green

Well, looking at the photos makes me feel a little sad. Here I am up in Toronto, Canada and we haven't had any snow yet! I haven't even started wearing a winter coat. The temperature has been in the 40s and 50s. It is definitely going to be a green Christmas.

For years I only had one credit card, VISA. I recently got a store card because I was buying something there and they promised me 20% off if I signed up for their card. I only used their card that one time and I pay off my VISA at the end of each month. Having only one credit card and one debit card has made my finances very simple and everyone accepts VISA.

Re roast beef and roast pork, we say it the same way as GeezerSue does up here in Canada. We also call all soft drinks "pop" whereas you Americans call them "soda." If you want a Coke or Pepsi or Fanta or whatever, you have to ask for it by name.

I have lived on both sides of the Atlantic and I must say that I completely disagree with the above quoted post. It is true that energy prices are cheaper in North America. It is also true that personal living space is cheaper for most of us who live on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. On the other hand we are on the losing end when it comes to travel and culture. All the interesting countries are over there in Europe. When I lived in France all the interesting places to go to were a long weekend away. As for cheap gas, when you are living on that side of the Atlantic, who fucken cares? Intra and inter city travel belongs to the realm of mass transit. It's fast, cheap, and efficient. The traveller has an number of options: bus, train, or plane. And if folks want to go by car and they are willing to share the costs, well, there are on-line services where the traveller can connect with other folks who are going in the same direction. When I lived in France I travelled to north Africa, Italy, Corsica, Spain, England, and Scotland. This was really easy for me to do. I was living in the hood and I had developped connections. I wasn't too happy about having to return home, you know. I didn't know how I was going to live over here on this side of the Atlantic. I do continue to live a very nice life. I live in a large North American house and I continue to travel. I have visited a lot of interesting parts of the world. I also have a friend who ended up working and living in Germany when she was in her 40s. She is still there. There are times when I suspect that she is living my life. She is engaged in doing what I did while I lived in Europe and what I still try to do now that I am living over here. She does a lot of travelling. I try to travel too, but it ain't as easy when you are on this side of the ocean. This has certainly turned out to be a long post but I guess that the point that I want to make is that life is so very, very interesting and it should not and must not be reduced to this biz of gas prices, ya know. That is just dumb.

And then my mum was on coumadin for some years before she died. But it is a rat poison, or so I've heard, and we used to like to tease my mum that she was on a diet of rat poison, but my mum finally ended up with blood that was just too, too, too thin. The family doesn't know how that happened but it did contribute to her sudden death, I suspect. Sometimes the steps leading up to the death of a loved one are simply too frightful to take in. The person whom you love is there and then he or she is suddenly swept up in an event with the result that this individual has disappeared from your view on a permanent basis. My mother was on Coumadin and by the time that she died she was more or less purple from the result of all the needles that she received. This is, the way, how an anti-clotting agent works on intravenous stuff. As for my mum, none of us have any idea how she managed to get her paws on so much anti-coagualant dope at one time.

Wow! You are reminding me of those times when my Dad was alive and that was some time ago. Of course these are both sweet and sad thoughts, as you all can imagine.... Anyhow, the dude was on blood thinners and had just given a vial of his blood. He was monitored frequently. The tech dropped this, it smashed on the floor, and my dad was fascinated to see how easily it ran all over the place,...just like water. My old man was on blood thinners because he would have died without them.

While I would never toss someone aside because they have suddenly noticed me after I had lost a lot of weight - please see my earlier post - I do have a terribly sad story to tell you all right now. (For those who might want to search the internet, I live in Toronto, Canada and the family name of the individuals who are involved is Ruso.) According to the local newspaper reports Wyann Ruso had been psychologically abused for a long time by her husband who repeatedly told her that she was fat, stupid and unloveable. When both of these individuals were in their 40s Wyann had an affair with a co-worker. One of her daughters told her husband about the affair. He then confronted Wyann and threatened to kill her. She found a gun in their bedroom - this is a big deal in Canada as our gun control laws are very, very stringent - and she took this to the local police station. When she turned this weapon in she mentioned the threat on her life. All the local cops could tell her was "don't go home." The poor woman did have a handicapped child in the house and did eventually go home. She was worried about the kid, afterall. Her husband attacked her with an axe and a hammer and only after believing she was dead told her kids, her parents, and the cops. Shyann Ruso survived with horrible injuries but two of her daughters are bitter, and are estranged from her. They have publically made a point of being on their father's side. She is physically scarred from her attack and is certainly not an emotionally well woman. How could she be? What I have noticed - and all I can provide is in the way of anecdotal evidence - is that overweight women are, because of their low self-esteem, more likely to suffer emotional and physical abuse from their mates. We all do want to be found worthy of love, don't we? Sometimes this simple desire can lead some of us into deep waters.

My parents came to Canada after the war. My father was a Polish Jew who was lucky enough to wash up in England early in the war. He ended up in British Intelligence. Most of his family perished in the Holocaust. My mother was Scottish by roots but she was born in and had grown up in England. They met during the war. Neither of them had any attachment to religious beliefs. It may be that their war experiences severed any belief that they might have had. Who knows? When they had their three children, myself and my two brothers, after they had come to Canada, they had us baptised in the Anglican (Episcopalian) church. They did this because this was the 1950s and people were still very interested in things like that. My mum made a point of going to church most Sundays even though she found the exercise to be a boring one. It was the 1950s and this was expected of her. Sometimes she would haul one of us with her but usually we stayed at home in our pajamas with our dad. I briefly got religion after I was sent to boarding school at the age of 10. The school was run by an order of Anglo-Catholic nuns. My conversion didn't last very long. Christianity didn't seem to be very inclusive and this seemed to me to be very cruel. I was eleven at the time and I didn't like the idea of all those good individuals who had never had the chance to know Jesus being eternally screwed. Because I was only eleven I was also a little dismayed to hear that animals would not get to pass over to the other side. It became difficult for me to continue to believe in such a strange belief and I suspected that there might be something better. Unbelief or disbelief was something that gradually occurred to me as an adult.... Now, one of you (I think it was Sunta) has pointed out that similar stories to those contained in the Bible can be found in other Middle Eastern cultures. To tell you the truth I have heard this before. It may worthwhile to recognise that the Bible is a collection of documents that come from a primitive culture and they have been subjected to, as Carlene has pointed out, wholesale editorial changes: great chunks of material were destroyed in the early years of the establishment of the Christian church. My personal feeling as an atheist about this issue of God is that God is formed in Man's image and that God is created out of Man's desperate need for Him. We see so many versions of God being bruited about, do we not? Some of these versions of God are very narrow-minded and judgemental. Let us look to the Christian God. Why, some of these pastors who speak for this God are not even willing to acknowledge the validity of other Christian sects! We have also seen good Christians post here who have another view of God and of Jesus. These are passionate individuals and they claim that they are following the Bible - for it is inerrant, remember! - but they have chosen to cherrypick out of this complex and often somber and violent document. I believe that if you want to come to a good understanding of a society, its fears and its values, you should examine its God.

*giggle* Go for it! It will drive him nutz.

Congrats! Get money from them!

And as for you who believe, how do any of you know that your God is the right God? You all believe with equal intensity, it seems to me. What if you all fry 'em in Hell Baptists croak and then find out that Allah is the one true God? It seems to me that we really have no way of knowing, do we? It might be a good thing to tread carefully in the presence of the Ineffable - that is if you believe in Him - for you have no idea as to which shape or form He might take, eh. This is just a suggestion.

I find it impossible to believe in God, any God, for I have seen no evidence of one. This is why I am an atheist. There are quite a few of us and I frequent a website where I find many other atheists. Believers do enter this site in order to debate with us and one of their concerns is that a disbelief or an unbelief in a higher power will free people up from behaving in a morally and socially correct fashion. Remove God (our hall monitor) from the equation and anarchy will follow. In fact this is not true. Most humans are by nature caring, empathic creatures. We don't enjoy seeing others suffer. This is human nature at its healthiest. It might be argued that we are programmed to respond in this fashion. Afterall, we, like dogs, do live in packs/social groups, don't we? Bad behaviour only leads to the collapse of our families, our towns and our nations. Instinctually and intellectually it makes sense to us to uphold the laws of the land, and these are only a formal codification of our own sense of morality and righteousness. The moral burden thrust upon the thoughtful atheist is, if anything, greater than that the believer has to bear. For those of you who believe in an afterlife the sight of people who are suffering is mitigated by the belief that they will eventually be rewarded somewhere down the road. For us unbelievers watching the pain that these unfortunates must suffer carries a different weight. We know that this is the only show in town. When you are dead, you are dead. You only achieve immortality through your genetic contribution. And maybe you can help out the miserable ones by being a decent, stand-up human being while you are still alive for you understand that this really is it.

Here is an address where those who are interested can connect to local newspapers throughout the globe. I sent it to a friend of mine who lives in San Francisco some years ago. He had been complaining about the news sources that were available to him being too caught up in the American world view. http://mypage.bluewin.ch/a-z/cusipage/allpaprs.html I hope I got this address right. I am blonde, ya know. Yup, I tried it out and it works so go ahead and enjoy. On a related note, you might be interested to hear that my friend who lives in Germany receives CNN there. She receives the Euro version and she claims that this is very different from the American version. It is, she says, less strident.

Laurend's comments are important, I think, and this is why I have reproduced her quote in full above. I, too, believe that to force a woman to have children that she does not want is to reduce her to second class status. She is only one step above wearing the niqab for the message is the same: you must abstain (unlike a man) from enjoying the sexual side of your nature. As for the Bible, I went to my favourite site and found the following information. As I have commented before, this collection of documents that we call the Bible is a complicated and often contradictory land in which to roam. Hosea 9:11-16 Hosea prays that the people of Ephraim will be barren. God hears his prayer and causes these women to miscarry. Numbers 5:11-21 contains a brutal description of an induced abortion technique to be performed on a wife suspected of adultery. Numbers 31:17 "Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him." (One might assume that some of these women were pregnant, eh.) Hosea 13:16 God promises to dash to death the infants of Samaria and "their women with child shall be ripped up." 2 Kings 15:16 God allows the pregnant women of Tappuah to be "ripped open." As for Jesus, He criticizes the Jews for not killing their disobedient children according to Old Testament Law: see Mark 7:9 and Matthew 15: 4-7.

I like baggy clothes and believe that they look the best on me. This is because, thin or fat, I have never had anything near an hourglass figure. I've always been more of a tube. I have always had a thick waist, broad shoulders and comparatively small breasts and hips. When I gain weight I gain this evenly over my torso. I look like a love seat with slim arms and legs. This is also why I still take big sizes even though I now weigh 179. I've still got that thick waist and broad shoulders. What a drag! Now, one of my best friends is also fat but she is built entirely differently from me. She has big breasts, an actual waist, and rounded hips. She looks like a fertility figure and she looks fabulous in fitted clothes whereas I look like a cowboy in drag. And my jeans are always baggy in the butt, hips, and thighs.... But big boxy tops look good on me. I've really enjoyed reading this thread although I have felt a little envious of all you folk who can wear normo sizes and yet who are roughly in the same ball park weight wise as I am.

Wow, he really is a prick, isn't he? Maybe it is time to push him back.... From my understanding of your last post it seems that he has put the utilities in his name and is therefore on the hook for paying these bills. Afterall, it is now a matter of his credit rating, not yours, that is the issue: he will pay these bills. You don't have to contribute. Do remove your accounts to another bank and do arrange for direct deposit, etc. You might also wish to remove funds that remain in joint accounts at this time. With respect to the phone, etc, get this account under your name and arrange for payment to be made through your new account or - if you want to play dirty - cancel these services and get yourself a cell phone that you keep near to your person at all times. Another approach might be to have a strong door with a good lock installed in order to protect your room and have new cable, phone and internet service supplied to this room only. In this way your daughter won't be entirely cut off from these services. If you choose to do this you can get a geek in and have him unlock your home access to this site. (You did say earlier that your husband had made it impossible for you to get here from your home computer.) I do feel for you and for all that you are going through. Having children certainly complicates things when it comes to fighting this sort of marital war. He is, afterall, their father and yet he is behaving in a very brutal fashion towards yourself. You are in a difficult position: do you descend to his level and take your gloves off? or do you continue to take the high road for the children's sake? My own instinct would be to take the gloves off at this point. You have put up with a lot. Why don't you talk to your kids about the situation? Ask them how they would feel if things got a bit bloodier around the house for awhile? Tell them it won't be forever.

Did someone say my colour?? Green wants to know. Oh Lila, I am so, so envious of you. My husband and I were planning to go to Mexico over the Xmas period but his sister and her two children are coming here from France and so we have chosen to delay our trip. It will be fun spending Xmas in the company of children but I do love Mexico, particularly the Pacific coast. I am hoping that we will get down there in the new year. Walking, eating salsa and guacamole, swimming in the ocean, and just generally hanging out sounds like heaven to me. Have you done any riding yet? There was a ranch on the main street of the little town where we once stayed. It's a drag about your band being so tight. Hopefully it will loosen up a bit. Have a very merry and enjoy yourself to the maximum. :biggrin1:

I had read somewhere that she was much more hawkish on this war than Clinton might have been. She has spoken out in favour of it since holding her present elected position. Upon learning this I became somewhat less enchanted by her - I am one of those who have always been against this war in Iraq - but I am a foreigner and wouldn't be able to vote anyway.

In England people eat a lot of lamb. My Mum came from England and so we grew up eating lamb. I never liked it when I was young. My mother tended to overcook meat. I like meat to be rare.

"There, but for the grace of God, go I." But none of us who are able to participate in this debate have to worry about that caveat, do we? None of us are or are looking after individuals who are so dreadfully handicapped that our household pets display more, well, what can you call it but mammalian charm. I guess the issue of foetal or pre-born rights is a little clearer for those of us who are atheists. We are not only used to examining nature but we think of ourselves as being part of the continuum. This whole biz of how gets to survive and who doesn't is tricky biz indeed. My brother is a doctor and in his first year in med school he learned that - historically speaking - more women died through childbirth and its complications than men did in war. Yep, up until the 20th century childbirth was a perilous experience for oh so many of us. (Try typing in puerpal fever.) I am an atheist and I had an abortion the moment I found out that I was pregnant. This was between week 6 and 7. Had I personally been so unorganised and so negligent as to let this state of affairs run to the point where I could have had a live birth I would have done so and I would have given the child up for adoption. This is how I am built. I really didn't want to be a mum. But I had always been meticulous about birth control and I knew pretty early on when everything went bad. I am an atheist. There is no question that the mother's rights trump that of her unborn baby. When you walk into a wood you will see a lot of saplings. Most of them won't survive. The rights of the full grown parental trees will trump that of the seedlings.

I have been a pretty mouthy outsider on some of your more intellectually challenging threads. I am a Canadian as some of you may know and some years ago I would have felt guilty wading into issues that you all might rightfully consider as being as domestic issues. I would have kept my gob shut but now I feel comfortable engaging in these debates and I feel that you must understand why. The truth is that American policies affect not only American citizens but do take in a raft of other people: Canada is certainly affected, as is Mexico, and then we have a mess of tiny Carib countries - the ones that girdle Cuba - and then of course there are the central and south American countries. Not all Canadians are aware that in the 1930s the Canadian economy was neck in neck with that of Brazil. It is certain that Canada has profited in a major way by the economic rise of the United States. She has been floating to the top on America's coat tails. On the other hand Great Britain had been occupying for centuries the place to which the US had come - both with respect to moral power and to physical might - after the conclusion of second world war. It is kind of interesting that it is the Anglophone nations who seem to be the ones who are the most engaged in this notion of democracy and freedom of speech, etc. So after the second world war we are looking at a chunk of property that has been depleted - let's call this most of Europe - and then we gets to view the healthy turf of North America. Oh lucky day! This property happens to be sheltered by a significant chunk of water on either side. This is a good thing for the obvious and stupid reason: Americans don't want to be invaded and trapped and stuck worshipping a)Lenin or b)Allah or c)whatever. It is important that you Americans understand that you now have other nations who rely upon you. You have become the single most important nation in this world at this time. You no longer have the right to privacy. You no longer belong to yourselves. This is why you will be subjected to complaints.

Thanks for giving the above snopes address, lisah. It is most informative on Clinton's record on terrorism. As for Clinton's sexuality, I, like most foreigners, have always failed to see what this had to do with his ability to govern. I have noted that a number of prominent Republicans have been recently outed for their own sexual pecadillos and are thus a long, long way from being as pure as the driven snow. The difference, as I see it, is that Clinton never ran his presidential campaign on this issue of family morals, whatever that might mean, unlike these new socially conservative Republicans. If there are any more scandals in this party I suspect that social conservatism will be just another way of saying hypocrisy.

It's true that cats are no good when it comes to cleaning up one's home of dropped nosh. They are actually messy eaters. Mine leave a litter of half eaten cat cookies around their feeding station and one of 'em likes to hook the wet stuff out of his food bowl and hurl it on the floor with his paw before he will consider eating it. The other licks the gravy off the gooey food and later may or may not eat the rest. And of course you gotta feed 'em before you get around to making the morning coffee....which you yourself need so bad! Still, that is The Way of The Cat.

All the very best to you, Bitter, and I hope you have a wonderful and peaceful Christmas.

Thanx, Yoda. In the right hands my neighbourhood barber shop would make for a good TV series, being as it's multicultural and all - which is the Canadian thing.:clap2: