anonemouse

Believe me, you don't want to. I've given up on that place. There are a bunch of people there that will drive you up the freakin' wall. Seriously, my teeth grind every time I go there. It's like nails on a fucking chalkboard.

I completely agree with this. Allowing your child to be obese (barring actual health problems causing the obesity, of course) to the point where their health is in active danger (after all, being young doesn't mean you're not at risk of having heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, etc.) is neglectful, if not abusive. (Note: I use the term "abusive" to describe situations where the parent has been educated and has been offered assistance and still refuses to take the necessary action. At that point, the parent is knowledgeable about the results of his/her actions and the risks the child faces and is making a conscious decision to place the child at risk.) I disagree. If a child is maybe 20, 30, or 40 pounds overweight, I don't necessarily think that the parent should be accused of neglect. But if a child is 100 or 150 pounds overweight, his or her health is being placed in very real jeopardy, just as much as an adult who is that obese, and to me that is neglect. Now, I don't think a child should be automatically removed from the household. I think that there should be mandatory warnings, education, counseling, etc., before any other actions are taken. But if, after those, the parent refuses to change, I do think the child should be removed.

I completely agree.

They've gone pretty well. The place I'm working at has just taken over another business, so the owner's rather stressed out and being a little temperamental and a tad difficult at the moment. Luckily, I don't see him very often. I've basically just been keeping busy and trying to stay out of the line of fire whenever he's around, lol! I've not heard from Starbucks, but that's okay with me. I think it would have been a little overwhelming to start two new jobs at once and go from working only a few hours a week to having three part-time jobs. Believe me, I'm loving the low-stress part so far! Other than the owner being a bit of an ass at the moment (the woman I work with assures me that he's not always like this), it's all pretty smooth and boring. It's a nice change from teaching!

Good luck, Julie!

Is that shit going on AGAIN?! Where? I've not been reading many new threads lately (mostly just going to threads that I'd already posted to), so LBT has actually seemed rather boring and much tamer than it was a few months ago. I just thought all the nuts that come out during the holidays went back in their holes. Guess I managed to miss all the fireworks.

My hospital billed my insurance just under $50k. The insurance discounted it down to around $18k, and I was responsible for about $8k, overall.

So I start my new part-time job tomorrow morning. I'll probably be working there at least three days a week, with possible part-days for two days a week. It pays pretty well for an entry-level part-time job ($10/hour) and the work is mostly office stuff that a trained monkey could do - lots of routine paperwork, data entry, that sort of stuff. I'm also still looking for some additional work, since they aren't open on weekends or later than 4:00 on weekdays. I've applied and been interviewed for a barista position at a Starbucks that's close to the new job (not that I know anything about coffee, lol), where I could work either early mornings or late afternoons/nights, and I'm hoping to get that, as well. I'm obviously not looking for anything long-term right now, just something that brings in some money ('cause teaching part-time as a grad student pays absolutely peanuts) until I can GET OUT OF THIS FREAKIN' TOWN AND AWAY FROM THIS DAMNED UNIVERSITY. Ahem. Well, I guess you understand how I feel about this place and how burned out I am, now, lol!

Hah! I just got a picture in my mind of Green whacking some stupid person on the noggin with her keyboard!

Hey, Green! So sorry to hear about all this going down. I sent you an email. (Or at least, I think I sent you an email. I got the address from an email that Wasa forwarded me. Who knows, there might be some weirdo up in Canada reading it right now. ) Just let me know what I can do.

Lol! I'm just sitting here trying to imagine the look on the guy's face, WASa!

I could not have said it better myself. The bottom line is that no one is forcing ANYONE here to read certain posts/threads. Don't like it? Don't read it. Believe me, I understand being sick of reading the same stuff over and over. You know what I did? I stayed out of the sections that seemed to contain most of the threads that I found irritating.

My brother's a lawyer and we were actually discussing situations somewhat like this over the weekend, since my former roommate was sued over a wreck (the other woman waited until the day before the 1-year deadline was up before filing the suit). He said that people wait as long as they can to sue insurance companies because they don't necessarily know how much money they are going to need. For example, if they are badly injured, they may have ongoing medical expenses. If they settle for a certain amount before before they finish treatment, they are limited to the amount of the settlement, even if their medical expenses wind up going over that amount. So if you are still undergoing treatment, you do NOT want to settle right now. You can't go back and renegotiate for a higher amount. Now, are you talking about your own insurance company or another one? I can sort see what I talked about above happening if it's the other person's insurance company that is paying, but I think you should call back and talk to another person if it's your own insurance company. If I've totally missed the point of your post, ignore me! I'm a little scatter-brained today!

Well, the CPS (or whatever it is there) may well be offering education/nutrition classes, in addition to the demand that the children show improvement in a certain period of time. We're just hearing the mother's side of things, since I would imagine that the agency can't legally talk about the case. What she heard may not have been what the agency's representative actually said. If they ARE offering counselling or classes or something, I agree with the agency's actions and demands. Those children are being put at risk, just as they would be if they were being fed too little instead of too much. If the parents refuse to see that, or if they refuse to change, those kids shouldn't stay with them.

No kidding. Couldn't get to any page other than the home page Wednesday and Thursday and now it's taking 15 minutes to load a page today.

HA! I knew it was a conspiracy! :embaressed_smile:

Ditto. One reason that I've looked into PS so early is that I KNOW I want it when I get close to my goal weight. I've decided to go for it this fall (around mid-August, hopefully), and I've put it off to that point because I do want to get close to my goal weight before surgery because I'm also having my breasts lifted, and that's a surgery that can easily be ruined by losing too much weight post-surgery. I've promised myself that I'll call and schedule it the day I weigh myself and see 140 (140 is a BMI that is right inside the healthy weight range for my height). I somewhat agree with what She Smiles' surgeon said, why work my ass off to completely lose the fat in an area that's just going to be cut off anyway? Sort of like, why pay to have the nasty carpet in a newly-bought house cleaned, if you're planning to immediately rip it up and replace it with hardwood before moving in, you know? And to be honest, a person that gets PS when they're still a bit from their goal weight can get results that are just as good or better than those of a person who was at goal. With tummy tucks, in particular, a patient can lose a significant amount of weight after the surgery and still have awesome results, so I don't really see the need to be "at goal" for that surgery. For breast surgeries, yes, but not that one.

I haven't even considered the statistics, to be honest. That's because I've had enought stats courses to know that it's just the average of the very best and the very worst, so it really has no impact on what YOU OR I can do. Take test grades, for example. An average score may be 60%, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible or even very difficult to get 80%, 90% or even 100%, if some effort is put into it.

You guys have probably seen me complain about some of my students before. Well, I got a doozy of an email yesterday. This guys emails me, wanting to know if we can meet to discuss him making up the material that he's missed. I email him back, asking how many labs he missed. No response within several hours, so I look though the materials I have for his lab. I didn't even have to look through all of the stuff to see that the guy's missed something like 5 or so labs, including the first 3 weekly lab meetings and the midterm. Yet, of course, he waits until 9 weeks into the semester to email me. I'm fully expecting to get a nasty email from him in the next day or two, because I had to explain to him that our department's policy for the class I teach is that a student automatically fails the lab portion of his class if he misses more than 3 labs, even if they are excused absences (because more than three labs missed means he's missed more than a quarter of the lab meetings). Now, it's usually left up to the lab instuctor to decide whether or not to enforce the policy. If the guy had had the decency to email me or have someone else email me or came up to me at one of the few labs he did attend, I probably would have waived it for him. But waiting until more than 9 weeks into the semester and two weeks after the midterm that he didn't go to and then having the nerve to say, "Hey, I missed these days, can I make the material up?"? Um, sorry, no. If you had actually been here, you'd know the policy. If you'd emailed me or come up to me with your request when you first started missing classes, you'd know the policy. Sorry to be the one to teach you this lesson, but it's too damn late at this point. I know it probably seems heartless, but I'm so FREAKING sick of students trying to take advantage of the system and treating their professors and fellow students with absolutely no respect. You'd think that if someone missed the first day of classes (which he did), they'd ask to get any materials that they missed, wouldn't you? I mean, this guy isn't a freshman, he's a freakin' junior in college. He KNOWS that the syllabus and course policies are covered during the first class meeting of every single class on campus.

Until now, I hadn't been able to access anything but the first page of LBT since last night. I kept getting a blank page that said "no input file specified" every time I clicked on something.

Yeah, microwaving protein curdles it. Completely disgusting. If you do want it warm, you have to heat it very slowly and stir it often, and you can't get it much past "warm."

Ooh, interesting. Sounds pretty good, but then again, so did the "creamy, dreamy milk chocolate" that was neither creamy nor dreamy. :thumbup:

I honestly don't think you're going to find any protein supplement that's truly yummy. The most that you can hope for, IMO, is tolerable. Some of them turn out to be pretty good, if you doctor it. Like WASa suggested, you can get sugar-free flavor syrups to add flavor to a plain drink. You could also try adding fruit and ice to try to make them thicker/tastier. whey Gourmet chocolate Peanut Butter is probably the best Protein powder that I've found. It tastes sort of like Reece's peanut butter cups to me. My suggestion is to try to find samples of powders and/or ready-to-drink stuff somewhere and try a bunch of different types of protein to see what you'll like. You might want to try soy protein, also, since you might be lactose intolerant. If all else fails, and you absolutely can't find anything high-quality that you can tolerate, go back to the low-quality stuff. It shouldn't be a major problem as long as you're not using it long term and as long as you are consuming other forms of food and protein. Ideally, though, if you can find something higher-quality that you can tolerate drinking, it's a better idea to use that rather than the low-quality stuff.

True. When looking for protein supplements, avoid anything that's made of collagenic protein or Calcium casseinate. Both are EXTREMELY low-quality protein sources. Which, honestly, makes the prices that are charged for the products particularly outrageous, I think. Those protein shot thingies are typically pretty expensive per serving.

That's correct. I was also told when first looking into laser hair removal that it works the best on fair-skinned individuals who have extremely dark hair because it targets the melanin in the hair shaft/follicle. That's not a problem with me, because I have almost black hair and extremely fair skin, which is probably why the laser has worked so well for me. The technician at the Sona MedSpa I go to said that I was an ideal candidate for that type of laser hair removal. One of the plastic surgeons that I had a consultation with recently offered a laser hair removal treatment that supposedly works on light or colorless hair. I'll try to see if I can find/remember the type of laser.