ok, well... gee.... I recall that it was not so long ago that I had discussions about what was the point of var.... now I understand (and I think that was actually 7 years ago, js coding is a bit different now ;).
Not so keen on myVar = null; to "force" cleanup and maybe get some improved performance, but better than the alternative. I think I have some refactoring ahead of me, a fairly significant shift in thinking for sure. Thank you Mike and Stephan for clearing this up for me. -w