Thanks Darrel! I should have guess that based on the underscore for the variable. The reason I wanted to use a constant is that I was having trouble with EE_write_default; it didn't seem to save the original value defined in EE_var to EEPROM when I turned off the circuit and restarted it, but now it seems to work (although the first time I powered up the chip after programming and when to show the value on an LCD screen using your example it had something like '366565' rather than '1000').

BTW, I spent about an hour removing all the HTML tags to make it readable. I've saved a copy in Word as I anticipate going back to it over and over.

Last question (unrelated to your include): does reprogramming a chip clear it's EEPROM memory?