anonemouse

I've not really heard anything about Dr. Woodman. Have you tried searching on ObesityHelp.com for some of his other patients? I wish that was all it was. I stayed with my parents for about 4 weeks, and when I got back to Kentucky, the air wasn't working. I had to go back to Tennessee the next day, though, so I just turned it off and left.

It was the last day of June.

I did earlier today. He came and looked at it and couldn't figure out what was wrong with it, and just said to call them again on Monday if it still wasn't working. And of course, it's supposed to get up into the mid-90s here this weekend. I think it needs more freon or coolant or whatever. It works (sometimes) when I first turn it on after it's been off for a while, but then it just starts blowing warm air. The fan works fine, it just isn't cooling anything.

While I do agree that it is posssible that Tammy knew nothing about what was going on, I think it is highly unlikely. She was either a complete idiot (which she didn't seem to be) or she was complicit. She may have started out with the purest of intentions, but I think she liked the lifestyle and that she probably convinced herself that she really wasn't doing that much harm. Hell, she probably deluded herself into thinking that she and ol' Jimbo were actually helping people. Denial helps people sleep at night, after all.

I thought it was interesting that most sundown towns actually weren't in the South. In fact, the guy that did the research found that Illinois had the most sundown towns.

I had never really heard the term "sundown towns" until today. Apparently, they are towns that used to (and may still, depending on who you talk to) ban non-caucasians (mostly African-Americans, but sometimes Jews or Native Americans) from being in the town or passing through it after dark. That got me thinking about my hometown. I can remember having a discussion in elementary school where one of the other students (or maybe the teacher, I don't remember) mentioned that there used to be a sign posted by the interstate that passed through our town, warning African-Americans not to be caught in town after dark. I can also remember hearing about the black man that was lynched at our courthouse. You can look for your town in this database: Sundown Towns by James W. Loewen. Just click on the map, and it will take you to a page that you can use to find suspected or confirmed sundown towns listed by state. My hometown (Crossville, TN) is listed as a probable sundown town. Apparently, there was a significant population of African-Americans there until the early 1900s. For some reason, they all left. By the year I was born, 1983, there were few, if any, African-Americans in my town. There wasn't a single African-American student at my elementary school, and only one or two biracial students (but several Hispanic students) at my high school (more than 2000 students).

About the protein shots... I have always been told that your body can only absorb about 25 grams of protein at one time and that the excess protein just gets turned to fat. If that's true, I would only take 1/2 of the 42 gram protein bullet at one time.

I don't think that it's all that bad of an idea, either.

That's not normal. It sounds like you might have an infection. My surgeon told me to look for swelling, redness, and heat.

Good luck!

It was a lot of fun, for the most part. I spent the week in a very small house with too many people, with periodic visits from even more people. It was basically a family reunion, even though a lot of the family couldn't be there. It was my parents, me, my brother and SIL, an uncle and his wife and two daughters, another uncle and his wife, and their three kids, those kids' spouses, and their 5 grandkids. Most of the grandkids were monsters or monsters-in-training, especially one in particular. He's the favored child of the favored child, so he gets away with EVERYTHING. To make matters worse, he's a child actor (actually just got signed to a NYC agent) who thinks he's cuter than he is. He ignored everyone that he couldn't manipulate, got away with kicking one of the other kids in the face, and got away with refusing to speak to his mother and father on the telephone. (They had to go back to Atlanta after a couple of days and left him there with his grandparents. He was the one to suggest that they let him stay there, btw.) The sad part is that he's only 5. I can't imagine what he'll be like when he's older.

I never said I was an expert. If simply posting about a topic implies that you think you are an expert on it, there wouldn't be very many people posting on this board. And unfortunately, you can't rely on people to think of what's best or what's right. If you could, we wouldn't need any laws. I would love to agree with you, to think that parents would always put the welfare of their children first. But the simple fact is that a lot of parents don't. When the nightly news is filled with stories of parents pouring boiling water on their children, locking them in closets, even prostituting them, that fact's abundantly clear. And while having more children than you can care for doesn't even begin to approach the level of abuse that I've mentioned, it clearly adversely affects the welfare of that couple's children. And yet there are people out there that continue to do it, just because they want a very large family. Like I've said before, I have absolutely no problem with people having children that they can care for. If you have the time and money to care for 7 or 8 children, that's wonderful. If you don't, though, it is clearly irresponsible to have 7 or 8 children. You don't have be a parent to see that.

I have a couple of opinions here. Like others, I think that there should be a reasonable time limit on alimony. I also think, though, that unless a domestic partnership has all of the legal benefits and bindings of marriage, it should not be considered a reason to discontinue alimony. Admittedly, I don't know enough about domestic partnerships in California, whether they are legally binding, or whatever. If they aren't legally binding relationships, but are still considered grounds to discontinue alimony, what keeps someone from asking that they be allowed to stop alimony payments just because their ex has a new boyfriend or girlfriend? Does that make sense or is it as clear as mud?

Good night!

Good luck with your progress! I am glad to be home. Living with my parents for close to six weeks, after I've moved out and tasted freedom, was not my idea of paradise. I'm just hoping to continue to lose weight. I feel like I can eat forever right now, so I can't wait for my first fill (scheduled for August 8th). I am just trying not to regain everything that I've lost. The parts that I'm struggling the most with are taking my vitamins every day (they have to be taken with food, but I never remember them until I'm between meals) and getting enough water.

My parents have a weekend house at a local lake that the entire family has been going to during the summers for about 50 or so years (the lake, not the house). The rest of the family (my dad's two brothers and their wives/kids/grandkids) got a cabin at the resort that's about 2 minutes away from the house, so we had a mini family reunion of sorts. To be honest, I don't really have a diet. I just try to eat relatively healthy foods (although, my dad's birthday was on the 27th, so we had white chocolate bread pudding and an ice cream birthday cake for desert one night). I had a few cookies during the week, too (my uncle co-owns a Subway, so he brought lunchmeat, bacon, and cookies), but otherwise I tried to stay away from junk food and eat decently.

Well, I'm back from vacation. I've missed a lot of this thread, and I don't remember which page I was on when I left. If you posted anything for me in the last week, please repost it.

Hi, everyone! I've not been around much for the last few weeks, but I just wanted to say hi to everyone. Everything went fine with my surgery and all, and I've just been staying with my parents (damn dial-up!) since then, helping out at their business.

Even though there is a size difference when you have your arms raised, they look symmetrical when you have your arms down. My concern would be that if you had one made larger or the other made smaller, they wouldn't look symmetrical when you had your arms down.

See you later! I'm going on vacation for a week, starting tomorrow, so don't worry when you don't see me around for a while!

I really think that Lee's just worded some of his comments badly, and given people the wrong impression. Once they get that impression, they read it into every comment he makes, even when it's not deserved. I think that we forget, in many cases, that the written word isn't always the best means of communication. You can't see a person's body language, which really does give us clues to the true meaning of their comments. You can't hear inflections in their voice that could change their meaning. Sometimes, people just aren't great at communicating what they mean with the written word.

If it is true, then all I can say is "Ouch!"

BJean, while his comment about the 11-year old is ick-worthy if you don't take it in context with the entire post that he made, it really isn't that bad if it is taken in context. Here's the original post: Yep, feeling great! Except for a stitch in my side that I've had all day, anyway. I was actually one of the lucky few who never had gas pain.

But she was responding to the question of why so many white women are marrying black men. The stereotype of black men having larger "packages" is very well-known. It's not a far leap to think that she was referring to the stereotype with that comment.

Before I forget, here's this week's updated spreadsheet. I'm not going to have time to post tomorrow, and I'll be gone for the week, so I'll go ahead and say "bye" to everyone now. I really hope I remembered to add all the updates that were posted or sent to me. EDIT: Crud! I can't believe that I forgot to add the spreadsheet! I have been SO scatterbrained this week. I looked for the keys to my apartment for two days before I found them lying on the passenger seat of my car, where I THOUGHT I had already looked.