green

I have to agree with TommyO. I wasn't alive until He was born. This has shaved 10 years off my age. Yippee! Thanks, TommyO. You're the best.

Green was very, very naughty. She used the putz-word.:phanvan

BJean, you always give good post. Don't be so quick to cut yourself down, grrl.

Yep, you are right. Although 57 has its bad points it also has its good points and I am content with my age. It is pretty interesting being 57. That is sad news about your best friend dying through his refusal to engage in his weight problem. I feel for you. I really, really feel for you. My kid brother recently died at the age of 48 of bowel cancer. He didn't like doctors and had refused to see one for ten years before his death. I still miss him deeply.

That's brilliant! It took me a lot longer to lose that amount of weight but then I am 57! :cry Congratulations.:clap2:

And up here in Canada our provincial governments are concerned about enterprising Americans who come up here and buy our cheaper drugs in bulk for re-import to the U.S. We are afraid that the pharmaceutical companies might start charging us American prices. This would be mighty nasty for us and our medicare system. We pay higher taxes and our dollar is weaker. Go figure, eh.... Seems to me that the pharmaceutical companies could start by cutting your prices and giving your citizens a break. Of course it also seems that eliminating big business from your medical system - which is what Canada, Australia, New Zealand and all of Europe has done - would trim back your medical costs by an average of $2,000 a year per person and eliminate the financial ruination of American families but that raises the spectre of socialism, doesn't it? I continue to be surprised by the antagonism that so many Americans feel towards nationalised medicare. Your poor are covered and your wealthy have no problems whatsoever. It is the middle class which is oppressed by the high cost of medical insurance and it is the big business middle men and the shareholders who are earning a living off your cancer, MS, or heart attack. All of the countries that I have listed above function on the democratic, capitalist model and yet they have nationalised medicine. In Canada doctors and nurses belong to national and provincial professional organizations and they can and will go on strike if they feel that their working or pay conditions are unsatisfactory. Doctors bill by the patient. It is the province, not the patient, that reimburses them. The province, unlike the patient, is never a deadbeat. Because an insurer whose primary concern is the bottom line is not involved this frees up the patient's doctors to choose an approach that is not hindered by financial considerations. My brother who is a doctor in Virginia has often told me that he must choose his approach according to what the dollar men will or won't allow him to do. On the other hand, my meticulous GP is comfortable about schlepping me over to see specialists whenever she feels that there is any ambiguity concerning the functioning of my innards.:phanvan

Oy! *shrugs* I know, I know. I just really like the joke is all....

LOL You will be able to feel your port and a drumstick!:omg:

Aw shucks, kid. A little hot headedness can happen to anyone of us and is quite different from persistent and wilful meaness. Although we Rant&Ravers have wildly divergent views we rarely get into slagging each other. This is a civilized and respectful site. It is true that we have been pushing each other to defend what we each believe in on some of the threads in R&R and we have been pushing the boundaries of polite discourse at times but we have all stopped ourselves from going over the edge. And that's a good thing. I also suspect that we may often feel a lot of affection and respect for those of us who hold a divergent view point. Afterall, we are all thoughtful folk who are willing to put ourselves and what we believe in out there. And we are all bandsters too and so have been sharing that array of problems together, eh.:phanvan I frequent another site, an atheist site, and the brawling there does get low down and dirty. Ooh, talk about an ugly barroom brawl. There's bad language, folks cracking chairs over other folks' heads, stabbings in the alley, and no cops in sight (or should I say in site?).

Re torture and all that: There is still some concern outside of the United States concerning the Maher Arar case. He was the Canadian national of Syrian origin who was deported from the States, not to Canada, but to Syria where he was emprisonned, interrogated and tortured. He is now back home and has been declared clean by our specialists on terrorism but is still on your no-fly list. Your ambassador called our Public Safety Minister "presumptuous" for repeatedly asking that his name be removed. It might be considered that your officials were presumptuous by removing a Canadian citizen to a third country, one that would use torture as an interrogation technique. It seems that this policy of shipping suspicious folks off to these countries is called extraordinary rendition and while Arar has become the poster child for this, he is not the only one to whom this has happened. It also seems that European airports are used as stopovers in order to refuel for the CIA planes carrying these individuals. In Arar's case the stopover was made in Italy. But the European Union's parliamentary committee has been looking into this practice and they have now issued a report condemning the practice as "'an illegal instrument used by the United States.'" They also say that this "'damages and undermines regular police and judicial procedures against terrorism suspects.'" Amnesty International been observing these developments closely by the way. Now, it is true that the Canadian government is also on the hook for the Arar mess. It apparently had faulty intelligence concerning this man, too. Where the U.S. screwed up was by not sending this individual back to his own country, Canada, but instead opting for the unilateral move of shipping this individual to a country where torture is an approved conversational technique. You might be interested to know that Senator Patrick Leahy (Dem) is attempting to force Attorney-General Gonzales to shed a little more light on this affair. I mention this because European Union report would seem to indicate that extraordinary rendition has not been limited to Maher Arar. This means that the American government has been deliberately sending other individuals to countries where torture is considered to be inside the rules.

A Jewish guy who has lead a very bad life - he has denied the faith of his fathers, been unfaithful to his wife, and cheated his partners - is killed in a head-on collision while driving one day. To his surprise he wakes up in the most beautiful environment he has ever seen. Eventually he gets around to asking where he is. "Why, you are in Hell," is the reply. Death continues to be a pleasure for him and one day while on his rambles he notices a mountain in the distance and decides to hike there for a closer look. When he gets to the top he sees that it is in fact a volcano and looking in he see the most horrifying sight. He sees men and women being burnt and tortured by devilish looking creatures. Terrified, he runs away. Many hours later he describes that chamber of horrors and asks, what was that?!? "Oh! That's Hell for the Christians. They seem to prefer it that way."

This is going to sound weird but for years now I have wanted to try working as a waitress. I've wanted to see how people would tip me.

I don't own a scale, and so the only times I have been weighed is when I have had my fills. Other than that I let my NSVs do the talking as to how much weight I've been losing. Of course the way I knew I was getting fatter and fatter was that I kept growing out of my clothes! Looking in a mirror was not nice, either.:think

Good luck to all you newbies from Green. You will be the class of 2007 bandsters.

Hey, it's great to hear your voice again!!! Let us know what the latest is as soon as you can.:biggrin1:

Congratulations to both of you sweet sixteens.

I got operated on a Thursday and spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday in bed. I could have gotten up sooner I think but I didn't have to and I was really enjoying bed, books, the cat, and cat-napping. I could have been up and about on Sunday. The only real grief I had that persisted was the gas pains and those might have gone away faster had I gotten up on Sunday instead of Monday. lol

Unruly, noisy, whiny, screaming, ill-behaved, spoiled children and the parents who allowed them to get that way. Folks, if your infant child throws a tantrum and begins to disturb the social environment around you, the polite thing to do is to remove the kid from the scene, calm it down, and then return People who change their children's diapers in public. Barf!:omg: People who talk on their cell phones while driving. It's dangerous.:eek: Telemarketers. All telemarketers.:angry Sales personnel and telemarketers who waste my time by asking, "How are you today?" when it's none of their business and they really don't give a rat's a&& anyway. People who block the doors on mass transit systems. These are the folks who get on a bus or subway car and then simply stop dead leaving everyone who is behind them forced to push pass them. Cheap perfume. And perfumed laundry detergent, deodorant, etc. I wear good perfume. I don't want competition from my laundry or my armpits, etc. I don't want to smell of eau de Bounce!:eek: Impoliteness, surliness, lack of good cheer, disrespect, whatever.... Though I frequent the Rant and Rave zone of LBT I am actually quite a cheerful, jolly, kindly grrl when I am out in public. I like to make people who come in contact with me feel good about the experience whenever possible. I believe that showing respect and kindness to our fellow human beings is one of our most important social responsibilities and I am always surprised when I encounter gratuitous arrogance and nastiness. Folks whose idea of a conversation is a monologue. There is nothing more boring than a one-way chat. I should mention to you that I spent my early years working in an enviroment which was top-heavy in female personnel; by contrast my later working years were spent building aircraft, a well-paid and almost entirely exclusively male dominated field. One of the things that I learned through these deeply contrasting experiences is that men are more likely to monologue than women.:phanvan Growing old and watching your body treat you like your mother's body treated her. And feeling that this is unfair when it is only natural. Dirty public toilets and the people who made them this way. What is this deal with not flushing?? Eww. Are you mentally ill or something???? This stunt, like much of what goes on with out of control brats, simply defeats my understanding!:help:

And the skinny teenage salesgirl was really nice.

Thank you my friends. I have to admit that I was very afraid to even enter the Gap because a) it is a normo store and :mad: their saleshelp are skinny teenagers. It was only after my size 16W jeans had been baggy on me for quite awhile that I to get up the courage for this stunt. The other store was easier. It sells a lot of loose-cut baggy linen pants and skirts. It was neat going down from their large to their medium, though. I still wear size huge in tops and probably always will. I have broad shoulders and I don't like my shirts to be clingy or fitted.

Omigawd, grrl, I do feel for you! I've also worn the T-shirt. I saw a woman who worked for me get hired to a position senior to my own when I was working at the University of Toronto and all I had to comfort myself with was that I at least wasn't chinless! The fact that she was a wonderful person didn't stop the hurt that I felt at the time. And I was young and poor. I was married to a musician which meant that I was supporting two people, one who got to sleep in every morning. Ugh! :mad: There were times during those years when I ate a lot of Kraft dinner. Later on I ditched the musician; he was expensive, lazy and he wasn't faithful. I started making much more money. I bought a tiny shack of house and paid it off. Its value appreciated - property values always do - and I started trading up in both the category of men and of houses.:rolleyes You are very lucky; you have already got a good and working man. From my own experiences of ageing and from that of observing those of other people who are my age the general rule of thumb seems to be that when you are young you have your looks, your health and your physical, creative, intellectual and emotional energy. When you are old you have money, stability, knowledge, self-confidence and sometimes - if you are very lucky - savoir-faire. The trade-off is that when you are young you are cornered by money problems and job problems and are continually being dissed by the power structure. On the other hand when you are old you are a physical wreck and it is only going to get worse. You also get to see a lot of people who you want to have around you die. Trust Green on this one. She's has worn both T-shirts!:phanvan She knows, eh.:tired

That is a most interesting quote which you have posted, Geezer Sue. Thank you.

Your weight loss has been really impressive. Congratulations!:mad:

Don't pb on the sheep, Cloe! It's very impolite.

You will be able to do it, folks! I spent the week before my surgery doing the Last Supper thing.:hungry: This is a normal reaction to the surgery that is coming up. I had my surgery done last September and yesterday I went clothes shopping in normo stores. I bought a pair of pants and a skirt in size medium and two pairs of skinny pants at the Gap in size 16 and I didn't have to struggle to get them on. I am 57 years old! :biggrin1: And because I've torn my rotator cuff I haven't been able to go to gym since I had the operation. Alll I have been doing is walking. :biggrin1: The operation turned out to be surprisingly painfree except for the gas pains! But they say that the quickest way to get rid of those is to walk as much as you can.:mad: I spent the first three days in bed reading and dozing with the cat to keep me company. By day four I was up, in day clothes and goofing on the computer. I believe that you will love the results that the lapband will give you.