green

My brother is a doctor who has worked under both the Canadian and American health systems. He said that when he used to work up here in Canada he simply ordered such medical tests and procedures as he felt his patient required; south of the border he was required to consult with the financial bottom line before making medical decisions. His medical freedom was actually greater up here in universal medicine Canada. Don't forget, we don't have to feed the businessmen and the shareholders. Canadians pay approximately $3,000 per person per year less in health care costs than do Americans and everyone up here is covered. Of course our government is largely run by beaurocrats, not incompetant politicians.

Hey, you could call him stumpy dumpy because he is kinda short in the body, too.

She was a controversial member of Obesity Help who was discussed at great length here at one time.

I inherited a bunch o bucks from my mum. This allowed me to take a very early retirement. I hope I am not going to end up eating cat food for the next 30 years. Oh, yuck!

She thinks that Obama is a Muslim because his middle name is Hussein. That is like thinking that I am christian because I was baptized. (I am an atheist.) Pretty low level thinking.

Most of the eminent scientists cited in this list were alive and doing their work during previous centuries. A great many of them were Victorians. What these individuals would believe if they were alive now might be very different. As it happens, they had the beliefs common to their times. This list does not make for a compelling argument for Creationism.

Kat, those women sound very unpleasant. Let them know, perhaps through their husbands, that you were on IV for a week and that you are fully aware of their unkind speculations. Yep, they definitely qualify for the bitch label.

I watched that show last night and I, too, was wondering what I would have done had I had a child as fat as Gaby's four year old. I was solid but never in that league. The casting of that child is quite interesting. The kid really is a fat child and she can look quite malevolant, quite defiant. It is difficult to like her. She really plays her part very, very well. So much so that one wonders what the kid is like in real life. One also wonders what the writers have in store for her. Perhaps we will come to very much empathize with the child. The deglamourization of Gabby is another fascinating plot twist. She is losing her looks and is feeling this loss keenly. This will give rise to plots/commentary hinging on the problems we have with our identities: looks and self-love/self-loathing. Bree hasn't changed, eh? Actually, none of the other women have, just their circumstances. I love the show. By the way, Fairy, congratulations on your weight loss.

Actually, Senator Obama is very Canadian in his style and his beliefs. This is not necessarily a bad thing to be. Canada is doing well these days. The net worth for the median Canadian family has exceeded that of the median American family: Canada - $122,600 to U.S. - $93,100 (all figures in U.S. dollars). Per capital personal debt: Canada - $23,460 to U.S. - $40,250. Percent of annual household expenditure spent on housing: Canada - 19 to U.S. - 34. It should be noted here that the average size of an American house is bigger: 2,000 square feet to 2,520 square feet. And as for universal health care, per person we pay $3,326 per year as contrasted with your $6,401 per year, a per person cost which doesn't even cover every American and yet is almost twice the price of our universal system. I can also cite figures that will show that we have a higher life expectancy, a lower infant mortality rate, a significantly lower obesity rate as well as rate of individuals with diabetes if you are interested. These are all reasons why Canadians do not find Obama scary. Hell, a recent poll indicated that 40% of Canadians would vote for him for our Prime Minister. He is polling better than any of our local guys. (We are currently having an election up here.) We also know that, should he win the presidency, many of his more creative initiatives would be blocked by special interest groups. They will never ever come to fruition.

Congratulations! That's a fabulous goal to have achieved.

Green is sniggering........

Why does he scare you? Because he is intelligent and well-educated and you are used to a moron running the state?

An angry ailing old white man and a woman who made the rounds of a bunch of second rate universities or a Harvard educated half-black man who was involved in service to the community. Gosh.

There are clubs. There is at least one in my city. And I believe one can advertise in the personals. If you live in a small town you may wish to read the personals and possibly advertise in the newspapers of the nearest big city. Yep, I did this with friends and it was kind of as a favour to my girlfriend. It wasn't something I had initially planned on or even wanted to do. The pair of them talked me into it but it was an interesting experience and I sure don't regret it. It was just that neither my friend nor I are the least bit bi-sexual and so we tended to find ourselves lining up for the male's attentions. Such activities as we did perform on each other were done at his direction. The experiment didn't harm our friendship, however, and that was a good thing. You will likely be better off, though, with a genuinely bi-sexual stranger.

Didn't like Izzy's new hair. Am bored with Alex's rage issues. Loved the army guy and hope he is back. I figure Christina can use herself some. Tee hee. Don't get why the girls fall for George. He has no sexual charisma. He is much more best friend material.

I live in Toronto. It is a great place to live but you are right! It is expensive for most people, especially the housing. Only Vancouver, I think, is worse. Food and clothing and books aren't so bad once you have lived here for awhile and have learned where the bargains are. Still, it is a fun place to live. Very multi-cultural. Lots of festivals going on throughout the year. A big variety of ethnic restaurants and some pretty good shopping.

This being scared to death is not good for you. The chances are excellent that you will survive and thrive. You have, after all, a secure property and a secure job and you are only 32. If you confine your choice of dairy products to fresh milk and yogurt and icecream and such cheeses as are made in America, Canada or in Europe, you will certainly not ingest melamine, the product which has been added to Chinese milk. As for the choice in presidents, well, you survived Bush for the previous 8 years and so your country will likely survive whatever is on offer during the next four. My advice is the same with respect to the economy. Good or bad, the economy doesn't kill off too many of us and you do have that job and that house. This brings me to your level of anxiety: it is excessive and makes me wonder whether you should see a doctor. The cause could be organic - faulty neurochemistry - or your anxiety over these issues could be masking other, different and more personal concerns entirely.

Yah, why vote for the same thing again when you didn't like what has been happening for the past 8 years? That doesn't seem logical. Why not change?

If you have worms you can also google this. There will be plenty of information, including solutions, about this problem on line. But, as for the best way to clean out your intestines, I suspect that it is the stuff they require you to take at home before a colonoscopy. That stuff will certainly empty you out! And you don't need a prescription. Just go to your pharmacist and ask him/her. It might not get rid of worms, though. They might have a way of embedding themselves in the bowel lining. Do google for more info. And good luck with this problem.

Yes, I had one with a girlfriend and her boyfriend. It didn't work out that well for my girlfriend. Her boyfriend paid a little too much attention to me because I was new to him. We also had a foursome. That worked out much better.

Yep, I am like Fanny Adams. I tend to be book retentive. I stopped going to the library years and years ago. I said that this was because of my fear of germs but really it is because I like to keep what I read. I also like to have a stock of unread material on hand in case I get laid up with a broken leg or some other catastrophe. This ended working out well for me when I got cancer this past March. I had tons of stuff around the house to read. In fact I still haven't read everything in my personal library. This is because some of my books are deeply buried behind others. I really should spend a couple of days unearthing them, shouldn't I?

We had a guy, Stockwell Day, who believed in Creationism run for Prime Minister of Canada a few years ago. He had been elected head of one of our two major parties but the electorate didn't take him seriously after the media kept saying that Stockwell was a guy who believed that The Flintstones was a documentary. He and his party were soundly trounced.

I love reading and I was buying a lot of books when I was fat, when I was too fat to find clothes that I liked, and yet was in the mood for a little shopping. And people have given me their books when downsizing and I inherited my mum's books. As a result, I have quite a few books which I haven't read yet. About the only good thing about being laid up with cancer over these past 7-8 months is that I have had the chance to do a lot of reading (and I have been feeling too crappy to do any shopping). This meant that a lot of my books finally got read (and I saved a lot of money). Red shoes can look nice with navy, I think.

I have never had a pedi but I do have a helluva lot of books - 11 bookcases and most of these have two layers of books on them. I should try having a pedi. I have ugly feet, big (size 10.5) and bony, and even though I am Canadian people do see a lot of them. This is because we take our shoes/boots off when we are indoors and I almost never wear socks. I should do people who see my feet a favour and have a pedi.

Ugh! Mine periods were horrible. A couple of days of insanity followed by 24 hours of terrible cramps and diarhea. And I started really young. I turned 10 in July and got my first period at the beginning of September. Because I never wanted children I thought that all this suffering was most unfair and I was always trying to find a doc who would remove the apparatus that was causing me so much grief. I was relieved when I crashed into an early menopause. So relieved that I refused HRT for the first five years, then tried it for a couple of years in my late 40s before going back off of it. With menopause I did suffer from hot flashes for about a decade and I do have osteopenia. You are lucky that your periods were/are easy.