LOL - I love that whole webstore!

praying for you and your family.

forgot to add: I'm sorry they're driving you crazy. I hope your Christmas is better.

we haven't exchanged with extended family in many years either. It's wonderfully freeing.

That's hilarious! No, it used icky ones about wanting to get to know me better.

I thought of that, but I had already deleted and blocked him. I don't know if I can. edited: I tried and it doesn't work.

Your note was enough to get you the creep factor... but... If you're going to try and friend as many of the ladies as you can, the least you can do is change your photo. A photo of your extra large girth in sweats sitting on a couch looking like you're watching the game with your baseball hat on.. um... no. Go away** I would have said go away regardless. Your note might work on some strange women, but it just annoys me. /rant off.

I'm hosting dinner and planning to cook a tenderloin and ham. My daughter and sister both want to know what to bring. DD wants to shop tonight so I'm kind of pressed for time. Me, I'd rather wait to think of this until Sunday or Monday. I'm brain dead. Help! What would be a couple of dish ideas for them? It doesn't have to be recipes... I'll let them figure out their own. Thanks.

oh man, I'm definitely joining this meal plan and I'm not even preggy. I love Cheesecake Factory cheesecake.

I do!! in fact I did it with the thread about DD - I even wrote out a reply and then deleted it :laugh: That's unusual though. Mostly, I just know I'm not touching it with a ten-foot pole. I usually enjoy reading everyone else's opinions on the topic.

Thank you. How long have you been using it?

praying.

singing. I do occasionally sing in our church choir. But, I've been thinking about finding a vocal teacher and then finding a local choir to join. The thing is I despise rock music set for a choir. Despise it. I prefer classical choral music and that can be hard to find year round. Most local choirs do tacky music mixed with the nice stuff.

praying for her and for you too.

wow! Congratulations from a fellow East Coaster (I think I'm almost local to you in VA). I've always wanted to move out of this area, so I'll have to live vicariously through you. One year I made a copy of the road map (do they still have those??) and have it available for the kids to highlight as you move along your route. Every year when the kids were smaller we took the annual trip to St. Louis to see my sis. I would also buy a few small things that they couldn't have until we started the trip... that way they had something new to do/play with. Yatzee is easy to do in the car. Just use the box top as your "table" so you don't loose the dice. Cards are good to have too.. but they can get lost. Books similar to "Where's Waldo" seemed to work really well on car trips. Good luck with decluttering and packing. What an adventure.

congratulations! I'm jealous.

My sis - who has done Atkins, then Primal is taking RS along with her husband. She think it would help me. I'm not so sure. They tend to run after the new fad type stuff. Me, I'm still doing Atkins (when I'm good), not willing to go Primal. She says it's helped with her mood issues, but she's only been doing RS for about 3weeks. She also said other people have had great success with losing the stubborn 20lbs. I definitely have a stubborn 20 (more like 30 now that the half-century mark is less than a month away). It seems that RS is pretty popular in the primal circles. Anyone tried it? I'm reading different articles/blogs (my BIL sent me a link to one blog). Although there does seem to be some actual studies on it, I'm not fully convinced. I want it to be the magic bullet.... but I'm skeptical.

I'm a Christian and I don't have a problem with it. You're right, it isn't in your face and I appreciate that.

I live where you live and I agree (although we don't do nearly that much stuff! Wow you are busy!). In fact, my local public radio music station is playing all Christmas music... I *love* it! The only place I saw an issue was on a weaving email group when someone recently closed her post with a "Merry Christmas". Someone was deeply offended and shot back a "This isn't a *Christian* weaving group and how dare you tell me Merry Christmas!" :huh: But that was one person getting their knickers in a twist, rather than a large corp, the media, or govt. The only other thing I've seen occasionally is probably more properly called a war on Christianity. Last year on Western Palm Sunday NPR did a segment debunking Jesus' entry into Jerusalem...and then all the usual stuff about how none of it could have happened (Easter, etc.). Sigh. Seriously? On Palm Sunday?? I find that quite tiresome..especially because I doubt they'd do a segment debunking stuff about the Prophet Muhammad during Ramadan. Or disproving the Maccabee Wars during Chanukah. But, I don't' watch tv news and I don't listen to conservative talk radio (or Christian radio)...so I don't think I'd hear about anything national.

poor thing.. praying for her and for you.

Oh my! That's awful that they'd stab you in the back like that. I hope it gets sorted out.

It's so funny you bring this up. I've been thinking about Myst lately and wondering how I can get a copy of it.

I hope you recover quickly - but don't push yourself. Take care. Praying for you.

I haven't read all the responses. We moved from 1.5 acrea (not exactly "acreage" but close enough for us) to a more traditional neighborhood closer to the city. I am SO unhappy. That's it in a nutshell. We weren't as far out as you are, I think we were definitely still considered the burbs... but it felt like we were out there. And, we were far enough out that I did get so tired of having to do that drive to get to anything. Even though I'm really unhappy to be living in this neighborhood (with an HOA -avoid at all costs) I do *love* the convenience. Only 5 mins. to the store - 15 to Church! Woo hoo!. I definitely feel like I've lost all my privacy even though I'm sure my neighbors could care less about what I'm doing. I just miss the room to spread out. I miss the darkness and I miss the privacy. I miss being able to do what we want.. .build a trebuchet in the driveway? sure no problem. I miss that freedom. We couldn't do that here and then keep it on the driveway for a day or two. The HOA would complain. So I might have been happier if we'd been in a similar neighborhood without an HOA. But having both close neighbors and an HOA really gets to me more than I thought it would. What I don't miss is dealing with the yard, or the pool, and the older box-like house. I hated my old house. I guess I can't be content (and that makes me sad too).

Lawrence of Arabia is an achievement. But the movies that I truly enjoyed him in were Becket, A Lion in Winter (I've watched that several times - love it!) and, Heavy Weather . That one is based on a book by Wodehouse and I'd enjoy seeing again. Sadly it's hard to come by since it was a British tv movie. O'Toole played an aristocratic eccentric whose prize pig was the delight of his life.