WITH "Gripes & Grins" coming from readers with a range of opinions, let's jump right in for the first of several columns this week.

Francis Volante of King George County can't stand the way development sometime occurs.

"Why is it that when some newcomers come to the Fredericksburg area to build a house, they cut down and dig up all the trees, bushes and other vegetation, scrape off all of the top soil, put a house in the middle--and then plant a tree?" he asked.

Bee Stumpf of Colonial Beach says she sees red when watching a diet drink commercial where a woman says her husband "calls me his trophy wife."

"It makes my skin crawl," said Stumpf. "It almost makes me think that she is proud to be bagged and tagged!"

Crystal Donnelly of Stafford County has a gripe about gas prices. She points out that one day, you go to the gas station and fill up with gas, then wake up the next and find that gas has risen 10 cents a gallon.

"On the way home from work, you pass the station and it has raised the price 5 cents more than in the morning," she said. "And so it goes."

While summer driving sends prices up again, she said there's a grin in the fact that Labor Day and the arrival of fall send them falling.

Sue Anne Vaughn of Stafford can't believe that her county gave approval for the blinking billboards that have gone up in several spots recently.

"They are distracting to drivers and are the most hideous things I have seen in a long time," she said. "Please don't ruin our beautiful county with any more."

Her grin: a local service department that went above and beyond to help at a time when there was illness in her family.

Ellen McMullen of Fredericksburg has had it with the water tank on Cowan Boulevard, across from Hugh Mercer Elementary.

"It needs a good cleaning and a good paint job," she noted.

Her grin: "Spring, with all the flowering trees and shrubs in the city."