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Most formations of stone are huge batholiths (large mass of intrusive igneous rock believed to have solidified deep within the earth). Quarry locations are tiny in comparison to the size of these formations.

However, the Namibian Desert has an almost mystical landscape. There are giant dunes, vistas of rocky hills and dry riverbeds frequented by ostriches and springhok. To preserve the beauty of the desert, quarrying sites arelimited to designated areas. Prior to the start of any quarrying activities, an environmental plan must be submitted and approved by the Ministry of Mines. The plan must define the procedures of quarrying that will best protect and minimize our presence in the desert. The quarries are continually monitored to ensure procedures are being followed, and to determine where and how they can be improved upon. The Africa Range is presently working to become ISO rated for its environmental standards. A strong commitment to minimizing environmental impact and working closely with the government of Namibia will ensure a continued supply of The Africa Range. Though it is definitely not a renewable resource, the high percentage of usable material removed from natural stone quarries limits the impact on our environment.

Unlike most quarried or mined materials being removed from our earth, natural stone has a relatively low impact on our environment. The extraction process does not require the use of any chemicals. Only water is used at quarry sites to cool and lubricate diamond abrasives to cut the stone. Natural stone quarries do not produce toxic waste piles which can pollute the surrounding environment.

Because of the low impact that quarrying natural stone has on our environment, it has become one of many products that are used in projects that obtain LEED certification. LEED, a voluntary program established by the U.S. Green Building Council, sets environmentally friendly construction guidelines for sustainable and energy-efficient buildings.

All manufactured or processed materials we use in our homes adversely affect our global and local environments. The best we can do is to choose products which have the least detrimental affects on our surroundings. Natural stone is the natural choice.

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Be environmentally friendly with the installment of your granite countertops; Natural Stone Atlanta; info@naturalstoneatlanta.com

For years I couldn't bring myself to give it up. It gave me a feeling of security, a lifeline to the outside world that would never fail. I knew that parting with it would be painful.

But I was also paying $40 a month. That was painful, too.

And so, a few years back, I got rid of my landline telephone -- and it was much easier than I expected. Dropping your landline can be an easy way to cut back on your monthly bills.

For many people, $40 is just the base price for a landline. Call waiting, voice mail, caller ID -- all of these cost extra. Don't even get me started on if you make long-distance calls.

By comparison, a cell-phone bill each month may run $40 to $50 (or a little more if you are using a PDA and need a data plan of some kind). But caller ID, long distance and voice mail are included, and you can take the phone with you wherever you go.

Still, a money-saving solution doesn't have to be so cut-and-dried. There are some options in between.
Voice Over IP (or VOIP) is a fancy way to say that your phone connection comes through your Internet connection. It does require a high-speed Internet connection, but it can save you a lot of money. You already are paying for your Internet connection, most likely, and VOIP connections are easy to set up.
Many Internet service providers provide these for around $20. Often, bundling your cable, Internet and phone services with one company can get you a reduction in rates on all of these services.

If your ISP doesn't offer this service, you can chose from a number of companies. The most well-known is Vonage, where you can get an unlimited-calling plan for about $25, which is roughly half of what a traditional landline might cost. Other options, such as Skype (which is similar to VOIP except that the calls run on a peer-to-peer network instead of through a central server), offer pay-as-you-go plans.

And if you're fine with getting rid of your landline but don't want to burn your cell-phone minutes on lengthy calls at home, there are some options, too.

Several cell-phone carriers offer service over a Wi-Fi connection. This means that when your cell phone (equipped with Wi-Fi) is in range of a wireless Internet signal, you can use that signal, instead of a cellular signal, to place a call.

Different providers have different restrictions. T-Mobile, for instance, requires that you use a wireless router that the company provide. This works great at home, where you can talk as long as you want without using your cell minutes. The cost for this is generally around $10 to $15.

Remember that with any of these options, you are allowed to take your home phone number with you to your new service, so you don't have to worry about friends or family not being able to get in touch.
Losing the landline might make sense these days for many people. It's painless, you won't see any reduction in service, and you can cut anywhere from half to all of a bill out of your monthly budget. The only thing you may wonder is why you didn't make the switch sooner.

- DYLAN BILES TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST

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VOIP Atlanta for all your metro county Atlanta Georgia Internet Telephone answers and needs, residential and commercial...info@voip-atlanta.net

A new study from the Atlanta office of MetroStudy has shown that the Atlanta residential real estate market may have hit the bottom. This would be good news for all home owners and anyone trying to sell their home. “Atlanta’s housing market has hit a bottom,” said Eugene James, director of MetroStudy’s Atlanta division. “Almost all housing indicators have reversed and are now heading in a positive direction. Finished inventory has been reduced to a level where builders have been forced to resume building new homes.” This September, Atlanta’s finished inventory was reduced to about 11,000 units, which is a 37 percent decline from September 2008 and a 48 percent decline from September 2007, according to Metrostudy. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Remodel your counter tops and floors with our granite and other natural stone slab and tile selections, whether for your own quality of lifestyle, or to prepare your home for sale: Natural Stone Atlanta ; info@naturalstoneatlanta.com ; 404-592-5597

Mummy Pizzas Ingredients 2 English muffins 1/4 cup pizza sauce 2-4 stuffed green olives or pitted black olives, sliced (need 8 slices) 2-3 pieces mozzarella string cheese Directions 1. Toast English muffins. 2. Preheat oven to 350*. 3. Lay 4 muffin halves on baking sheet. 4. Spread a tablespoon of pizza sauce on each muffin half. 5. Set 2 olive slices in place for eyes on each muffin half. 6. Pull string cheese into pieces and lay on muffins above and under "eyes", layering them to look like mummy wrappings. 7. Bake for 10 minutes or until cheese is melted. Brain Spread This is a GREAT appetizer for your next Halloween Party! If you don't have a brain mold, you can substitute by lining a med. size round bowl with saran wrap and making your mold. Once the mold is set, you can take the round end of a knife or other dull, small, blunt end object and create your crevices and creases to make your brain. Takes a little more time, but works well. When done designing your brain, peel off the saran wrap, and plate to serve along with your crackers, chips etc. SERVES 10 -12 Ingredients 1 (10 3/4 ounce) can cream of mushroom soup 8 ounces cream cheese, softened 1 (1/4 ounce) envelope unflavored gelatin, softened in 1/4 cup water 1 bunch green onion, finely chopped 1 lb crabmeat or lobster, shredded (or 3 lbs. cooked shrimp, coarsely chopped) 1 cup mayonnaise 1 tablespoon lemon juice Tabasco sauce or creole seasoning, to taste Directions 1. Heat soup, undiluted, and mix in the cream cheese. 2. Stir in softened gelatin, and blend well. 3. Fold in remaining ingredients, and pour into a lightly-oiled brain mold. (pour some oil in and swirl it around, then pour out excess). 4. Chill until firm, and serve with your favorite crackers, pita or bagel chips or scoops. Barbecued Bat Wings SERVES 8 Ingredients * 4 lbs chicken wings * 2 cups ketchup * 1 1/2 cups molasses * 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar * 3 tablespoons worcestershire sauce * 2 tablespoons sugar * hot sauce * salt * black pepper * black paste food coloring * blue paste food coloring * green paste food coloring Directions 1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Boil the chicken wings for twenty minutes in a large pot. While the wings are cooking, prepare the sauce. Whisk together the ketchup, molasses, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, sugar, hot sauce, salt, and pepper until smooth in a large roasting pan. Add enough black, blue, and green food colorings to the sauce to make a dark black sauce. Place the pan in the oven and bake for 10 minutes, stirring once. 2. Drain the wings well and add them to the sauce and toss to coat evenly, poking the wings liberally with a fork. 3. Bake for 20 minutes, then increase the temperature to 450 degrees. Toss the wings in the sauce again to coat evenly. Bake until the sauce is thickened and slightly blackened, flipping the wings over occasionally, about another 15 minutes. Serve hot or at room temperature. Spider Web Platter SERVES 8 -10 Ingredients 2 (14 ounce) cans refried beans 1 lb lean hamburger 1 (1/4 ounce) packet taco seasoning mix 1 (10 ounce) can Ro-tel green chilies 4 ounces medium hot chunky salsa 1 (8 ounce) package four cheese Mexican blend cheese 4 ounces sour cream Tortilla chips or Frito Scoops Directions 1. On a lg. round or oval dish spread out refried beans. 2. Fry hamburger until no longer pink, and drain grease. 3. Add Rotel tomatoes and let liquid boil out. Mixing a few times so the burger doesn't stick. 4. When most of the juice is evaporated put the meat mixture over the refried bean layer. 5. Spoon on salsa and spread across meat mixture. 6. Sprinkle with cheese. 7. Bake in 350 oven for 15-20 minutes, or until cheese is melted. 8. In the meantime, spoon the sour cream into a small Zip-Lock bag, and cut the corner. Pipe a large dot in the middle of the cheese, then make a line about 1" from the circle all the way around. 9. Make another circle 1" from previous circle all the way around, and continue making lines until you are at the edge of the mixture. 10. Drag a tooth pick through the sour cream to make a web design OR you can draw horizontal lines with the sour cream a few inches apart, all the way around to make a spider web, so you can add more sour cream to the top. I usually do it this way. 11. Decorate the top with a little spider for added affect (can be an edible food "spider" on non-edible novelty item) 12. Use tortilla chips to scoop dip. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Have a beautiful new counter top to work on with your new recipes and cooking; Granite Countertop Atlanta; info@granitecountertopatlanta.com

With bargain prices and an $8,000 tax credit set to expire Nov. 30, first-time homebuyers rush in where they previously feared to tread. Here’s one more way the housing bust has changed the rules of the real-estate world: In this market, first-time buyers are getting VIP treatment. Indeed, they’re the star players in a nascent market revival. New buyers accounted for almost half of all sales during the first part of the year, well above historic levels, according to the National Association of Realtors. Tanking prices have certainly drawn the newbies in; J.K. and Nicole Harvey, for example, just snagged a three-bedroom Dutch colonial in Trumbull, Conn., on a corner lot — after bidding $50,000 less than the asking price. Low interest rates and a new federal tax incentive are making a difference, too. But more than anything, first-timers are benefiting from not being homeowners. They don’t have to worry about selling their current homes, most likely in a down market, to raise money for new ones. “The world is their oyster right now,” says Mike Larson, real-estate analyst with Weiss Research. Small wonder that agents are now gladly tagging along as the “kids” kick the tires on starter homes. That’s a big change from the way things used to be: For most of this young century, the real-estate scene was dominated by homeowners trading up, flipping properties or snapping up vacation homes. Bubble-driven prices meant that even “starter homes” were out of reach for younger couples. Brokers and agents shunned first-time buyers because they needed too much hand-holding and, of course, because they weren’t that lucrative — why waste time peddling $150,000 condos when you could make seven times as much money selling a single $1 million McMansion? But today, new buyers with humbler aims are just as likely to get the red-carpet treatment. Right now, of course, buyers of all stripes face what seems like an unprecedented opportunity. This year the housing affordability index reached its highest point in almost 40 years. But not every “Sold” sign is a marker on the path to prosperity. Despite signs of improvement in a growing number of markets, hardly anyone expects a quick return to boom times. That’s partly because first-timers are more willing to scoop up bargains at the bottom end of the market than jump into a bidding war. And buying a home can be trickier and scarier than ever. Still, virtually everyone agrees that the housing market won’t fully recover until buyers soak up the bloated inventory of available homes — in other words, until the rookies come through. Tax breaks for rookies First-time buyers owe some of their time in the sun to Congress and President Obama. This year’s stimulus bill included an $8,000 tax credit aimed at first-time buyers — and it wasn’t long before those newbies got wooed by a business-starved real-estate industry. Phoenix-area builder Fulton Homes blasted its mailing list with information about the tax credit and material promoting homes tailored to young couples. Over a recent 12-week period, the company sold 120 homes to first-time buyers, says Dennis Webb, Fulton’s vice president of operations. Brokerages like Watson Realty, in Jacksonville, Fla., have issued buttons to their agents that read “Ask me about the $8,000 tax credit!” Mike Crowley, a broker in Spokane, Wash., even hosts a regular seminar for first-time buyers. He provides pizza and soft drinks, but that’s a pittance compared with the $3,000 he budgets each month to promote the classes on radio and television. These days the seminars focus special attention on the tax break. Crowley says the workshops have helped his office sign up more than 30 clients in the past year. “We’ve got it dialed in now,” he says. But for all the love it’s getting, some say the tax credit’s impact is limited. For one thing, $8,000 is a drop in the bucket for shoppers in expensive housing markets in the Northeast and California. The credit’s income ceiling — it phases out completely for couples earning more than $170,000 — isn’t mentioned on those buttons. And the credit often isn’t enough to get a first-timer over the down-payment hump. In fact, the typical newbie can come up with only a small fraction of the 10% to 20% that most banks are looking for these days. All of which means that many first-timers are getting into real estate in a more traditional way — with help from mom and dad. Erik and Jessica Wackenstedt of San Diego shopped for months before finding a row house with Pacific Ocean views, marked down to $530,000 from $700,000. Erik Wackenstedt’s father, Lars, loaned the couple $225,000 to make a hefty down payment. His motives weren’t entirely unselfish; he says he thought that payments from a loan to his son could provide a more reliable income than any of his other investments. There were other strings attached to the assistance: When Erik Wackenstedt originally asked for help a year ago, his father refused, saying that prices were “on the stupid side.” (In this case, obviously, dad was vindicated.) The bank of mom and dad While nobody tracks loans like these, some families see them as a win-win. The youngsters receive financing at a rate much cheaper than they would find at a bank, while the older lenders get to help their kin and still collect an income. Elders who are feeling flush can still make gifts, of course. Each donor can give up to $13,000 each year to each relative, tax-free. Nicole Harvey’s family gave her money from a trust that was supposed to remain sealed until the now-33-year-old woman turned 40. Ultimately, it was her father, Oscar Marcos, who decided that giving up a few years of investment gains was a tolerable price to pay for getting a home cheap. While their parents may be stepping up to the plate with help, some new homebuyers say real-estate agents are only making their lives harder. Michael McLane, a 23-year-old educational consultant from Tempe, Ariz., started shopping for a home online in March and attracted a swarm of brokers. “As soon as I put my information in, they were on me like chicken hawks,” says McLane, who wound up needing a new e-mail address for all the spam he got from desperate agents. His answer? Sidestepping them and buying a home directly from a builder. But some buyers say it isn’t always that easy, especially when the relationship with the agent gets further along. They tell stories of agents pushing them to buy from their brokerage’s listings (as opposed to the complete local inventory), while others report sellers’ agents who call several times a day. Once a deal gets to the contract stage, many cash-strapped brokers have been adding document preparation fees and other vague surcharges, according to Barry Zigas, director of housing policy for the Consumer Federation of America. Zigas adds that many first-timers are unaware of cozy ties between agents and the lenders, home inspectors and title companies they recommend — relationships that can boost a buyer’s costs. (A representative for the NAR says such fees and relationships should always be disclosed to consumers.) Looking for ‘move-up’ buyers Not all brokers – even well-meaning ones – are thrilled by the influx of first-timers, with some complaining that they offer a toxic mix of cluelessness and arrogance. But others have a deeper economic worry: By focusing on cheaper homes, the thinking goes, the new buyers are pushing average prices down, which in turn discourages “move-up buyers” — growing families and upwardly mobile types who would normally be trading up to something more luxurious. “For the overall market to recover, we’ve got to get people into that move-up market,” says Jim Gillespie, president and chief executive of Coldwell Banker Real Estate. Gillespie is among the throng of real-estate honchos pressuring Congress to increase the current tax break from $8,000 to $15,000, extend its duration and make it available to all buyers, regardless of their income or whether they’ve bought before. The price tag: an estimated $36 billion. Naturally, among the beneficiaries would be people who overpaid and overborrowed for the houses they’re in now. By comparison, this generation of first-time buyers is more cautious. The kids want fixed-rate mortgages they can easily afford, and they aren’t merely looking for a property to flip. A survey by the NAR showed that the average first-timer hopes to stay in the home for 10 years, up from seven at the peak of the boom. Regardless of how long first-timers stay, many economists believe these buyers can tip the first domino and kick-start the rest of the market. As Mark Markelz, a broker in Fairfield, Conn., puts it, “Without first-time buyers, you are going nowhere.” Help for that first down payment Until recently, the typical first-time buyer paid less than 5% as a down payment; now most banks are asking for 10% or even 20%. Here’s how buyers are making up the difference. The Feds Loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration permit down payments as low as 3.5%. They make up 18% of the market, up from 4% in 2006. The catch: Borrowers must pay mortgage insurance, usually 1.75% of the loan upfront — or $5,250 on a $300,000 loan — plus an annual 0.5% premium. Glenn Kelman, chief executive of discount broker Redfin, says some sellers shun FHA-backed offers because they take longer to close. Family money Parents can give up to $52,000 to a couple tax-free (if each parent gives $13,000 to the child and his or her spouse). Most lenders require a “gift letter” explaining that the money does not have to be paid back, says Keith Gumbinger, vice president with HSH Associates, and some require the borrowers to come up with cash of their own. If the family money comes in the form of a loan, the IRS sets minimum rates — currently just above 4% on longer-term loans — to ensure it isn’t merely a run around the gifting laws. Tax credit The much-ballyhooed $8,000 tax credit is set to expire Nov. 30, though industry groups are pushing to extend or expand it. Typically, the credit can be used for closing costs but not the down payment itself. One often overlooked plus: The government defines a first-time buyer as anyone who hasn’t owned a home in the past three years, so some former owners can qualify. Brad Reagan of SmartMoney ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Remodel your kitchen and bath with the help of Savannah Discount Granite