green

Hi Missy4. As you can see from my earlier post, the main portion of our drug exports to the States consist of marijuana. We also manufacture ecstasy and it is possible that heroin is fed into States via Vancouver, a Pacific port city. Of course cocaine does not come down from the north. That's a southern import. Do you see many border infractions where you live?

Nope, I was including Americans, too.

TOM is right about drugs coming into the States from over the Canadian border. Up here we have grow-ops all over the place; it seems like there are busts going on daily. People rent apartments/houses and turn them into grow operations for marijuana. The end result is that these domiciles are no longer fit for human habitation because of the dangerous amount of mould which also grows in these humid conditions. Our previous government did try to decriminalize simple possession of pot but the American government put pressure on our government and so it dropped this initiative. Too bad! Why clog up the judicial system and waste money going after pot smokers? Why not save your ammo for the businessmen who work this illegal game? Anyhow, it appears that the quality of Canadian pot is superb. We ship it Stateside and we receive artillery in return. As you may or may not know, our gun laws are very tough and it is exceedingly difficult to buy 'em north of the border.

It is true about the standard of living in western continental Europe. I lived in France for 3 years in the early '80s. Europe has everything that we have and it is much easier to travel - something I love to do - when you are living over there. Moreover, every worker has a minimum of five weeks of paid holidays as well as medicare and generous maternity leave. Moreover, Europe is very beautiful, both the landscape and the cities. We, however, can justifiably pride ourselves on being less racist and less class conscious.

Hahahahaha! We Canucks are gonna bore y'all to death with our niceness and our polite ways. :heh: :heh: :heh: We will force you to watch the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Channel) and nuthin' but!:rolleyes It's gonna be nothin' but hockey, Canadian news, and bad Canadian sit-coms for your television viewing pleasure, eh.:success1: And then we're gonna restrict your food to donuts and poutine, the national nosh of Canada. :hungry: Yup, it's cholesterol time Canadian style. If the boredom doesn't kill ya the food will. :phanvan (We have our weapons, you know. They might be passive-aggressive weapons but they are ours. )

I just read about your dad, L8. Please accept my sympathy.

I tend to dress to the left and yet I am suspicious of knee-jerk politically correct attitudes. It is for this reason (and because they are well-written) that the only two newspapers to which I subscribe are either centre-right or very right wing. As for Fox, I don't like their news coverage because it is Ameri-centric and I am used to a more globally based approach. This is undoubtedly because I don't live in America and thus my expectations of reportage are different.

I have been finding the past few pages on this site to be most interesting reading and am reinforced in my conviction that democracy truly does live again thanks to the internet; it is here where we can meet in the virtual town square and trade opinions and experiences. My own parents came to Toronto, Canada after the Second World War. She was Scottish (with some French ancestors) but was born and raised in Bristol. Moreover, her father's side of the family were titled landed gentry and thus kind of lah di dah. She hooked up with my father, a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust because he ran away from Poland in sufficiently good time to avoid the slaughter. The marriage was by British standards a mismatch and so they ended up in Canada, a British colony at the time. Nevertheless, the pair of them were treated as foreigners by the native Canadians even though Canada and Canadians were proud of their ties to the mother land and to the British Commonwealth. My mum and dad were always reminded by the locals that they didn't, you know, blend.... Canada was an exceedingly whitebread kinda joint in the late 40s and throughout the 50s. When my father decided that he would learn Russian (an easy thing for a Polish speaker to do) - and this was towards the end of the 1950s - he found himself under investigation by the RMCP (our national police). When my father first arrived in North America and went to visit his oldest surviving sibling, a sister who had left Poland for New York City during the 1930s, he found that she and her husband were unable to discuss socialism in public. These were the days of McCarthyism, you see. He wasn't prepared for this level of fear in the New World. I have a hunch that for people like myself, the well-educated children of people off the boat, a liberal approach is the only logical approach to take. You see, we, unlike you folks who have been camped out in peaceful Canada or the United States for generations, have heard the family stories and we know how easily passion can slip over into intolerance and intolerance is just the beginning of the slippery slope into such behaviours as hatred, racism, violence, totalitarianism, genocide, war. This is why the big cities in Canada, the ones which are overwhelmingly multi-cultural, tend to vote for a liberal ticket even though this is the party that protects the right to choose and which has given to Canada the distinction of being one of the first countries where same sex couples have the right to marry.

Bandiva: four pounds in three weeks is a healthy weight loss. Losing weight too quickly can stress out the body and can lead to an equally quick weight gain further down the road. In fact this seems to be why many diets fail: the weight comes off quickly without the body having a chance to adjust to a lower set-point and then when we ingest a few extra calories those are converted instantaneously into unwanted fat!! The end result is that your metabolism becomes even more efficient at turning anything you eat into personal lard. Remember that 4 lbs in 3 weeks is 8 lbs in 6 weeks and that they say that this biz of getting to your target weight the lapband way is a two-year project. IMHO you are doing very well, grrl!

I have bookmarked a site called Rapture Ready which I occasionally visit when I am in the mood. It makes for fascinating viewing.:rolleyes These folks believe that the rapture is imminent due to the events in the Middle East and so they really don't care about what happens to this planet; they themselves will be leaving it for another climate. As for us Canucks, TommyO, we should be very afraid.:think We have lots of fresh water and as our climate becomes more attractive to live in there will be great pressure from outsiders to take this property over.:success1: Remember that there are only 31 million of us to keep an eye on the joint.:faint: That ain't a helluva lot of people and Canadians are not known for their warlike personalities!:phanvan

Good Luck, Wheezy! May this be the magic fill!

They do appear to be just a bunch of greedy rich white guys who are misusing their Bible.

It is interesting to read that Tina is kinda anti-internet. When we first got our computers I became very annoyed with my mate because he spent vast amounts of his free time on the computer, either playing games or drifting around on the internet. And when he wasn't on the computer he was up at his parents' cottage doing chores. I was wildly jealous of his devotion to his parents and completely bugged by his devotion to the computer because it seemed that I myself and our household needs were getting the short end of the stick. I was only stopped from becoming a nasty, shrewish grrl because I knew that I was in fact very lucky to be with this man and that these frustrations were really kinda minor. Well, now the tables have turned! Now I am the computer addict and it is my poor mate who has to pry me away from my PC. And it is he who sometimes takes up the slack with respect to the household chores. And I have finally, after long years of living with my mate, acquired a taste for country life and, in particular, country chores! I will voluntarily allow myself to be separated from the city, the internet, and all the mod cons if I am allowed to do outdoor work when I land up in the land of lakes and woods. I am now an internet addict. I find the internet to be arguably the greatest cultural leap for mankind after the invention of the Guttenberg Press. Moreover, the internet is truly democratic; everyone who has access to the internet has a voice. Nothing is filtered here.

Yep, I agree.

This is much, much better advice than mine!!!!

If she is a really nice woman maybe you should take your taxes to her and tell her the whole truth about the miracle of the lapband as well. Ask her to keep it absolutely to herself, of course.

Yes, oh yes! But only if you like Canadians!

I am a liberal, heterosexual atheist with many homosexual friends. I also have a valued friend who has right wing views and is a homophobe. He is undecided as to whether he believes in Intelligent Design or not; this fellow does not attend any church, however, although he did have his kids baptised in the Anglican church. Though we are radically different, we occasionally find ourselves sharing a viewpoint. This is part of the value of freedom of speech, I reckon, for it does engage us all in intellectual growth. Your cartoon was silly but you have prompted an array of interesting responses and so it has met your stated goal. Thanks for posting it.

I know that this is going to sound awfully shallow but I gave myself some plastic surgery for my 50th birthday. I had my jawline excavated as it had become rather mushy and gave myself lips. I come from a family that is thin-lipped on both sides and I wanted to be able to wear lipstick before I died. I also wanted to see my jawline again. :phanvan Well, this was all microsurgery and the surgeon also filled in the lines that run between the nose and mouth while he was there. I ended looking much the same but much, much improved; tidied up, you could say. My recovery was quick and I am still happy with the results. Now that my 60th is approaching I am planning to have some more work done. A nice side benefit where I live is that such surgery is income tax deductible.

That is a terrible, terrible accident! I am so sorry that you and your family experienced that. My brother died suddenly of undiagnosed bowel cancer. He didn't like doctors and hadn't seen one for ten years. (I suppose that this attitude might be considered kind of ironic considering that our middle sib is a doctor.) He had had back pains and was suffering from periodic difficulties in his digestive system. He put this down to middle age. When the pains became excruciating he took himself to emergency. They ultrasounded him and found a huge mass. They said that they would have to operate on him ASAP but that it didn't look good. He and I chatted about this later that night on the phone. He sounded his usual self and we talked as though we had decades ahead of us. Later that night he fell into a coma, was rushed into intensive care, and died a week and a half later. He was 48. It was a truly awful blow to our small family. My mother died two months later to the day due to a botched colonoscopy. They fixed this surgically and she initially seemed to be rallying but then she quickly went down hill. This is why I think she died of a broken heart. I was already off work due to major depression. I grieved them violently for the first year. The second year was easier. This happened two years ago. Oh, and by the way, I have the same birthday as your mum. I was born on the 4th of July, too.

It is easier to lose your mother when you have seen your mother go through the pain of losing a child. My kid brother died two months to the very day before my mother did. He died after a brief but heart breaking illness. The death of my brother was probably the worst thing that my mother has ever experienced and she is a woman who has lived through a war, through the deaths of her parents, her only sibling, and her beloved husband. My mother died at the age of 87 of a broken heart. My brother's death knocked the stuffing out of her. One of the gifts that Tina can give her mother is to outlive her. By the way, your granddaughter is absolutely adorable. Thanks for posting these photos.

I have heard the same kind of stories. :eek:

My doctors always put gloves on before touching me.

In our hospitals there are dispensers of waterless anti-bacterial soap everywhere, including the entrances to the hospitals and the entrances to all the rooms. When my mother was dying I was always washing my hands! And immediately post SARS everyone had to wear a mask.

Yep, you have got that right, Mini. The interesting thing about the band is that this piece of hardware does incorporate itself with your own body and thus it does end up reacting to and reflecting your own physiological and psychological responses. If you are stressed the band will tighten up. At certain times of the month the band will tighten up. The band is likely to be much tighter in the morning than later in the day. The band, unlike a pacemaker for instance, does not remain a purely mechanical device once it is installed, that is to say, the band is not a piece of hardware which operates entirely independently of your body, its moods and fluctuations. The band really does become part of you and this experience is exceedingly interesting. This is what I have found. I have also found that the band does work. It does not permit me to guzzle foods the way I used to.