green

It seems that fat folk are welcome in Maine. I think that I will visit Quebec instead. They say that there is less smug up there and the scenery is just as nice.

Stinky smelly fat people. Ugh!

Few smokers go around blowing smoke into non-smokers' faces. We have all been tamed long ago. It is when individuals persist on continuing with the feeding fest that I feel annoyed. In my opinion there has been quite the little feeding fest going on earlier in this thread for the issue was no longer the question of second hand smoke but of the stinkiness of smokers. Well, I for one don't like to sit in an aircraft seat next to a tubby because my personal space - and I am neurotic about being touched by people - is infringed upon. I am also really unhappy about being near very young children and babies. But families and wide-bottomed folk are part of humanity and so I am often forced to suck it up and without a cigarette to take the edge off, too! That's life. Some people smell of cheap perfume, some carry with them noisy kiddies, some of us carry the stench of our last cigarette and some of us are tubby.

Ah, it sure is fun to hate addicts, isn't it? In fact, it sure is fun to hate other people. Let's all practice being smug and dissing everyone who isn't exactly like our own perfect selves. Let's see.... I am an atheist, a Canadian, a smoker, and now can wear a size 12P pant. I am also affluent, well educated, well travelled, sophisticated, an urbanite, don't eat all that much meat, never did like to drink soda or eat sweets, and have always eaten a lot of fresh produce. I also don't drive a car and have in fact never learned how to drive. Oh, wow! I guess that allows me to despise all kinds of folks should I choose to opt to employ the same rationale employed by some of the folks who have posted in this thread. I guess I might have to change my opinion on Americans and agree with the assessment which most Europeans have: under-educated and uncultured, racist, soda-sucking, fast-food addicted, bigoted nutcases. Because I am a big city grrl I figure that this also means that I can laugh at anyone who has chosen to live in the country instead and call 'em hicks or bumpkins. Oh, and now that I can shop in normo stores, that means that I can laugh at fat folks and agree that they are lazy, self-indulgent piggies and that they are stinky, too. And as for people who don't own passports and regularly use 'em, these are unworldly, uneducated individuals. Typical Americans!!! And of course I am a much nicer, cleaner, more environmentally responsible individual because I use mass transit and I walk; I don't crap up the air and waste fossil fuels because I don't own or drive a goddam vehicle!!! But I do smoke. I smoke on the street and I smoke in my house. I am an addict. And I am certain that you all would be much more tolerant of my addiction if my drug happened to be heroin but the truth is that nicotine and heroin are equally as addictive and just as hard to quit. And cigarettes were socially accepted when I began smoking and are still legal. Of course the truth is that I don't harbour any of those feelings - except the stuff to do with vehicular dependence - but I am anxious to make a point: Hating other folks is never kind nor attractive to the observer or to those who are the objects of the venom. Smugness and hypocrisy are not good qualities, folks.

Well, now this is kinda bizarre. I did sucessfully shift the advert room to the right but still only have the first two columns of emoticons. Oh well and that's life.:cry I guess I will just have to become accustomed to dealing with a reduced array of emotions, eh. Life could be much, much worse. Thanx, Alex, for all your fine work on LBT.:clap2:

Thanks, Lucy, for providing this info. I was totally baffled.

I really like what you are doing, Kyethra, in order to reduce your footprint. Your approach seems well thought out. Kudos to you!

Well, I have moved my face restoration/renovation project to the early fall, to September (lapband month) in fact. So much for looking just like Laura Bush! LOL My kinder, gentler, nicer half will be spending June in Mexico. I am pondering spending part of the time down there as well. I figure that I will have to buy myself a laptop and I have been planning to get myself a digital camera for sometime now. Oh yah, I'm gonna need an English-Spanish dictionary. And of course I never travel without a crate load of books! I will need all these toys to entertain myself while my fine man is off teaching others how to do our highly paid unionized jobs for he will be working long hours and 6 days a week. While we earn close to 30 bucks Canadian/hr plus drugs, dental, and eye glasses, etc, our new partners will be earning the equivalent of 8 Cdn smackeroons for doing the same work. As for benefits and overtime premiums? who knows.... And Airwaydude, I felt exactly the same as you did with respect to Sharon Stone's blondieness. I said to myself, so.........??? :bored

My wonderful spouse tends to talk too much at times. When I got the lapband he told everyone at work - and I used to work with these guys until I retired - and he told my hairdresser. Oy vey!:tired And now I am getting my face lifted....gawd only knows what he has said about that!:paranoid Nope, I don't wanna know.

Oh, Wheets, that thing with the jokes! That drives me really nuts when I hear people taking the long way round in order to tell a joke. People sometimes do it when they are showing you photographs, too. Oh, they say, that's Great Aunt Nelda over to the far left, or is it Cousin Gina? Well, she's my seventh cousin once, or is twice, removed, you know? In the meantime Green's eyes are getting really glassy, she's stifling a yawn, and she's thinking WTF!! Haha.

Yep, I read about the Japanese drop off box. I think that it's a good idea and an excellent option. Japan has one of the lowest birth rates in the industrialised world, I gather.

I do have ta say that I love Mexico, the culture, the food, etc......... As for the plastic, it was gonna be on my already fairly good face. Boobs are okay and only my man can see my tummy. Now the face, that is up front and central, eh!:faint: :paranoid Big thanx fer the advice. Keep it coming. I need lots of input right now. I am kinda blonde and I am Canadian.

Omigawd! I almost thought I married yer husband fer a minute, eh. This is why I usually go to movie matinees with other buddies and then the hubby becomes offended because I never, ever go to flicks with him. This is un petit probleme. Green loves Ninja Monkeys, doncha know!

BJean: Thanks for this post. I always enjoy hearing from you and this post was most timely because Mexico is very much on my mind. Over this past winter there has been a number of Canadians who have died while vacationing in Mexico. While the number of people who have died has not been large these are individuals who have died violent deaths while they were staying at high-end luxury resorts. This has been disturbing for Canadians for of course these deaths have been widely reported; but the reason that Canadians remain deeply disturbed is that the local Mexican authorities have badly botched the investigations into these murders. In the case of an older couple who were found with their throats slashed in their five star resort room - they were down there for a family wedding - the room and environs were scrubbed down by the hotel staff before forensics had a chance to do their crawl. And then the local cops decided that the persons of interest were a couple of mums, friends who were taking a week's break from life in northern Ontario. One of them was going to a northern university, she was in med school as a matter of fact. These two grrlfriends had returned home the very day that these murders were discovered, exactly one whole week after their week in the sun had begun, you know. Green saw their photos in all the media. They had to hire expensive lawyers, you know, after those allegations. The women, a couple of women who were wives and mothers who were in their early thirties, were understandably absolutely freaked out. Now, I am someone who has done a fair amount of travelling and I do believe that it is sometimes true that tourists reap what they have sewn. My mate and I travel fairly attitude free and we are curious people. This has stood us in good stead up to now. Nevertheless, sometimes an innocent and open heart may not be enough. I was talking to my physiotherapist about the possibility of my mate moving to Mexico for awhile or for an even longer while and of course I have mentioned the possibility of my joining him for part of his stay. My therapist is Nicaraguan but he is my age and thus he has been around for quite awhile. He told me that he lived in Mexico for four years and while he made friends with many of the local folk he personally found the establishment to be corrupt and he was glad to leave the country. In fact he told me that he told the Mexican authorities as he was exiting that they could destroy his version of the American green card; he had no intention of returning! While I have no intention of ruling my life by anecdotes, I do find them of enormous value. It is through marrying up statistics and anecdotes that we can best sense what is happening around us, doncha think?

Wow! That is some kinda low BP! It is positively reptilian.:faint: I hope that Mr. Yoda is feeling better and I am glad that you are taking care of Yoda business, Nurse Yoda. Yer hubby is doing that man-thing, he is losing weight faster than we do.:clap2: Take care.

I think that I might have lost some more weight but this is because I have been sick. My size medium pants are kinda baggy and I have to hoist them up periodically. I guess this is the up-side of being sick, eh.

Wow! Margi, you are losing weight like a guy does. Congratulations from Green. You sure you not a man? LOL I am GREEN with envy!!!!

Enterprise, Green feels your pain.

Now I have no scroll bar when LBT is full size but am still missing the last two rows of icons. Why don't you move the advert section to the right hand side? I am sure that this would solve a lot of the problems.

Ousooner, while abstinence is an approach which will work well in theory, particularly if men can also find it within themselves to commit to this, too, something which I find kinda hard to imagine I must admit, this approach will only work with a certain kind of individual. You must remember that the sexual revolution has happened and that is a genie which cannot be easily stuffed back into the bottle. Abstinence may work on the many folk who function within a strongly faith-based church-going environment. This is, however, an argument which will never fly for those individuals who function outside such an environment, and there are many of us. The sexual revolution has taken place and most of these individuals regard sex, that is friendly boyfriend/girlfriend sex without the further commitment of marriage and parenthood, as one of the rights of adulthood. The trouble, too, is that humans are hard-wired to want to have sex and even those young men and women who fully intend to be abstinent can find themselves carried away, end up going too far just one time.... Then a really nice decent young girl finds herself pregnant and she hasn't even finished school.:cry

Oops! It seems that our posts have kind of crossed in the mail. And yes, that was me, Green, who was sounding both closed-minded and undoubtedly strident as well. This is because I always become edgy and nervous when thinking of male legislators having the power to determine the rights or lack of rights that women will have over their own bodies. To have a child is a terribly big commitment on the part of a women, physiologically, psychologically, and financially. As I have previously mentioned, some of the changes in her body are very unpleasant, even for a woman who is anxious to have a child, and some of these changes will have long-term repercussions on her physical health. There are also emotional stressors to contend with and these are created by the fluctuations in hormone levels. These occur throughout the pregnancy and after the birth. Tough to get through when you want the child, and a nightmare when the pregnancy was the result of one bad night...or a couple of minutes. Then there is the financial cost of health care, maternity clothing, etc. The man's participation practically speaking starts and stops at his orgasm. That's it! He can continue going to university. He find a new girlfriend. He decide to stay with his wife, afterall. He can move to a new state. He can do whatever he likes.

To be perfectly correct, Ousooner, and I will say right now that I very much respect you yourself and the peaceable and dignified fashion in which you always express your views, Mark has been asking questions, pointed ones to be sure. He has not been telling other folks how they should manage their lives or what their personal ethical standards should be on this particular question. I still believe that women must have the final word in the abortion debate; they are, afterall, the ones left paying the price.

Well, maybe she is for them if they bring the price of pharmaceuticals down.

Airway: It seems that he will be working in Santiago which is about two hours drive from Mexico City. This is an old colonial city with a population of about a million persons which is up in the mountains but which still gets real hot in the summer. I don't deal well with heat at all. I am more of a winter woman, a real Canuck, I guess. I also don't speak any Spanish except for a few nouns and some modifiers; all verbs are missing! On the other hand, I do find Mexico interesting and maybe I might find a place which offers language classes. It seems that there will be a second group which will be sent down there in the fall. Too bad they want him to go with the first lot! I guess that is because he is a lead hand. Further grief is that I will have to postpone my plastic surgery! This means that I will not have that opportunity to look identical to your first lady until the end of 2007, damn it!:faint: And I hate being mistaken for Pamela Lee A!:paranoid

These are only general observations.