green

I am always impressed by those who have given up smoking and I can fully understand why non-smokers demand to have the right to work in a smoke free work place but let us get real here - during that period when smokers ruled folks were not dropping off with smoke-related illnesses in huge numbers due to their exposure to second hand smoke. There is some degree of hysteria here and some of it is deliberately misguided, I think. It is much easier to blame all our air-borne nasties on second-hand smoke than it is to finger our inefficient power plants and the inefficient transit systems - i.e. the car - that North American society has chosen to continue with. I live in southern Ontario, in a city that is considered the 6th largest city in North America. As the summers have grown hotter and hotter our region has suffered more and more with heat and smog advisories. These advisories mean that we should stay indoors and refrain from physical activity. What makes our air so toxic is that it is too damn hot and smoggy to go outside and as a result everyone has their A/C running. Some of our power plants are still fired by coal and that ain't a good thing. The other thing that makes our air so toxic is that, even though this big city has a superb mass transit system, many people still choose to drive. Cars spend a lot of time idling and when they are doing this they are pumping a lot of toxins into the air. My city has recently enacted an anti-idling law but how are you going to enorce this? It is so much easier to blame everything upon the smoker and this certainly does let all the big players off the hook.

Never, ever listen to the fashion advice of a guy who is straight, sez Green. Everyone knows that straight guys have got bad taste; they want their girlfriends to look like hookers and their wives to look like their mommas!

Thank you, Sunta, for your latest post. I must confess that I have not carefully read through the entire post - lazy Green! - but as you know Canada is a northern country and so I have comments to make. The ecological structure becomes more and more fragile as we move towards the polar regions and along with this fragility goes a lack of resilience. We are no longer living in a lush part of the globe and the damage done to the creatures and the plant life that are to be found in these regions cannot easily be repaired. The continued survival of polar bears is a big problem and is representative of the issues which complicate the discussion of the polar regions. The aboriginal folk of the Canadian north deny that there is a problem vis-a-vis the polar bear issue but then they are making money off wealthy southerners who want to bag a polar bear. The American government and international organizations admit that this species is in trouble. The species is in trouble because the ice conditions that this species requires for hunting purposes have degraded; we don't have much ice in our polar regions because our winters are now too damn warm. It is ironic that the American government admits to a concern about this species but will not admit to the fact that there is global warming. It seems that some of Canada's northern folk, and these are mostly aboriginal people, are also in trouble. They have chosen to live in the north and they have always relied upon winter shipments of hard goods by land. This is because the watery north freezes up solid and this is when the year's supplies of heavy goods are customarily trucked in to these settlements. Well, a year ago the land never really did freeze over until very late in the winter months. This left these northern settlements hanging of course; would they be able to receive their supplies for the year or not? And now I find myself, a Canadian, writing to you all from Toronto, Canada. We haven't seen snow this year. It has been rare when the temperature has dropped below 32 degrees F. The lawns are green on my street and the squirrels are out there gambolling. I own two sheepskin coats; I have worn one of 'em once this year. I am saving a lot on heating costs but I find myself missing winter - I am a Canuck born and bred - and I find myself dreading summer for I know that whatever I have saved on fuel costs now I will more than blow away on air conditioning next summer.

Actually, Ill Jedi, I believe that your last post was what we old f**ks were looking for. You raise a lot of good points in this post. President Polk was a president who slithered into obscurity for good reasons. Presumably there are other underperformers. And your comments about the messier/more controversial aspects of the administrations of Lincoln and FDR are fascinating. Both of these men have acquired great lustre over the years of course. You do well by reminding us of the underbelly of these administrations for there is always an underbelly, is there not? Now, I should mention here that I am Canadian and am therefore not as conversant with your history as most of the other contributors to this thread might be. Though the rules, as I see it, of good discussion or debate or whatever you want to call it do require that we avoid the cop-out of utilising the sound-bite technique - that is to say, issuing a statement and then bailing - it is always important to provide detail, the more the better, in order to press home your point. And if the detail that you provide is sufficiently rich you will not only educate those foreigners who frequent this site, foreigners such as myself, you may well have won them over to your viewpoint. This will be a tough act to perform in the present case: George W is wildly unpopular abroad.

Oh, Wheetsin, my heart goes out to you! I can imagine the horror.... Pumpkin appliquees and sequin ghosts, ugh! I was in the mood to go shopping today after my visit to my therapist. I was feeling in a better mood after she had debriefed me of all my Christmas stresses, I was in the heart of the best shopping district in the city, and we are in the season of sales. So I went snuffling around all sorts of stores ready to buy and came home with nothing. I found out that when you visit the "fat grrl" zone of stores you will be ambushed by pastels even when it is Winter. I found out that most every top will be a Vee-neck and that the one collection of black and white pure cotton Ts that didn't have V-necks and who were from a relatively up-scale designer had designs pressed into them. I like my clothes to be kinda plain and entirely grown-up. If I want to dress them up I want this to be my choice. I have a lot of jewellery, mostly costume, but no one can wear this over clothes that have been junked up by the manufacturer with cute appliquees, sequins and the like. It strikes me that many clothing manufacturers treat women of size as though they were mired in adolescence or pre-adolescence. The cuteness and the baby colours, and the cheap synthetic fabrics that are characteristic of pre-teen clothes show up again in the plus grrl sizes. I personally find this very disrespectful. It's been sticking in my craw for a long, long time now. Green has been a smart, cynical, surly old bat for some years now. She is not prepared to go to bed wearing sleepers which have Walt Dismal's characters printed on them even if they fit her and they are made of 100% pure cotton.

Most Canadians, the ones who have grown up in the cities, have never been near guns. We certainly don't own 'em. This means that your old farts can beat our old farts. lol

BJean, my theory about it is that these kids have grown up on sound bites and thus they believe that this is how one conducts rational discourse.

Poodles, you are describing a look that I look good in and like - the big white shirts and skiny black pants/jeans with vests look. I also look great in boat or jewel neck sweaters but these are hard to find. The clothing manufacturers assume that everyone wants to show off their boobs. The other thing is that I am a true Winter and look best in black, white, gray, and red. There are certain seasons of the year when it seems that it is raining pastels unless you are prepared to shop at the high-end clothing stores. I only wear cotton and linen. Why is it that so many stores think that overweight women want to wear pink or baby blue synthetic garments with cute appliques of flowers, hearts or kittens on them? A woman of size who wants to save money but still look like a grown-up is sh!t outta luck!

OMG, it could be that this year will be the Year of the Vomit! Hahahaha:(

Shucks - I didn't PB for all those months and then I did it twice within a week. 2007 could be the year of vomit for Green, eh. Ya never know...... Bleh....

It is ironic that the Muslims hate the Jews so intensely for Islam and Judaism are closely yoked and of course both Arabs and Jews are both Semitic peoples. Christianity was a religion that drifted away from the exigencies of the desert but both Judaism and Islam are desert religions. Both these religions have a much stronger sense of the responsibility of the host towards those who are in need. Hospitality and help towards travellers and others who are in need are one of the formal demands of both of these religions. This makes sense when you consider that these folk are living in an unkind part of the world. To deny someone help means that you are consigning them to death. The desert is unforgiving, you know. I've travelled through the Sahara in a carvan of specially outfitted cars. Even then we all remained in communication with each other. When I was a young student and hanging out in Morocco with a couple of other European students we were befriended by a young Moroccan who put us up in his crib. He slept on the floor. He didn't want anything from us even though we assumed that he did. The next day he took us over to meet his mum who lived in the old part of the city. She lived in one room which opened out onto a courtyard. There was a communal kitchen. She fed us tea and cakes. Over the years since then I have come to know many Muslims. Some of my family are Jews and though I have been raised more or less atheist I have done some reading and some observing. The practice of good works is formally enshrined in both Judaism and Islam. Indeed, one of the requirements to be a good Jew or to be a good Muslim is to practice kindness and show good works towards others: this is demanded by the religion. Such behaviour is always righteous but for those who live in the harsh conditions of the desert a slip from this will cause death. And of course you will remember that both Jews and Muslims follow certain dietary laws that Christians have taken a pass on.

I didn't PB for the first 3 and one half months. Since I have been banded - Sept 7, 2006 - I have PB-ed twice.

Sounds like an excellent NSV to me, Angel Bear. I love the idea of your bathing suit being in free fall.:omg: Teehee.:mad: Here is my latest NSV: I went to the dentist today and got loads of compliments on my skinnier self. And my jeans which used to be too tight really are very baggy.:mad:

Yep, there are the good Christians and then there are those who are self-righteous Christians and they aren't going to get it, are they?

I am so happy with my band. I have just come back from the dentist and while I was there I received big compliments for my smaller body. I do think that banding can be a wise move for us older women. I know that I started to gain weight after I hit menopause. This happened to me when I was 41! The weight gain happened slowly and at first I was kinda relaxed about it. A year or so ago I woke up and realised that I had become quite large and that this was a one-way street going in the wrong direction. Indeed it was! The following year I continued to gain weight. I was giving away pants that I had recently bought and I was truly in despair over my body. Joining a gym did not help me lose weight and I had heard that diets could have long term negative effects. (Believe it or not, I have only once in my life been on a diet and that was in my early 20s. I put myself on this egg and grapefruit diet and lost weight off my boobs. lol) I had been fantasizing about massive liposuction when a friend of mine heard about the lap band on a local television morning show. She told me about this procedure and told me how to access a local website. My concern was that I wasn't heavy enough even though in Canada we usually are required to self-pay. I met with the surgical team and was approved pending the results of my physical tests. I cleared those and the rest is history. There were a number of things that I found reassuring about this approach to weight loss. I liked the fact that the surgery is minimally invasive compared to many of the options out there. It is day surgery and the recovery time is quick. I also liked the fact that it is reversible. I am one of those people who tend to see the glass as half empty. I know that if I should have a serious illness and need my appetite back, I can get it. Weight gain is a side effect of ageing. The lap band is a tool which can help us fight this.

Yup, that would be him: tall, good lookin' and a beer drinker....:girl_hug: *Heh heh* Because of the beer we had to go home in a taxi. The cabby drove the way cabbies do, breaking suddenly, accelerating, and weaving in and out of traffic. It was not a calm ride. I was so stoned from the wonderful drugs that I was flopping about and by the time we got home I was bleeding profusely. It was a helluva day!:omg: :phanvan That night he was like a mother hen with her chick, however..... And I was so stoned that I was kinda relaxed about the situation. It's okay, Cloe, you can laugh.

I am 57 and started off with a relatively low BMI but I did lose about a pound per week during the first 16 weeks after surgery (which took place in early September). I don't know how I have been doing since then - what with Christmas and all. I haven't gone in for an official weigh in and I don't own a scale. I look a lot thinner and I am eating a lot less than before. I am also thinking more about what I put in my mouth. The band makes you do that and that's a very good thing. The band seems to have changed something, that's for sure. Before I had the band I was active but the weight wasn't budging.

My resolution is to get myself invited to Bitter's house now that she is cooking French cuisine. That pork dish sounds brilliant and I love scalloped spuds and garlic is good with everything savory.:hungry:

Yeh, but why? Don't leave us hanging, eh.:girl_hug:

Well, Cheney is a pretty good shot.....:heh:

And what about Hans Blix and his report concerning the weapons of mass destruction? After the Gulf War a U.N.-sponsored international team was placed in Iraq. Its mission was to search out all weapons of mass destruction in order that these might be destroyed. This team remained there for some years and was headed up by Hans Blix, a former Swedish Dipomat. Though this effort was disbanded in the late 1990s Blix was recalled under the auspices of the U.N. after 9/11 to make a further search for weapons of mass destruction. He reported to congress that none had been found before Bush chose to invade Iraq claiming that Saddam did in fact have WMDs. As we now all know, none were found.

Thursday, Sept 7, 2006. I hope he wasn't behaving too, too badly.......:party:

A PB or Productive Burp happens when what you have just swallowed gets stuck in your upper G.I. tract and will not budge. At first you feel as though you have just swallowed a golf ball. The object hurts and it simply will not move. Then you begin to drool or "slime" and sometimes you find that you are unable to swallow this drool because everything feels so tight. Then you sick up what you have swallowed and everything is more or less okay. It is different from puking. The offending object simply bounces up and out. This happens when the band is tight or when you have swallowed a big bit of something. Lap bands are often much tighter in the morning or when you are feeling some degree of stress.

It is always good to hear from you, Vines.

BJean: Green is still looking forward to the day when her knickers continue to sit when she stands up. That will be one helluva NSV! Happy New Year to everyone!