green

The best bagels are found in Montreal. My city lost the big bagel competition! As for the face lift, it is scheduled for the third week of June and is going to cost me a car. Good thing I've never learned how to drive and always take public transit, eh! lol :biggrin1: And yup, I was banded last September. I have lost 30 lbs so far and now weigh in at 170. The lapband doc and his magic hi-tech computerized weighing machine say that my target weight is 150 and I am inclined to agree. I am not of a delicate build; I've got big boney hands and giant feet and broad shoulders. I still wear a 3X sweater thanx to my shoulders and a fondness for loose garments. The plastic guy said that a loss of 10 lbs post lift isn't going to affect a face lift. And I will probably be down by another 10 by the end of June. I am very restricted right now. I can't guzzle water in my usual careless style. I've got to drink it daintily. And I can always postpone the surgery until the fall. I am really scared of the pain and the recovery time. He wants to give me the full monte. I was kinda hoping that I could get away with a facelift lite! but it seems I am gonna have to have the old fart treatment....:phanvan What did make me decide to sign on for a face lift was the positive results which I have received from the lapband surgery. :welldoneclap: I should also tell you, BJean, that I had my jowls - they were really driving me nuts - hoovered by this guy when I turned 50 and I was delighted by the results. In fact my jawline still looks good. I guess I now have a positive attitude towards surgery.:Banane20: As for my husband, he always has the same attitude: you don't need it, but if you want it I will support you.

My parents were short slim elegant brunettes. I am comparatively tall, blue-eyed, prone to being a fatty, and reddish blonde with fish belly white skin! A total recessive, genetically speaking! blehhh! Then my brother was born and he took after them. I was so furious that I refused to speak until I was 3 years old with the result that they hauled me off to all sorts of specialists.

Come on down, sez Green. The prices are getting really cheap now that winter and March break are over.

Oh! That is a terribly, terribly sad ending to it all. You have my condolences, Carlene. I know that this has affected you deeply (as it would me).

BJean: it sounds like that spa should be called a 'getting fat farm.' I am deeply in love with bagels but there ain't no way a grrl is going to lose weight on a bagel diet.:faint: As for me, I have just signed on for the next frontier: a face lift!!!!! :welldoneclap: And I am kinda terrified, eh.:omg: It seems that there will be pain and I am a sissy when it comes to pain.:nervous Jeez, I hope I don't end up looking like Pamela Lee Anderson....:rolleyes Now that would be false advertising!:heh: I could get arrested..................:Banane20:

Haha, BJean, Green can certainly relate. She herself is a kinda fishbelly white and she also glows like snow in the sun! *sob* Her mate tans real nice and he has often been mistaken for being part Native American or Spanish even though he is German and French. Oh yah, the body gods were kind to him. (Good thing Green is a smarty pants.)

Woohoo! Green adores being turned red! Although I am an atheist and a cynical individual by temperament I am not inclined to agree with the above statement. I believe that religions were often established in a more innocent fashion - Jesus's activities may be considered to be somewhat akin to those of oh, let us say, a Che Guevara or a Ghandi, given the political and religious power structures in place at his time; in brief, Jesus was certainly a revolutionary and he did fall afoul of the local power brokers. This is easy to decypher whether one believes in the Bible or not. Jesus came from the common people even though his antecedents were royal, the line of the Jewish kings. Jesus tossed the money makers out of a place of worship. Jesus recruited members of the working class to follow him. Jesus taught the notion that all humans have equal standing under the eye of God. He protected and valued a prostitute, Mary Magadalene, and taught that the rich are at a disadvantage when it comes to entering heaven. He sure did challenge the existing power structure, eh? I am inclined to suspect that many movements, religious or social, are initially founded in idealism and with the best of intentions. The corruption and the greed are things that sadly follow later on. If we wish to look at the dreary result of an initially idealist secular movement we could examine Communism as it was applied to Czarist Russia. The initial impetus was an honourable one. This was a country which was still living in feudal times. Wealth was gathered in the hands of very few and fewer still were literate. And though the United States and Europe were arenas of modern industrial progress and were thriving, this country was still managing on the social and economic structure of the 1400s. There were peasants, there were illiterate local landowners, and there were a handful of power brokers who lived in the capital city of Russia. Communism did serve to toss the country into the 20th century, free the serfs, and raise literacy. Along with these benefits there grew an oppressive totalitarian state, and a new corrupt power structure. In just such a way Christianity was, I believe, an idealistic folk movement at its birth. At various points later on this Christian movement became lost to the idealists and the revolutionaries and became, like all successful movements do, machinery which comes to be used and owned by the establishment. The Franciscan monks were a group of folks who rebelled against the perceived wealth and power of the Catholic church; they were a group of Roman Christian adherents who were anxious to emphasize poverty and simplicity as part of their commitment to their religion. They chose to follow the teachings of another revolutionary, an individual who later came to be known as St Franciscus. The earliest Protestant schisms, excluding that of the Anglican/Episcopalian church, were prompted by a desire to reject the power structure and to return to basics. The efforts of these revolutionaries stand in stark contrast to the more questionable aspects of the Christian churches: the wealth of the Vatican, the former empire of Jimmy and Tammy Fae Bakker, the desire of Benny Hinn that his adherents buy him a personal aircraft, and the personal wealth and power of a Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, etc. Although I am an atheist I believe that the role that faith/belief plays in the hearts of mankind is exceedingly complex. I personally think that one role of religion is to help men believe that they can make sense of their emotional and physical environment, an environment which might otherwise be much too terrifying for many of us to endure. This comfort would have been particularly crucial in those times when science was its infancy. And, as I have previously stated, all sacred texts are filled with rules which not only instruct us, but command us to maintain social order.

My mate and I love Mexico, too, and we are going there this Friday to spend a week on the Pacific side near PV. My mate and one of his good pals, a Polish immigrant by the way, both figure that they would love to move to Texas; the pair of them share powerful cowboy fantasies. I think it's a guy-thing.:phanvan As for me, I am built the opposite to you, Carlene. I thrive in the cool and suffer mightily in heat and sun. Though I am blonde I have the complexion of a red-head and I sweat. Boy do I sweat!:cry This is kinda tragic for me: I find the hot countries more interesting to travel in. And during the dog days of summer in Toronto I am more or less confined to my air conditionned house. On the other hand, my skin is fabulous for my age and I walk a great deal when the temperatures plunge. I will spend this week in Mexico loitering in the shade covered in number 55 sun block. We will be strolling along the beaches early in the AM and late in the PM and I will likely spend part of the day in my room with the A/C on max reading a book. And like you BJean, I adore the handicrafts of Mexico. The artisanal traditions of Mexico are far richer than those of the other get-away countries of the tropics. I particularly love the carved and painted animals though we did have problems with the one we bought, a big one, which turned out to be infested with dry wood termites. I discovered this pretty quickly after we got it home through the sawdust that the thing kept shedding. Anyhow, I went on line and found out that one of the ways of killing this particular type of termite was to expose the wood to prolonged periods of sub-zero temperatures. The cat - it was a jaguaranda - was far too big to fit into our freezer and so I stuffed it into a garbage bag and left it in our garage for a couple of years. This has solved the problem but just to be sure I have the cat sitting on top of a metal plate.

Oooh, shopping! Green is jealous! I hope you get better fast.

I became quite chunky after being exiled to boarding school. The grub there was mostly carbs. My mother came from England and cooked plain and often rather boring food. We did eat vast quantities of over-cooked meat in those days. But the most fattening things we ate when I was young were potato latkes and pierogis, a lethal combo of carbs and fat. As an adult I acquired a taste for food with sauces and cheese and then post-menopause - which happened when I was 41 - I started to get a little meatier. The real damage began after I turned 50!!!!! By 57 I was a chunky monkey and on the road to worse. That is why I was banded last September.

I agree with Cloe. I am totally envious of your eyebrows! Mine are thick but they are now so light that they look like basteing threads. :cry And the rest of you looks fabulous!!!!:clap2: Thanx for the pix.

I very much like Bjean's comments in the above quoted post. It does seem to me, too, that those who are believers would require that their spiritual guidance involve every aspect of their daily lives and this is provided by the leaders of their churches, of course. What dismays many of us is when that guidance omits common sense, kindness towards others, tolerance, and acknowledgement that there has been certain changes in our social fabric, some related to our greater scientific knowledge, since a sacred text was written. It seems to me, a atheist, that apart from the command to worship God, the overwhelming thrust of all sacred texts is establish and maintain social order among men. This is what all the rules are about: things you shouldn't do and things you should do. Now, the Bible has a number of rules concerning the treatment of slaves and captured women of enemy tribes which are entirely inappropriate for modern times. So too, I would argue, is the material contained in this Book which is viewed by some Christians as being hostile to homosexuality. Indeed, it could be argued that the story of Sodom is more a comment on sexual excess and sexual degradation than a complaint against two loving members of the same sex who wish to live in a union and enjoy the same civil protections that the rest of us do.

You would certainly be welcome to move up here. There is a blog by an American who decided to move to Canada; it is called We Move to Canada and it makes for interesting reading. She describes everything she went through before moving up here and she also describes the differences between the two countries. Something I never knew is that Americans wear shoes inside their houses; up here we take 'em off as soon as we get inside our front doors. Hah! Go figure, eh. I am bare-foot right now.:heh:

Well, that's the point of both my and TommyO's posts. Such a scenario does not seem to be in the cards in this country. Our Christian social right is not well viewed by mainstream Canadians - indeed they are regarded as a fanatical fringe group to put it bluntly - and our Conservative party was finally able to achieve a minority government only by squelching the voices of those members who attempted to talk a Christian social conservative line. This uneasy minority victory was also helped along by the fact that the Liberals, a party which had been in power for many years, was now viewed as being careless and corrupt. As for our elections being corrupt, for both provincial and federal elections we rely on the printed ballot which must be marked by pencil. Collecting these ballots and counting them is done on something much like a pyramid system and all parties have their local members present during the voting day and at the count as well. It may in theory be possible to corrupt a poll or two but when you take into account that an urban poll takes in only a few streets you can see this business becomes complicated. Moreover, the total number of official ballots handed out must correspond with the number of names crossed off for every poll and all these documents must be saved against further review. It is true that a lot of trees get killed whenever Canadians have an election....:cry It should also be noted that the largest single group of Christians in Canada are Catholic. This is not only because many of us are French Canadian but also because many of our Christian immigrants come from Catholic countries. These are folks who come from Italy, Poland, the Phillipines, the Hispanic countries, Ireland, Portugal, Spain.....

I am pleased y'all like the saying. My friend who used to say this was none too happy with his family and I have often felt much the same way about my own family. My parents were very interesting people but they were not well equipped to be parents. They were smart and cultured and had lived through interesting (living in Europe during the war) times and I have profitted from that. They were also truly awful at understanding children and dealing with their emotional needs. I guess I am still dealing with that. This is why I made a point of never having children of my own.

That's brilliant! :heh: :heh: :heh:

Wow! This is so different from where I live. Up here the church is not welcome in the affairs of the state. We have no local Pat Robertsons, Jerry Falwells and their ilk. There have been a few folks who have tried to set themselves as religious and political forces but they have met with little success outside their own tiny bands of supporters. Indeed they are viewed with suspicion by most Canadians, certainly the ones who live in urban centres. For many years our Conservative party was only conservative on economic issues. It was socially liberal. When it was destroyed by an overwhelming victory in the late '80s by our centrist party, the Liberals - a party which falls considerably to the left of your Democrats - a small rurally-based party of Christian social conservatives formed in Alberta, our oil-rich province. This splinter party helped to keep the Liberals in power for many, many years since it served to diffuse those votes destined for the right. The two parties eventually married up, a cautious marriage of convenience mind you, and finally won a minority government. They lost the first time around because the Canadian voters were spooked by the noisy voices of the Christian social right. The second time out the party did manage a win, a minority win, but only because the Liberals had become complacent and corrupt and their leader managed to squelch the voices of the more extreme members - the ones that wanted to interfere with the Canadian legislation guaranteeing a woman's right to choose and same sex couples' rights to civil marriage.

Yep, being 5'6" was hell when I eleven years old but I would love to be 5'9" today.:eek:

Yah, a week is good but Lila's vacation is better! Thanks for the good wishes, eh.:eek:

This is an over-reaction, grrl. I hope that you realise that your contribution to the communal discussion is valuable. Indeed this is one of the miracles of the internet: it permits us to meet and greet and to swap information and ideas. I really do believe that the internet ranks up there with the Guttenberg press in terms of inventions that have changed humanity. The Guttenberg press finally brought about literacy: this was through turning the written word into something which was cheaper to produce and thus much more easily available. Literacy drifted along with this increased availability of written material. The internet really is extraordinary. The net provides a public forum and a place for the free and easy exchange of ideas for all of us who wish to engage. The internet is utterly democratic: everyone has a voice.

Ah yes, this is so true. Sometimes a grrl finds herself wondering where the logic is..........:welldoneclap:

Yep, I have given POA to one of my nieces in the event that my husband, a guy who is 9 years younger than me, should cash in his chips first. I have warned both of them that I do not want to be kept alive after my mind has long since left the nest. It is degrading and both morally and environmentally wrong. Better to spend the energy, knowledge and the cash assisting someone who actually can be rescued, eh.:rolleyes

My hunch is that the man thought that it was a dreadful indecency to keep his former wife, now an existence entirely lacking a brain, alive for all those many years. And he was right, I think, the poor woman should have been laid to rest years before she was and it should have been done with respect instead of under those zoo-like conditions of publicity. Would anyone of you wanted anything different for yourselves?

Congratulations on the fabulous weight loss. We are leaving for Mexico this Friday but only for a week.

Yup, our economy is intimately tied up with yours. We will also likely see a depressed housing market. This issue of the economy is one of the many reasons that I am anxious that the United States remains a strong, free, healthy, and democratic country. The world needs the U.S. and so does Canada.