green

Lucky Lila. What an interesting country! I love Mexico. Where will you staying?

Congratulations, deputy first lady! This is so cool! And congratulations to your husband for his win.:clap2: :clap2: :clap2: :clap2: :clap2: :clap2:

I can eat everything! My third scheduled fill is coming up next week but the TLBC fill tech is being very conservative with my fills. Maybe this is because I had problems drinking water after my first fill and had to ask her for a defill. The rest of my graduating class received 5 cc for the first fill. I received four. At the time of the second fill I was topped up to 5 cc but the rest of the gang are cruising on 6 cc, I believe. One of the gang claims to eat a lot of subway sandwhiches, but it seems that she also PBs a lot. Perhaps I shouldn't be in a flap over this issue. I know that I have lost weight since I have been banded and that my appetite is not as out of control. I am eating more carefully but I would like to feel some sense of restriction. I am afraid that I will return to my old eating habits otherwise. I guess that I am in a flap....

Raspberry cheese crepe, eh. Mmmmmmmm. Green is in lurv! Speaking seriously, I am glad that you got to go to Halifax. I was there briefly last August for my nephew's wedding. What a pretty city! We were intending to spend a whole week but the folks at my mate's work got nasty with him. Still, we really liked what we did get to see of Halifax and the surrounding area. We actually did manage to see Peggy's Cove but it was pouring rain that day. It was worth the visit even though we were cold and wet. I loved seeing your photographs.

I have heard that the best way to successfully introduce change into an interpersonal dynamic is to change one's own actions and reactions. You are far too exhausted right now; what you need is peace and quiet and lots of rest. Maybe he could stay at a family member's house for the weekend in order that you can have a break? What you might want to do when you are feeling stronger is try analysing what your "hot buttons" are. If you can avoid reacting to him when he is pushing these, maybe he will start to change his behaviour. Oh yes, the two of you should probably go for some counselling sessions, both together and apart. You've been going through a very, very rough time lately! The kids will undoubtedly love you for giving it another shot. And sometimes the second chance does work out. My significant other and I got back together after taking a break from each other. We got involved with other people but discovered that no one else measured up. Good luck.

Big congratulations! That is terrific news.

Ugh! I can eat bread with no trouble.

Sometimes tough love is the right kind of love. I had a yuppy friend who always gave into her daughter. She grew up to be a real spoiled monster. The yuppy friend thought that she might have some kind of emotional disability, took her to a shrink for assessment, and the shrink said that she was just badly spoiled is all. I regret that we are no longer friends but I couldn't stand being around her daughter and she liked to bring her along. Ugh! Now, tell us about the events of yesterday. Did your hubby get elected? I sure hope he did! PS. Congrats on the weight loss!

Green is in the yellow zone. Maybe my band is leaking or something? I have 5 cc in a 10 cc band.

I still have no restriction. I ate a hamburger the other night with no problem. I wonder if my band is leaking.

Good luck on your weigh in!

Great photos, eh.

There is a vilification of poverty and of the poor and from what I have been reading this attitude originated with an off-shoot of Protestantism - Calvinism. According to Alain de Botton in his book, Status Anxiety, many 19th century Christian thinkers came to think that wealth in this world was a mark of God's favour and thus " the Poor are Sinful and Corrupt and Owe their Poverty to their Stupidity." The writer notes that this feeling was particularly prevalent in America. Add to this the fact that it is not easy to like poor people. They seem to live muddled and chaotic lives and usually have bad taste. And the middle class, the backbone of any stable society, is under attack or, at least, feels itself to be under attack. It is understandable that there will be tensions and resentment. Nevertheless, most of you are Christian, and Jesus's take on the poor was very different. His instruction on this issue is much more challenging. This is not to say that we should not care for our ageing folk. These are not only people who created us, their own blood children, but who created our society through working hard, paying their taxes, engaging in the community and by voting. We owe them a lot, both singly as their children and collectively as a society.

We in Soviet Canuckistan are much more heavily taxed than our neighbours to the south. These taxes go towards paying for our social programmes and our general infrastructure. You must realise that our population is very small compared to yours, only somewhere around 35 million I believe, and yet our land mass is large. This means that a lot of highways, etc. to nowhere have got to be paid for. Still, we've been told that we boring Canadians seem to be a nation of savers, folks who have little nest eggs squirreled away. On the blog of an American who chose to move to Canada for political reasons she mentions that, along with all our good qualities, we are cheap. I was kinda shocked until I thought about it. She is likely right: we are a nation of bargain hunters and savers. Perhaps it has something to do with the climate, eh. My friends who live in the highly industrialised western European countries pay much more tax than we do. They like to visit Canada because the living here is cheap in much the same way that we Canucks love crossing the border for our holidays. The idea of a flat across the board tax with no loop holes seems intriguing to me. It would put a lot of accountants out of business, though. How much weight do they carry in Washington? Perhaps if the flat tax works south of the border this concept could be imported up here.

Oof, the goldie years suck, you brand new lucky Canucky. Bette Davis said that growing old wasn't for sissies. It is good to hear your voice again and you should feel free to express the downside of life on this site. You should know that there are others of us who may be going through the same b*ll$h!t, too. Feel free to vent. I myself am suffering from a buggered-up shoulder that won't get better and I still don't feel any restriction! And this is most depressing time of the year! It is the time for eating and sleeping....

And if Iraq becomes a "better place," won't that be an American success? And, by the way, the donkey is spelled Democrat!

You have a good point, Laurend. There will be home grown terrorists (nutbars) who will have no connection with the events in foreign countries. There will be folks like Tim McVey. There will also be alienated/whacked out crazy people who decide to become mass or serial killers. Most Americans are more likely to be affected by these individuals than by Muslim terrorists. This is just the way the odds work. I don't think that we should forget the odds. People who live in Manhattan, Washington and possibly Chicago, L.A, San Francisco and Seattle may live in attractive cities to terrorists. As for myself, a Canadian, I live in Toronto which is probably the most attractive Canadian city. Folks who live in Ottawa, our capital, and in Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver might also be considered to be at risk. This means that most of Canada and the United States are irrelevant to the terrorists, and even in those areas that are vulnerable most of the population would be unaffected. The events of 9/11 were truly horrible. I was emotionally frozen by these events as were we all. This was not just an American tragedy, it was a North American tragedy. In fact many Canadians were working in the twin towers and died that day. And it was Canada who received the international flights when the States became a no-fly zone. It is, however, of paramount importance that a large and powerful country not sink into fear and paranoia as a result of this terrible time. North America will not be invaded by Muslims. Post 9/11 there has been no further successful terrorist activities on North American soil. Should, god forbid! a further tragedy happen, most of you will not be affected and the perpetrators will be found and punished. I am puzzled by the climate of fear in which so many of you have chosen to live. Realistically speaking most of us have as much chance of being killed by terrorists or psycho-killers as we do of winning the lottery. In fact we probably have more chance of winning the lottery. I do not think that it is healthy for anyone to choose to operate under a climate of fear. I say this as a woman who has travelled alone in Europe, who has lived alone in the heart of a major north American city, and as a woman who is, on her father's side, part of an often disliked minority. The way I see it, you who have chosen to embrace this climate of fear have permitted the passage of the Patriotic Acts, and these are serious attacks on your civil liberties....

Oh, Carlene, my current viewpoint has come about because I have been dragged unwillingly to the point where I am now an old fart. I have observed a lot of relationships and seen a lot of compromises that seem to observers to make no sense at all and yet they work for the two people who are involved.

I don't think you understand much about terrorism. I don't either but here are a few facts that you should be aware of. 1 - Apart from the truly dreadful events of 9/11, events that occurred while the Republicans were in office by the way, there have been no other successful terrorist activities inside North America. 2 - Terrorists like to target internationally important cities and international flights. This means that very few of the 300 million folks who live in America will be affected by terrorist activities. 3 - Most terrorist activities are confined to the state of Israel. You may be interested to know that a number of possible terrorist activities since 9/11 have been foiled due to the joint efforts of the FBI and the CIA in the United States, the RCMP and CSIS in Canada, and by various European authorities including the Scotland Yard and Interpol. (This way of combatting terrorism is both cheaper and more effective than invading Iraq.)

When I was young and on the eve of my marriage I told my father that I thought that sexual infidelity was the worst thing that a marriage could endure. He was amused by my answer. I was very young but it was my husband's sexual infidelity that ended my marriage. Looking back I now realise that this had been the last straw; he had been a lousy husband. For the past 20 plus years I have been living with a very good man. I believe that our relationship would survive an episode of infidelity if both partners wanted it to remain intact. What it would not survive is spousal abuse, psychological/physical, or financial cheating. If I were to find out that my mate had robbed me of my financial security through years of consistently irresponsible behaviour, I would leave him. If I lived with an abusive man, I would leave him. If my mate, who has always been a loving, responsible, and nurturing human being, had strayed, I would be horribly hurt and I would probably want to know why he had cheated, but I would want to give our relationship another shot. As we all know, marriage is for the long haul and during this time we see our loved one in all phases - the good, the bad, and the ugly. There are times when we are out of sync in our emotional and physical needs. We shouldn't turn to other people, but some people are vulnerable and they do. I hope this never happens to my relationship nor to anyone else's, of course, but we humans are complicated, imperfect, and often lonely creatures.

Is what happens inside a marriage really ever any outsider's business whether the participants be gay or straight? Most of us, the ones of us who don't live in Hollywood that is, take marriage seriously or so it is to be hoped. But maybe life isn't like that, even in heterosexual land. There are an awful lot of divorces, aren't there? And I am sure that there are infidelities that have occurred in marriages that have finally been discussed by the husband and the wife, and ultimately put up with and even forgiven. Yes, marriage should probably be viewed as a serious life-long monogamous commitment between two individuals, and in an ideal world it would be, but this is not an ideal world. Humans are imperfect creatures and it is easy for them to make mistakes. I have observed a lot of relationships and I have read a lot of biographies and I have come to consider that emotional and intellectual fidelity are just as important, if not more so, than sexual fidelity in some marriages. It is up to the individual couple to decide what works for them, not up to any outside force. And by the way, on a personal note, I kicked my ex-husband to the curb when I discovered that he was sexually stepping out on me. His second wife, however, loved him and valued other aspects of their relationship enough that she chose to endure his sexual infidelities. He died a couple of years ago. She is still mourning him deeply.

I have never cheated on my current mate and we have been together for over 20 years nor am I likely to but if I did I would never tell him.

I live in Toronto but I have gay friends who live in Paris who have gay friends who live in Montreal. In fact one of my Paris friends has just moved to Montreal. It is a gay-friendly city. Both Paris and Montreal have gay quartiers, by the way, as does my city. The last week of June in this city is known as Pride Week, there are festivities in the ghetto, and these culminate in a parade on Sunday. The turn-out for this parade is now massive, well over half a million people, and so many major companies participate by providing floats advertising their wares. Also participating in the parade are a number of gay and lesbian organisations; PFLAG is one, parents of lesbian and gays. There is also a group of gay Anglicans (Episcopalians) and a number of minority/special interest groups that are gay. These are groups that carry banners and home made signs. Even though I am not gay I've participated in the parade a few times. Long before the parade became so popular a gay friend used to have a gang of his straight friends come over to celebrate the party with him. We would wait until a float with really good music came by and then fall in behind and dance for awhile. Now the parade is so popular that there are barricades between the public and the parade and so this is no longer possible. Most recently I marched in order to support a friend of mine who is a lesbian. My husband did too and he found the experience stressful. lol

Hurray for Geezer Sue. (And I believe that the total number of deaths on 9/11 was 3,000.)

Ohmigawd! That is so true!! I guess I'm pretty lucky. I've always had a taste for nice boys.:Banane20: