green

I found that having drinks of hot chicken or beef broth made me feel more like I had just had a meal than anything cold did.

Ms Modelling Agency is one rude bitch, isn't she?

I have painted my various shacks many, many times and it is very easy to do. It is also, just like the other posters have said, boring. Prepping the room will take the major part of your time. If the walls are dirty, greasy, or painted with an oil or glossy paint you will need to first wash them down with a mix of water and TSB. TSB is something that you can find at any paint store - along with lots of excellent advice. If the original paint job was oil paint and you want to switch to latex - and, trust me on this, no one should ever, ever use oil paint on household walls now that we do have excellent latex paints - then you must first use a primer. Once this is dried you can then paint with a latex paint. This is only one part of prepping the room. You will also need to remove or cover your furniture; you will need to mask or remove everything which is currently hanging on or afixed to your walls and this includes electrical outlet covers. Anything you don't want to get paint on - window and door sills, wood panels, baseboards, etc - must be masked with masking tape. And you must cover your floors. At this point, and assuming that you do have your paint roller and your brush (which you will need in order to get into those tight corners), you can start painting. You will be amazed at how quickly you can cover your room with paint once it is prepped and you are ready to go. A few additional hints: for walls and ceiling you should use a matte or eggshell finish; if or when you are painting wood trim (doors, window frames, baseboards, etc.) a semi-gloss is the way you must go. Do indulge yourself in trying out interesting colours and colour combinations: paint is relatively cheap and if it doesn't work you can easily paint over your mistake, and when it does work, well then, you will find the results abolutely glorious! (This is why Green has come to know a fair bit about painting houses. She loves to experiment with colour and does a lot of this.) You mention that you are acquainted with painting on canvas. This would indicate that you are aware of the advantages of working with acrylics/latex over that of working with oils. As to the texture-y walls, this is going to be a pain in the arse for it will take you much, much longer to cover them and you will use up significantly more paint than you would have on a flat surface. Your friend is right; you will need a fluffy roller. You will also find yourself resorting to your brush quite often in order to push that paint into the cheeks of your walls. Do yourself a favour: buy yourself an expensive brush or two and treat them like gold. If you do have to use an oil to latex primer, buy cheap brushes for this from a discount store, and when you are through for the day toss them out. I figure that it this is easier on the environment than washing them in solvents. Latex paints are nice in that they have a quick dry time. You can start mending your newly repainted room fairly quickly. Do bear in mind that the cure time for a latex paint is much longer that its dry time. Don't try washing down your new walls for a least a month after they have been painted. As for the business of paid help, it may surprise you to learn that Green once had an under-the-counter gig to repaint a house. She got the gig while she was laid off from her well-paid union job. She was pretty happy. She needed the money. She had a mortgage to support. She also had a friend who wasn't doing so well and who badly needed the money. "Howzabout we split the work and the cash?" Green said. Now, the reason why I am telling you this story is because I know that there are always folks around who would be happy to do a little grunt work for a bit of cash either over or under the counter. Anyone who needs help with the grunt work of painting or gardening can usually hook up with some decent individual who desperately needs a little spare cash. As for my last couple of tips, well, here they are: view the job as an opportunity for a physical work-out and get yourself some work-out music to listen to; and do take advantage of all the advice which the salesfolks in the paint stores can offer to you. And, by the way, pale green sounds much more sophisticated than boring beige. :eek:

I love stories of the stupid.

Thanks for posting these, Mrs. Husker. They are both very funny and at the same time hold great truth. Reading them sure did brighten up my day.

Ha ha. So true. Life was so different back then. I tend to think that it was a healthier environment for kids to grow up in. We were not so protected. We were able to have our little adventures, dreams, and private kid culture. Our lives were less structured and we did spend more time playing outdoors. Being able to get away from adults was real nice; it was also real nice knowing that an adult (usually someone's mum) was available if you needed one. I believe that this freedom allowed us to develop richer interior lives, richer imaginations. Today's kids seem to be all about shopping at the mall.

There are many, many things which creep me out but the only thing of which I am truly phobic is snakes. I cannot even look at a photo of one.

Me, too. Back in May I got, for the first time in my life, really bad acid reflux. I suspect this was due to an overfill. Because it took me over a month to figure out what was wrong with me my esophagus was badly inflamed (it felt like it had been painted with acid) and I had that creepy reflux cough. I got a complete defill in August and am still healing. The reflux meds weren't working while I was still partially filled by the way. So far I haven't gained back any weight except for 1.5 lbs.

I have heard that there are brilliant plastic surgeons in Mexico, Brazil, and Thailand. A lot of Americans used to come up here for their surgery but our dollar is now on par with yours and thus surgery here is no longer a bargain. :phanvan (Only a few years ago a dollar Cdn used to be worth 60 U.S. cents.)

BJean! Gawd, grrl, but I have missed you!! I am so glad to see that you are back. Too bad that your absence was due to a crappy computer crash. I had been imagining you and your hubby travelling through Italy - and was drifting about on a sea of envy, myself. Your visit to the dietician sounds like a really horrible experience. I used to see a psychiatrist who invariably left me sobbing and feeling like a sullen, angry teenager who wanted to cut herself. Upon leaving her office I always bought myself a bottle of scotch and a big bunch of cut flowers.... In fact I used to spend my sessions with my psychologist trying to work through the pain and confusion created by my sessions with my shrink. I finally dumped the shrink and got the one I see now, a guy who finds me so boring that he drifts off during our short sessions. (As a result I never tell this clown anything.) Are you sure that you should be seeing a dietician who leaves you feeling this lousy about yourself? Or is it that you are the one who is being far too hard on yourself? I know that when I feel lousy I want to indulge my bad habits, not stay away from them. I have heard that band surgeons regard the weight loss part of the project as normally taking two years and as we all know there are plateaux when doing the weight loss thang. Also weight loss will be more complicated for those bandsters who do have a sweet tooth as compared to us who just suffer from portion control problems. It sounds to me like you should pat yourself on the back because you have lost weight and you are banded. You should now rededicate yourself to the bandster rule of protein first, then yer vegies.... And as for icecream, well, you do love it and so you must figure someway to keep it as part of your life: what about frozen yogurt? or frozen fat and sugar reduced icecreams? Maybe you could get real creative and make your own. And certainly you will have do some kind of calorie trade and portion control thing. I would certainly take those pictures of yourself down and then burn 'em. They are only going to bum you out and make you lose heart. I hate looking at myself and that is why there are so few photos of me. I am kinda cute but the camera does not love Green's face! Even my husband, who is always telling me that I look cute, says so. I found your comment that you still think of yourself as a little person to be most touching. You see, it reminds me of something my mother said to me. She told me that whenever she accidentally caught sight of herself in public she would think 'who is that fat old bat?' before realising that it was herself. Her own private image of herself was fixed at when she was young and very, very slim. I've never seen myself as slim although I have been at various points of my life; I was a great slab of a teenager and I guess that is when my sense of self-identity was gelling. Hah! Some of the swelling and the bruising is gone but my eyes still make me look like I have Down's Syndrome. And I sure do hurt. Man, do I hurt! :help: Hooray fer drugs, eh!!!:clap2:

There are two kinds of fillers - permanent and temporary. I went for the permanent because I hate those pesky maintenance issues. The lips and the lines between my nose and mouth remained looking pretty damn good, I must say. And, GREEN HAS MORE DRUGS!! :biggrin1: YUP, SHE GOT THEM TODAY. :whoo:De sun gwine shine again, or, um, er, whatever......:rain:sez Green.

When I had my mini-face lift 8 years ago - the same guy did it by the way - they offered to do it with a local. This would have saved me a thousand bucks but I opted to be knocked out. That mini-face lift stood me in really good stead. I never did develop a set of chins or jowels because he had hoovered the meat away. He also filled in the creases between mouth and nose and that took years off my face. And he gave me lips! No one on either side of my family has any. I was finally able to wear lipstick. :biggrin1: The thing was that I recovered really quickly from that surgery as I did from the lapband stuff last Sept. This time around I am having more difficulty. blehhh! :phanvan

Thank you for your kind thoughts. I hate pain, too. In fact I have the pain threshhold of a man! Must. have. more. drugs.

Sounds like fun to me. My gay friends tell me that I am like a female Oscar Wilde.

Green still doesn't play well with others and she avoids going to reunions, weddings, and baby showers. She also does not do pot lucks! She, however, will meet you in a bar, cafe, or restaurant.

Yep, I saw that movie. It is in the way of a warning, isn't it?

I agree with Boo Boo K.

I never joined one. I don't play all that well with others.

I myself was kinda shocked when I heard that it was going to take 7 hours and I heard afterwards that the surgery ran a couple of hours overtime. The thing is that I had a really good face before I started with this. My skin was pretty much wrinkle free since I have never spent time in the sun - redhead's complexion, eh - and my chubby cheeks gave me a kinda grrlish look. I only wanted it to be even better in order to match my newly small body, I guess. Oh, sad vanity!!! :phanvan Nevertheless, I did want something permanent in the way of facial renovation/restoration because I am kinda weird among women in that I really don't enjoy the process of personal maintenance/being pampered all that much. In fact I find a visit to the coiffeuse on a par with a visit to the dentist, even though I am a welcome guest at both joints. This dislike is why I opted for the full monty including an eye lift. I figured get it fixed, get it fixed good, and then coast through the next 10 years of my life on an excellent face, and spend my 70s growing facially old. Haha. :heh: I chose my surgeon carefully because when it involves your face you can't hide any mistakes. This guy is one of the best up here and he has pioneered a number of techniques. I must say that I have never experienced this degree of pain before. This has me thinking that I am an idiot to have undertaken this.

The topic interests me, too. I suspect that because of the increasing sophistication of the media and the easy access that we now all have to the technology of the internet we simply get to meet a much broader range of people amd view a much broader range of activities than we did before. In our real lives our interpersonal contacts are largely edited: that is to say, you will likely know people who do the same kind of work as you do, go to your church (if you do go to one), have graduated from the same schools, and who live in your neighbourhood. They are likely to have similar interests and concerns and have achieved a similar level of education. They will thus appear to be fairly intelligent and fairly sane. (Except, possibly, the in-laws!) But now, thanks to the unedited free-for-all which is the internet, we are exposed to the vast range of human personalities and interests and, yup, we will be left with the sense that there really are a lot of whackos and idiots out there, many more than you can recall from pre-internet times. Actually, one of the reasons why I am so fond of the internet is that it leaves me feeling much more intelligent and much more sane than I usually feel. Talk about yer instant ego boost, eh. Haha. :rose: :ranger:

I never caught your original post but the "pink elephant" comment sounds pretty damn hostile to me.

Hahahahahaha! LMFAO Thanx, eh.

I hear you, grrl! My own father was hard to live with. This is why I still see a therapist. :phanvan

This is actually quite funny. None of these guys would be cool with Rosie's homosexuality were she to live in the Middle East. And as for freedom of speech or the freedom to make an ass of yourself, I am all for it. :heh: It is part of the added fun of living in a democracy. :rose:

Charging 5Gs per bullet isn't a bad idea.....