing. Over 100 alpacas were done in the two days, a lot of squealing, spitting, and screaming, the alpacas were loud too! Was a lot of fun and we learned a lot. Here are a few pictures to give...

In the last week, two of four original equipment tires on my F150 SuperCrew pickup have failed with tears in the tread. Have the spare on and will be off to replace the original tires today. My mileage is about 34,000 and was wondering how this might compare to other people's experience? Based...

We're going to start building our retirement home in the next month or so, log house on 28 acres in WV. We had originally planned to wait another year or so before starting but builders seem motivated to get jobs now and if there is a full recovery, we think building supply prices will rise...

We sold a house we've had rented (off and on) for the last 10 years last week, need the cash to start building our retirement house and it's about 15 years old so didn't want to have to deal with what we believed would be an increasing number of failures and expenses. The house sold for about...

We're about 18 months away from needing to live off our retirement savings and trying to understand the best way to actually withdraw at a safe withdrawal rate. If we're looking to generate about $35-40K per year from a $1M savings, how would we want our assets to be invested. Let's assume about...

My wife and I are currently covered by medical, dental, and vision plans through her employer (school system) and they seem to more than adequate, reasonable copays, deductibles, choose your own doctor, etc. Dental and vision are the top of the line but not bad. In 2 years, she will be able to...

Early retiring at the end of the month and will be getting a lump sum pension payment from a pension plan that was ended in 1995- will be about $140K which we're planning to use to pay down our mortgage a bit. In some ways, this is found money because really didn't expect it to be there when I...

I'm early retiring at the end of the month after taking a package at Megacorp- was given 30 days notice last week, 10/3 is the last day on the payroll. Given that Megacorp had a company match for their 401k plan, we've deposited our pretax savings in that plan but now that I won't be working...

I'll be leaving my job at the end of September and starting early retirement. I'll receive just over one year of severance pay and want to invest this separate from my retirement savings and provide an income and delay dipping in to the retirement funds as long as possible. I estimate my...

Hi, I'll be leaving my job at the end of September, I'm 53, my wife is 49. I had been planning to retire at 55 but I've been given a 1 year severance package to leave so figure it's really only a year early. Recently found this forum and looks to have a lot of interesting people and a lot of...