This is an industry that's done business pretty much the same way for the past 100 years. Most of the funeral homes are still family-owned, so they rely on word-of-mouth or local advertising to reach their consumers. What we realize is that as geographic trends have changed for families and they no longer live in the same hometown, how would they know where to go if a loved one died?

Despite signs nationally of a more normalized level of activity with regards to sales pace and price appreciation, our capital investments in these strategic markets afford us a significant competitive advantage and allow us to be well positioned for future success.

The strength of the national housing market continues to fuel our record bottom-line performance and record second-quarter sales,

Even the currently cooling housing conditions will give us an opportunity to perform well into 2007. We've already seen some recovery in the traffic patterns in our major markets.

While we generally don't preannounce our quarterly results, given yesterday's market volatility and given the fact that our Miami corporate office was closed and management was inaccessible because of Hurricane Rita, we felt it prudent to preannounce our third quarter results,

We have seen significant improvements in the system.

There has been a slower sales pace in certain markets in which we operate, and price appreciation in these markets has moderated relative to the appreciation experienced in the past few years.

When people think of death and dying issues, we want them to think of us,

We want to keep sports going. Kids have interest and for some that is the reason they stay in school.

Thousands and thousands of people came to view the JFK memorial, the Carolyn Bessette memorial, the Lauren memorial,