green

China, eh? I would be inclined to go for it. Sounds like you will have a most interesting 3 days.

Yup, it is a cute euphemism.

I figure I'll give up smoking, see if I can get some Vicodin - 'cause that's what Dr. House likes - and drink a bottle of single malt scotch or some fine, fine claret.... But seriously folks, atheists don't believe in judgement day.

Yah, no longer surprising for Green to hear. One of these dudes was explaining that by publically admitting atheism he was risking social ostracism, loss of job, and maybe having his house burned down...and this is a white dude, a professional, and a pillar of his community! You wouldn't think that he would be this vulnerable, eh? I found his story to be as strange and as foreign as anything I have heard from the Muslim theocracies. I was touched when the dude said that he and his wife might like to retire to Canada, the cold country! Of course, and this is thanks to global warming, Toronto's new winter is kinda like that of Virginia! Our temperatures have been in the 40s and 50s and we haven't seen any snow at all. But that is the topic of another thread. As for me, Green, like the rest of her family, is an atheist all the time. This presents no social problems up here. Over the past 8 years a number of members of my tiny family have died - first dad, then aunt, baby brother, then mum - and all of these members were dispatched without last minute religious intervention.

In a similar vein: why are camels called the ships of the desert? Because they are also full of Arab semen.......

Grrls, we gotta get together and blow up the fat grrl sequin, etc factories! let's take back our self-respect!:heh:

I was banded at TLBC. They were great and I have no complaints. I have heard on this site that Dr. Coburn also gives great lap band.

I grew up and still live in Toronto, Canada. I have heard that this is now the 6th largest city in North America. It is a city that is made up of immigrants. It is also a city that is more like New York or San Francisco - if you want to compare it to American cities - in that the core of the city is the most vibrant part and the most sought after part in which to live. Our areas of dreadful poverty and dysfunction are to be found in certain suburban areas. Although the city is becoming more and more expensive to own property in there are still many areas where our most recent waves of immigrants manage to live. We all live here fairly peacefully; and it is certain that living and working with people who have come here from all over the world makes life here culturally very, very rich. At the foot of my street is a Catholic church which serves the Portuguese community. They hold wonderfully passionate religious parades on this residential street. Nearby is a store front mosque. An imam lives a couple of doors down the street from my house. In the house beside him lives a Hindu family who have always treated me as a family friend. I have worked along side Hindus, Muslims, Catholics, Protestants, atheists, and Jews. Some of my family are Jewish though they are non-believers. Indeed, pretty much all of my immediate family, the Christian side and the Jewish side, can be considered to be atheist. In brief, I live in an interesting and largely tolerant society. Although I have just gone into my story at great and boring length I have done so because I am in touch, through another website, with atheists who live in the Bible Belt. These folks have provided their own stories of how they live in their communities. I find these fascinating. It would appear that there are communities where this issue of religious freedom is not as loosey-goosey as it is up here in the north or in large cities anywhere. The splendid thing about a large city is that it does buy one anonimity.... In truth I do believe that I found myself launching on this long post because I was so surprised to read in an earlier post that there might be Christians out there who had never encountered folks of other faith. These are people who are, by and large, just as enchanting and just as irritating as you and I.

I don't see Clinton's infidelities as being quite so heinous as some of my co-posters do. I see his behaviour as being an issue that properly lies between himself and his family and if they are willing to accomodate that aspect of his personality, then that is their business. JFK was a serious slut, too, but this was not discussed openly by the media in those good old days. FDR had a long-term mistress; his wife, the fine Eleanor, may have been a Lesbian. So what! How do these unconventional arrangements interfere with anyone's ability to govern in a wise, caring and judicious manner? I suspect that had Clinton been a Canadian Prime Minister his stunt with the cigar and Lewinsky would have provoked more ribald amusement than moral outrage. Our satirical public affairs shows - we have a few - would have dined out on this for weeks. The sale of cubans, cigars that is, would skyrocket, and a lot of men would be wearing T-shirts with cigars printed on 'em in the hopes of getting a little bLewinsky. And in the serious media social anthropologists and psychologists would be weighing in. They would of course be discussing infidelity: the whys, the percentages, etc. I see Clinton's offense as being less a moral crime than a crime of appetite. He has much in common with the obese person who is unable to restrain himself. It would be a sad day indeed to hear that an obese person is, only by virtue of their weight, unfit to govern a country.

Watching all of this go on would also make me feel very insecure and vulnerable in my own relationsip with my own mate; in your case it must be particularly so in that your husband's continued friendship with this pair gives the appearance that he condones Mr. P's behaviour. Men can sometimes be less sensitive to these nuances than we are - sorry, Marjon! Have you talked to your husband about this aspect of the situation? As for my earlier assessment of Mr. P's behaviour, I forgot that the dude is only 60. I thought that he was older and more befuddled. My bad.

And that would have got me off the hook with my husband. Haha. And re the reverse BJ, I would hope that that boy could do push-ups with his tongue. Har har.:heh: Of course he does play the sax.......... !

The worst thing is flying into the Big Smoke by plane. Ugh!

Have you considered talking to him about this situation and about your feelings? I am unsure as to how valuable his friendship is to your husband and how valuable the continued friendship of your husband and of you yourself is to this man. It does strike me that his love for his wife was genuine and it also strikes me that men - men much more than women - can become unanchored under these circumstances. As we all know, women can rest in a state of widowhood, go through their time of mourning, and then perhaps remarry. Men tend to leap into a second marriage right away. Indeed, it is true that folks who are widowed may seek a replacement mate much more quickly than those who have gone through a divorce. In a perverse way this may count as a compliment to the departed; this displays that the one who is bereft found the married state to be a wonderful state. Obviously your boy is jumping the gun and is displaying an unsettling degree of callousness. There is no reason why you should be expected to swallow this! On the other hand, it strikes me that he is an old man and that he is confused, frightened and is behaving very, very badly as a result. He sure as hell can't talk to his new woman about any of his internal, ethical or spiritual conflicts. He can't talk to this woman about his grief, fears, despair or qualms over his current behaviour. Let us assume that he has some. Let us also assume that he may not be able to talk about these issues with your husband....men being what they are. Why don't you corner this guy, tell him what you think, and open the door for him to say anything that he might wish to get off his chest? This might be a good move for both of you.

It is my impression that Jimmy Carter is a fine, fine human being.

And he plays the sax....I'd a done him but I would have wanted a reverse BJ. This is only because Green is a very, very lazy grrl. :heh:

I don't know why although I think I once did. lol This is the effect of age, blondieness, and retirement, I guess. All I can say at this point is this: come to Toronto during one of our heat waves when there is an air advisory due to our truly horrible air quality and then our nick name makes sense.:heh:

All of us lapbanders want to lose weight and to be able to wear what the normos wear. Indeed, we want to look like normos. My point is that I feel that women of size should not be punished for being outsized by only having ugly clothes available as their one shopping option. As a case in point: it is much harder to find a plain cashmere sweater with a three-quarter length sleeve in size 3X than it is to find this garment in size 4. I was at my local department store the other day. They had 'em in regular sizes but not in our sizes. And as we all know, a plain cashmere sweater with a pair of jeans, chinos or a funky skirt looks good and feels great. Another case in point: I do a lot of shopping at Winner's which is what TJ Maxx is called up here in Canada. They recently had their cashmere event - for those who fit normo sizes. They generally have some good pickings within the normo size range but the clothes begin to get kinda ugly once we begin to drift in the plus zone. All of a sudden it becomes synthetic city, the natural fibres begin to disappear and so do the subtle and elegant colours; these are replaced by weird and garrish colours which means that you can walk out of the store looking like Jaba the Hut dressed in synthetic orange or, if you don't like orange, then there is the same garment in exactly the same colour of blue of that plastic water bowl which you bought for your dog. Of course such colours are good colours to wear if you are planning to go duck hunting. There ain't nobody other than Dick Cheney who is likely to shoot you by accident. So we are presented with these excessively garrish clothes or we are given the other choice, those damn cute clothes with their sequins, appliquees, Walt Dismal's characters, flowers, hearts, care bears or kittens printed on them. This second choice makes us look like giant, ageing pre-teens. And of course these clothes, too, are rich in synthetic fabrics. There is nothing more comfortable than clothes which are made from natural fibres. They age better, have better drape, and you will sweat less. The only syntho-fibre that I personally like is micro-fibre which drapes beautifully. As you can see from the posts which I have contributed to this thread, I have very strong feelings on this topic. I never really did pay any attention at all to this issue of clothing until I became fat. And I always assumed that I would be able to dress the way I wanted to since I am kinda lucky in that I am not on a tight budget. But I learned that I no longer had the choice. As a fat grrl I had dropped out of sight. This was how I discovered that there is a huge element of discrimination which is being perpertrated by clothing manufacturers against a segment of society which is no longer a minority. Many of the folks who live in North American are overweight and are battling obesity. I believe that we are in the majority at this point. And yet clothing manufacturers do not cater to us. Nor for that matter does the airline industry. As we grow taller and wider the airlines have been demanding that the aircraft companies configure the seating room in order to cram more and more passengers into each flight. But this is a different, though related, complaint of mine. Thanks for letting me blow off steam, folks. I've been brooding over this for a long, long time now.

Rats! Foiled again!:bandit But the Doonesbury cartoon is pee yer knickers funny.......:heh:

Could be tough.... Afterall, this is the Year of the Vomit.:omg: Hahahaha! :help:

I am glad that you had fun in da Big Smoke, Wheezy.

Actually TOM, there are a number of young war resistors up here in Canada along with their young families. These are young soldiers who have gone AWOL and who are now petitioning the Canadian government to be allowed to stay here as refugees, claiming that they will suffer if they are returned to their home country. Things are not looking too good for them. Our immigration rules have tightened up since the days of the Vietnam War. In those days individuals could come here on student or visitor visas and then apply for immigration status and this would almost always be granted. Now there is a point system that must be satisfied, the applicant must apply from outside the country, much paperword must be completed and the process can take up to two or more years. And as for a refugee, he has to make the case that he will suffer undue cruelty/death should he return home. Some of these kids have already been turned down. Their cases are now under appeal. I feel for these kids. The worst thing is that we have recently elected, with a minority only, a Prime Minister who is fond of BuSh. He is sometimes known as BuSh lite.

Wow! :faint: Thanks for providing this info. I am left feeling speechless.

Jodie, your country is a super power and its actions do have a serious impact internationally. This is why foreigners and these are not just us Canadians feel comfortable analysing and, yes, criticizing your country. In one sense you are like your own Hollywood stars; with power and fame your actions have become fodder for the rest of us to discuss. No one here is talking about Finland or New Zealand even though these are democratic countries with sucessful economies. I believe that I am right when I say that many of us foreigners are anxious to see that your country remain strong and economically healthy. You are, you see, the linch pin upon which the stability of the west rests. In a few decades the chief competing economy will be that of China. Some also say that India's economy is growing fast. It is difficult to say whether these countries will be as concerned about international peace-keeping as the western countries now are. This war in Iraq is causing your economy to bleed out and that is not a good thing. Iraq never did have ties with al Quaeda and bin Laden. And according to the report made by Hans Blix to congress prior to the invasion no weapons of mass destruction had been found on Iraqi soil. As to this point that you make about shedding blood for your government: it is true that your country was born out of a revolution, one that had to happen! Canada grew much more slowly due to our lousy climate as much as anything else. There were only handfuls of settlers here when you were giving birth to yourself. There were mostly aboriginals and fur traders and explorers in this part of the world. Even today our population is small: only about 35 million. No blood was shed when this country was hatched. So what's your point? We like our form of government as much as you like yours. Both forms seem to work just fine. In my post I am not picking on you either. You raise some interesting points that I wanted to discuss. (And by the way, congratulations on your weight loss, grrl!)

Yup, you are right, T.O.M., Gerald Ford was a class act, and may I also say that it is a fine thing to hear your voice again. (You might thank yer wife for her patience on my part, eh.)

I don't want to dress like a teenager. I want to have options and I want to be treated by clothing manufacturers with respect. This is what drives me nuts as a big bitch!!! I sure as hell don't want to be infantalized. Green is very, very cranky on this subject!!!!!!!!!