anonemouse

I remember reading an article about the pear orchards or something along those lines that were already suffering from ICE cracking down on illegal labor. The fruit was basically rotting on the trees because there wasn't anyone to pick it. American companies can't afford to hire American laborers. And even if they could, many Americans wouldn't be willing to do the work. Much of our economy is running on illegal labor or migrant workers.

Yeah, that's the one thing I'll miss when I get banded. I'm a total bread addict, and their's is the BEST. Well, their's, Macaroni Grill's, and Olive Garden's. And Logan's Roadhouse. And O'Charley's. And.... ACK! I'm confused! I edited to change "theirs" to "their's", but that doesn't look right, either! I give up!

That's why I only eat the chicken there. And the biscuits. LOVE the biscuits.

Synicalchick, I think you should move him, or even see if you could afford to have him cremated now. For the last several years, we've always gotten our babies cremated when they passed away. The Humane Society here cremates them for us for a relatively small fee (like $50 or $75), and we send them through my dad's clinic because his office has an agreement with the Human Society. When my grandmother's cat had to be euthanized, we kept his ashes until my grandmother died and buried them together. Come to think of it, I think Thumper may be in a freezer at my dad's office. He did a necropsy to see what was wrong with him since he went down hill so quickly (literally, I came home one day and his balance was off a little and he died within a week), but I'm not sure if he ever sent him to be cremated. He probably did, but I'm not sure.

I usually do, this is just an aberration. I am still under my parents' insurance and I am semi-dependent on them (grad student salary and all), so that's why they've had input with the surgery. Plus, when I first told them, I thought they would be happy for me.

I would think that someone with such advanced degrees would use proper grammar and spelling. Guess not.

Mysherrijo, why do you have such a grudge against people that haven't had the luck to be banded yet? You have a pattern of making condescending remarks to those of us who don't agree with you. So I would have to disagree with the other poster who said that this behavior is out of character for you. My case in point (emphasis mine): By the way, I didn't have to search hard for these. I remembered someone posting that they were leaving the board because of people attacking them and sending them rude PMs sometime around the beginning of last month. I actually posted in that thread to show support. Guess what? You are not better than anyone else on this board. You don't get to tell people where they can or can't post. And by the way? You are not your thread. People having a problem with WHAT you post don't necessarily have a problem with YOU. There's no need for personal attacks. Cool your ass down. Maybe you should take your own advice and "not take everything soooooo personal."

Right now, I am in Kentucky. But I am originally from Crossville, Tennessee, so I've been trying to have surgery in Tennessee. The only two surgeons that were in network for my insurance were Dr. Boyce in Knoxville (which is actually only an hour from Crossville) and Dr. McGrath-Weaver in Memphis. I had orginally planned to use Dr. Olsen at Centennial in Nashville, but found out that he was out of network after they had submitted everything to insurance. Ideally, I would love to have surgery closer to home, but insurance has vetoed it. At least, my brother lives in Memphis, so I'll have someone to stay with for the first few days after surgery. And he lives with his girlfriend, who is the nutritionist for another bariatric surgeon in Memphis, so I'll be well taken care of.

These were some of my babies. All of these are no longer with us. The long-haired tabby was a Maine Coon named Thumper (my big baby - he used to let me hold him like a child and he would wrap his front legs around my neck and shove his head under my chin). He was huge, by the way. You can't tell how big he was in that photo, but the cat he was in front of wasn't a small cat. I was incredibly broken up when he was euthanized. He had caught some kind of lung fungus from going down into our cellar and basically deteriorated very quickly. The black and white cat behind him was Simon, one half of a pair of brothers named Simon and Simon, after the show. The black cat in the pic with the Siamese was Westie. We picked him up from the middle of West Avenue in my home town. The Siamese was Sassy. We had her for forever. When I was little, she used to track me down at bed time and yowl at me until I followed her to bed. My dad had to euthanize her (he's a vet) once she went senile and started randomly attacking workers at his clinic (she lived there for the last several years due to severe gastrointestinal issues - basically constant diarrhea). The gray tortoiseshell persian (Sasha) was one that my dad adopted when her original owner wanted to euthanize her because of skin problems. We saved her and got everything cleared up, so basically the original owner didn't want to put in the effort. We would just let her run free in the clinic. She was euthanized by my dad when we found out she had severe lung cancer. I wish I had pictures of my current cats. I got one from a veterinarian's office (he's basically a Russian Blue). Another is one that we picked up from a city dump (named her Trashy Tabby or TT for short). I got another one when he showed up at the rear of my dad's clinic and wouldn't leave. As you can probably tell from the list of all these cats, my parents and I are push-overs.

Not yet, sad to say. My surgeon won't give me a date until I'm approved by insurance, and they haven't sent my stuff in yet. I was just able to get them the last of the info they needed today, so I am hoping they will send it off in the next day or so. It's been a lovely mess of delays in getting my info from the old surgeon to the new one, especially since the staff of the old surgeon apparently thought they had faxed materials that they hadn't and they had lost my pulmonology clearance. I finally took things into my own hands and got my records from the pulmonologist, nutritionist, and psychologist and sent them to the new surgeon myself. Of course, after all this I got a call from the new surgeon's office manager, basically saying, "Didn't I tell you? Dr. Weaver is going on maternity leave in April, so the earliest you will be able have surgery is probably late July." So I'm looking at basically a nine-month delay from when I first decided to have surgery to when I am actually likely to have it. I'm not happy about it, but I'd rather have a delayed surgery with a more experienced surgeon than a quick surgery with a less experienced one (the only other one in the state that my insurance would pay for has only done about 20 lap-bands, according to OH). Oy. Well, at least I'll have time to get the bulk of my thesis work finished while I'm waiting, and I'll still have some time to lose weight before I have to apply for PhD programs.

Mine was more tedious than hard. I had to do a couple of personality tests, which added up to almost 600 questions. Then I spoke with the psychologist for about 10 minutes. Nothing major.

Boomhower (or however you spell it)! Hiya, Auntie Boomhower!

It's from another thread. TOM and I were joking about how we had the same opinions, but in the opposite gender. I said something about how I could be his long-lost daughter, and then he said he had a 21 year-old grandson, and to call him "Grandpa TOM". So I do.:girl_hug:

She's had weight problems her whole life, and right now she weighs around 185-190 (she's 5'3"), so she SHOULD know that "pretending I had surgery" won't work. "Pretending I had surgery" won't make me satisfied on a small amount of food. She has had a pretty strong pattern of sabotage, whenever I have dieted in the past. Whenever we would eat out together, she would get something and then say, "Here, try this." I would say that I didn't want to try it. She would then nag me until I either tried it or yelled at her. She went to a seminar with me, and was really supportive afterward, but now she doesn't really want to hear about it. Which is really frustrating, because other than the people here, she's the only person (other than my dad, who REALLY doesn't like the decision) that I'm close to who knows what I'm doing.

I'd hope so, but it's a little late, after the fact. My personal feelings are that if you post something, stand by it, even if you don't like the respnse you get. To me, like one of the other posters said, it's a little 3-year-old-ish to post something and then take it down when you are throwing a tantrum.

She would never have been elected to Senate if she acted like Laura Bush, and there would be snow in Hell before she was elected to the Presidency if she acted like her. No offense meant to Laura or anyone who likes her, but to me she has no personality at all. She may be a very strong woman, but she comes across as a meek "little woman".

Hiya, Auntie!

Apparently, the evangelicals aren't happy with Guiliani being divorced. And from what I've read, they are worrying that McCain is a little too wishy-washy for their tastes and they're not sure he is really respectful of true conservatives. I hate to say this, but it looks like they're just going to have to suck it up, no matter which candidate they go for. Those two (IMO) are probably the only ones that would have half a chance at actually winning the Presidency. Well, Mitt Romney might, but he's Mormon, so the evangelicals won't be happy with him, either. Looks like either way, they aren't going to very happy.:rolleyes

I am about to fall over, so I think I'm going back to bed. I would still be asleep if the nutritionist that evaluated me hadn't called. She couldn't fax my evaluation to the new surgeon without having me sign a release form. So, that's done and faxed back to her, and I can go pass out now. I slept horribly the night before last and couldn't nap well yesterday. Then I was up until 3 AM this morning. I'm TIRED! Oh well, at least my only class today isn't until 6 PM.

That's adult. You don't like what people say, so you go back and basically delete your original comment.

Very cute!

Yeah, following instructions is a biggie. Our midterms and finals are laid out in stations and we give the students a set amount of time at each station and then tell them to move. There are arrows printed on the question cards at each station, showing them the direction to move in when time is up. We invariably get people that go the wrong way and mess the whole system up. I finally told my class this semester, "If you do nothing else, please, PLEASE follow the arrows. Otherwise, everyone gets their numbering messed up."

I actually just saw a pair here in Kentucky for the first time. Stainless steel. Nearly blinded me because of the way it swung.

Ditto! I'll defer to Grandpa TOM!

Yeah, it's fairly eye-opening, what these people think they can get away with. They can earn up to 6% of their final grade in extra credit points, and I STILL get people that come up to me at the end of the semester, begging for more points. And usually, they are the ones who didn't bother to do the extra credit I offered them. It blows my mind sometimes. We instituted a new policy this semester that says that all students that miss three or more labs automatically fail, whether or not the absence is excused. There really isn't any way around it, because three absences is about a quarter of the entire semester. One of the other lab instructors told me that he already had a student fail. She missed the first three weeks of lab due to "family issues" (in most cases, read: I just didn't feel like going to class and didn't realize it would get me into trouble) and THEN emailed him, asking if there was a way to make it up. He had to tell her that she should just go ahead and drop the entire biology course (lecture and lab), because she had already failed it. Last semester, I had a student email me about 4 weeks into class, saying that he hadn't been in lab that week due to being sick, and that he had missed the other labs because of "depression/family problems" (his exact words), but that he would be in lab next week. I never saw the guy. Apparently, he went to one of the other labs and took his midterm, but that was the ONLY grade I had for him. I had to email him before the final exam to tell him not to bother coming to take it because he had already failed. One of my friends was proctoring a lecture exam for one of the professors, and said that he told her that "The guy in the back has taken the class 4 times. He cheats, but I don't do anything because he fails anyway."