green

Congratulations!!! You are doing fabulously.

Yah grrl, keep us in the loop and good luck to you.

I was cool until I got on the operating table and then I almost wet myself from blind panic. It was a good thing that I hadn't had anything to drink since the night before. And now I am a thinner and happier grrl.

Hey Gaffer, it's always good to hear from another Canuck. I had heard quite some time back that there were a lot of shrines in your province along the trans-Canada highway and that these proliferate in the mountainous areas in the Rockies. If that is true, maybe these shrines are as much a warning to travellers as anything else.

Thanx, BJean, for those kind words. Actually we both got very lucky. He's the beauty (he is always getting hit on by baby bunnies) and I am the brains - except when it comes to most mechanical and computer stuff. He is also a warm, generous and maternal kinda guy. It turns out that I need this; my mum was not good with tiny children and she preferred my brothers. As for the painful childhoods, we both have that in common. I was huge for my age and I was a geek. Then my parents warehoused me in a boarding school but kept both my brothers at home.

Your latest post is an interesting one, Jodie. I am glad that you are going to see what the campus counselling centre has to say. You may have a Borderline Disorder, as was earlier suggested here, or you may be bi-polar, a simple depressive or none of the above - just young and frustrated! By the way, at various times in my life I have been diagnosed with all three. Although my life has been interesting it has been punctuated with more drama than it should have been and this has interfered with my productivity in the two areas that I prize the most, the intellectual and the artistic. If you can begin to sort your issues out now you will be in a better position than I was to enjoy your gifts and your life. Keep on keeping us in the loop.

You might have that right. My husband was picked on all the way through school. He is dyslexic and so didn't do too well in many of his classes. And his mother is German; this did not go down well with the neighbours when he was a kid. The memories of the Second World War were too fresh. He still has a lot of scar tissue from those humiliating times. And thus the desire for a hawg!

My husband dreams of buying a Harley but he is too blonde to be on a motorcycle!

These are really fantastic NSVs. Congratulations, folks! I think the NSVs are interesting because they show things that the scale alone does not show, like the difference in the clothes sizes and blood pressure. And getting compliments is always an excellent NSV, too.

Oh, thank you so much, Dame and Yoda - you little sweetie pants - and you, too, becca, and the rest of you lucky Canuckies! I really, really appreciate belonging to us, eh!:myscared:

Hi to everyone. I was banded last September and I am in my late 50s. I have had little restriction and I have been taking this whole business slowly. The band has helped me big time for my ability to guzzle has been cut. I have been taking care of business, too, for I have been paying attention to those foods which have been going into my body. This means not only looking at the overall carb count but also at the break-down of nutrients. I don't know how it works south of the border but in Canada all processed foods/packaged foods must provide a nutritional facts breakdown. This is how I learned that Gardenay soups will provide 80 calories or so per half box but that while they will be generous on the vitamin A and salt requirements, these soups will only provide a minor amount of fibre and as for the vitamin Cs, Bs, Ds or Es, well, you can forget about it. On the other hand, eggs are brilliant when it comes to comparatively low calorie nutrition providers. Those eggs are loaded with the B complex vitamins and they are packed with protein. I don't have a sweet tooth - I really don't like fruit - and so I have been eating a lot of avocados even though they are relatively high in calories. They are high in potassium and are a good substitute for bananas. I am lazy and so I went through a period of buying bottled salad sauces even though I had lived in France and had learned how to make my own healthier and less fattening dressing. But I am banded now and I am determined to take care of business and so I am back to making my own salad dressing again. You might be interested in this and so here the information which I learned while I lived in France: extra virgin olive oil, lots of dijon mustard, and vinegar to taste. I like to use apple vinegar and I like the taste of hot and sour. If you want to sweeten the taste of this dressing you should add a few drops of balsamic vinegar or some grains of sugar. Lemon juice can be used in conjunction with balsamic vinegar. The deal is that you must use a fine quality oil, good dijon mustard, and an excellent acid as a base. You will beat this together and it will announce itself suitable for your vegetables when you have got the proportions right. Now, this is a basic vinaigrette but if you really want to get funky you can mash up some fresh garlic and introduce this into the sublime slime. Another truly splendid thing which you can do is to introduce a very, very high quality blue cheese into your vinaigrette. This must be an oily, sumptuous and dissolute blue, one that is easily mashed into the mix of extra virgin olive oil, a respectable Dijon mustard, and the right amount of vinegar. Now, a proper vinaigrette is not low-cal but it is devoid of transfats.

Oh, you wild and whacky funster! Where did TOM maintain he was a dreaded Socialist/Communist on any of these threads? And did you not know that communism and socialism are two entirely different economic philosphies? And certainly you must be aware of the malicious manipulation implicit in the above quoted post, nicht war? You have conflated what you believe to be this man's beliefs, and his evident dislike of the current right wing political approach to international affairs by the baby Bush government, as being evidence of his being anti-American and being anti-Christian. In fact this cat has always been anxious to engage in open democratic discourse. Are you insane? Do you really think that TOM is a threat to the sweet civil liberties upon which the United States were founded? On the contrary, his engagement in these big questions emphasizes the moral and intellectual generosity of the Christian West. What do you expect to achieve by demonizing TOM, a fellow Christian, by the above quoted statements? Cusano, you must realise that your fondness for dramatics and for snits and for abuse will never win anyone over to your side. Why do you do the things that you do? wants to know the baffled Green.

Kiddo, I think I can see what you are up to. I spent a couple of periods of my life sowing my wild oats and deliberately choosing to investigate the most immediate and certainly the most sensual and the most shallow pleasures. Although I regret none of my bad behaviour I am inclined to believe that the intelligent individuals who choose to jump into an extreme form of behaviour - whether they choose to be libertines or anchorites - are propelled by issues of emotional damage. It ain't merely a philosophical exercise and you must recognise this and you must, on the short term, take precautions! You must protect yourself against pregnancy and STDs. You do not wish to lumber yourself with the guilt of an abortion nor do you wish to lumber yourself with 9 months of pregnancy and then the issue of your future as balanced against this emotionally loaded business of a baby. And of course the STD question has become increasingly sinister since the apprearance of AIDS and those variants of chlamydia which can give us cervical cancer. I must confess that I was lucky; I got to behave badly during those golden years when birth control was fairly au point and AIDS didn't yet exist in the human race. I think that what I am anxious to relay to you is that you must maintain your intellectual focus. Your earlier engagements on this site were discussions about political and (implied) economic theories. You must continue to be engaged in and deliberately exploit the materials made available to you at your university. You must do this cold-heartedly and callously. The only way that you will catapult yourself out of Shitsburg and into the real world is by winning a post-graduate scholarship. Sow your wild oats. I think that this is a phase that some of us who have felt ourselves to be marginalised for one reason or another will profit by exploring. I know that I certainly did. My only advice to you is that you cover your ass during this period. Later on you will need to consult with a mental dentist or two. This is no big deal. It is kinda interesting.:eek:

Sounds like a pretty nice group of individuals whom you are describing in the above-quoted post, Cusano. Sounds like a well read, intellectually curious, kindly disposed, relaxed group of individuals. I am looking forward to our party on the beach. I know it's gonna be some kind of big fun. Yep, there is gonna be some atheists there, some secular humanists, and there is gonna be a bunch of Christians, too. Two Canadians from, well, you know, Soviet Canuckistan, are planning on showing up. If we are lucky we will get some full Semites, eh. The incomplete kind who may be Jewish or Arab. Now, let us get down to business. You comment that 'Jesus said that we shouldn't be surprised if "the world hates us for His name's sake...."' (Your quote is, by the way, incoherent; this would be due to your careless attention to written grammar.) In fact, Christianity is no longer a beleagered religion; it is has the widest population base world wide with Islam coming in second. This would indicate that the world no longer hates Christians for their beliefs; the glaring exceptions at this time of writing are those countries which are owned by Islamic fundamentalists. Your own country, the United States, is overwhelmingly Christian. This does mean that the name and teachings of Jesus are recognised in this part of the world by an overwhelming majority. To employ such a quote in order to imply that Christian beliefs are under attack, whether it be by Muslim terrorists, atheists, Christian liberals, or any individuals who do not belong to the Christian fundamentalist Right is both manipulative and specious. I am, moreover, baffled by both your often exhibited foul temper and your equally often displayed lack of generosity towards your fellow Christians. To tell you the truth, I don't get it. I would have thought that you would be happy to see so many folks taking the trouble to write into this thread in order to say that they, too, count themselves as Christians, that they, too, believe in God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Instead you choose to spend your time damaging these people and belittling their beliefs. This is not the best way to spread the Word, kiddo. This is not a good marketing technique, is it? 'A soft answer turneth away wrath' or so they say. Browbeating never works unless you can blend this in with the rest of the Manchurean Candidate techniques.

So, for an answer on the socialism question you must look to Russia according to Cusano. Well, this is a comment from an individual who is apparently lacking basic information on history and economic thought. What was practiced in the USSR was Communism under a series of cruel and often incompetant totalitarian regimes. Moreover, this system was transposed on a third-world country which up to that point had a feudal system of illiterate peasant serfs and often barely literate landowners. Many, many sucessful democratic economies practice a modified form of socialism, a fusion of capitalism and socialism. In so doing these countries seek to control the damage that unharnessed capitalism can wreck on the middle and lower classes and yet, by controlling socialism too, encourage the creativity and the business acumen of the citizens. You may wish to examine the countries which comprise the European Common Market, Cusano, and Canada, the Scandinavian countries, Australia, and New Zealand.

Oh, the my God is better than your God statement! How refreshingly juvenile. This reminds me of my schoolyard era and that was a long, long time ago. :rolleyes

And what is wrong with socialism? (Perhaps you are confusing socialism with totalitarianism, eh.)

Cusano, you have chosen to display your beliefs on this thread and thus they are open for discussion. It does not follow that TOM must display his beliefs and he has chosen to keep these to himself. What is wrong with that?

So who does have the "right" to marriage, then?

Yow! I am so glad to hear from you, grrl. I have been wondering how you have been getting on for the longest time now. I know I coulda PM-ed you or e-mailed you but I didn't want yer husband to get into the info exchange. Your latest news is very good news. and:clap2: from Green, eh. Please keep us in the loop.

I have had gay friends, both men and women, ever since I was in my late teens. I am now 57. I can say that none of my friends chose to be gay. Why, some of the older ones even got married and had kids. Some of them got beaten up and some of them quit their jobs or wanted to because of the harrassment. It is much more difficult to be homosexual than it is to be straight, and the teenage years are especially painful. Those are the years when we are all most anxious to belong, to blend in.... I have been told that the rate of suicide among gay teens is much higher than it is among straight kids. This did not surprise me. Nor was I surprised when the results of various scientific studies indicated that sexual orientation is not a lifestyle choice but something with which we are born. My gay friends have often told me stories of preferring to play with the toys and games of the opposite sex when they were very small. For any heterosexual to announce that homosexuality is only a perverse lifestyle choice borders on the irrational. If you find yourself unable to go to bed with someone of the same sex, why do you think anyone else is able to perversely and carelessly make this choice? Especially when they know that they are not going to have an easy time of it! One of my closest friends once said to me that life was much easier for us heterosexuals. He said, "you have a map. Each one of us has to make his own."

Hello to everyone. I am one of those atheists; I am an atheist with liberal values who lives in Toronto, Canada. This is a real nice, cosy, mellow thread - quite different from the usual Rant & Raves threads that I tend to frequent.:rolleyes Synicalchick, I have been enjoying following your banding stories. I could really relate to the stuff about the kitties. I have a cat that likes to sit on my port site, too. :phanvan This was a big concern when I was newly banded.

Certain Christians are refusing to recognise the civil rights of homosexuals to same-sex civil marriages.

Gadget, there is a very big difference between and Cusano; you don't lose your temper and you are never impolite. When confronted with ideas and theories that differ from your own you are interested in instructing others on your beliefs and presenting the information which underpins these. This is cool. You never insult anyone. This, too, is cool.:clap2:

I want to come to the Cusano fest. I figure that because I am half Jewish and half Scottish (and a few French ancestors, too) - the bagpipes, yuh know! - and all liberal that I will fit in.:heh: My drinks of choice are scotch and claret. And because Cusano is confused about my gender I will wear trousers and a chiffon blouse.:faint: Oy gewalt, bring on the completed bagels and let the skirl of the pipes begin!