JKane

I was in the same boat so I started my diet with 3 months of Optifast. Didn't have to cook, 'meals' didn't cost much, and since it was all I had in the house my laziness worked for me... Another option is the meal delivery services, they've cropped up all over and the friends I have that were on one in LA loved the food and lost weight. But that can be expensive. Sorry I don't have much in the way of useful on-topic advice, but we're really in the same boat. One thing I'd suggest is Costco, they have great fruit and vegetables, often in little baggies. Baggy of baby carrots is 25 calories, also apples, plus trays of mixed fruit or vegetables. Also saw a pack of individual 2oz things of hummus last time. Much better than ranch for dipping vegetables, and the veggies are much better than crackers or bread for dipping in hummus! And grazing the sample aisles is great when you're trying to save money, IF you don't buy anything. It's my experience it never tastes as good when I do buy it and make it at home anyway! Alton Brown had a great episode of Good Eats on some easy healthy food. Highly recommend his show if you need to know more about cooking!

But he was a Democrat. It's only the Republicans who are immune to hypocrisy!

I *hate* that! Maybe it's because I've never lived in a city, but I'm not used to paying for parking very often, or if I do having it only be a couple dollars with validation. I was shocked when I stayed at a 5-diamond rated hotel and they wanted another $25/night to park (self park at that!). I'm currently at a *Best Western* that wants $30/night for valet! **Really** should be mentioned when you make your reservations! Why the fuck *Best Western* is operating a 10-story city Hotel with no parking when it's nothing like what one expects when one books a Best Western is another question. They really don't know what they're doing either, no bell service, for example--so get everything you need from your car, maybe you can use our on rickety luggage cart when the 5 guests before you are done with it... Fun trip so far though, but I wish I was in Brazil for 3-weeks instead!! And I'd echo that even if you don't have a lot (or any) travel for business you can get plenty of miles or perks other ways, as FlyerTalk documents. You can easily get a 100k+ miles on American for just signing up for and using two of their credit cards, for example--enough for a *business class* round trip to Rio if booked in advance! I still need to pick a hotel program and join--it would help if I didn't stay at places like Best Western though!

I've recently lost almost a hundred pounds and am finding it very difficult to eat healthily. Bought one of the Eat this, not that! books (the one on eating out) and the only pattern I could discern in it (other than some points you made, red sauce instead of white, grilled instead of fried, plus that MAYO IS THE DEVILS WORK!) is that there are no patterns. Fish Tacos one place can be over 2000 calories, while a meal at Wendy's can be well under 500. The Egg McMuffin is a fairly healthy breakfast... Went to Subway for the first time in a very long time just the other day... With them asking me what I wanted as soon as I walked in I glanced at the menu and chose the first thing next to a picture of Jared. 400 fucking calories BEFORE I answered the next question: which cheese would you like? But, on the bright side, a 6-inch with no mayo and iced tea is a lot better than fully loaded 12-inch plus chips and soda I'd have ordered before.

God damn I'm tired of hearing about HER. She was a surprisingly competent senator and seems to be competent as SecState. But I don't see the appeal at all, especially in the gay community for the political dynasty that gave us ***both*** DOMA and DADT. And I love Biden. Somebody that says what he feels and occasionally goes too far is far better in my book than somebody who focus-groups her every opinion and has no positions that don't gain her something politically. But it's hard to imagine Biden having much chance at the Presidency, so putting somebody with a future in could make sense. But that's the rub, a bright potential FUTURE, not a baggage-filled PAST.

Did the pink triangle have any good history before Hitler used it to mark us? How did that get adopted as an accepted symbol of us?

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/literally 'specially the last image. Other stuff on that site is great too, but this one seems apropos.

I really feel for those going through this with their parents, it was pretty hard going through it with my great grandmother (whom I was very close to). She was always very good natured, and may have had the staff believing everything was great, but for the last 5 or so years she had no idea who was visiting her, her relation to them, nor any memory of conversations or entire visits hours later. I was thinking the other day, given that we're more likely not to have families, ending up like that alone one day really concerns me. How are others dealing with that? I was thinking some kind of DNR in my 60s or 70s, but that only handles one small contingency. Retiring to a country without the puritanical forced-life, so that one would always have options seems a good idea, but how many places are like that?

The photo threads are pretty obvious, with their attachment icons. IF certain people didn't also post hot images randomly in unrelated threads... Doesn't bother me, but I can see how it could bother some, especially if they were browsing in a public space or over a slow connection (such as cellular modem). Maybe a good compromise would be forcing thumbnails for all images, which would become full size/res only when clicked?

Yep, done all that, a couple times. Put in a new hard drive, fresh install from scratch, no special settings. The login in general is working like crap for me, even when I do it manually. Sometimes it doesn't take, or if I forget and start browsing the forums there's no way to get it to show me the pictures (log me in) to a page already opened.

Never heard of them before, and I consider myself something of a car guy. Interior looks like they raided BMW's parts bin, but pretty sweet. http://www.motorauthority.com/blog/1024961_faralli-mazzanti-launches-the-v12-powered-vulca-s

It seems to me the true core of the Republican belief system is that those with the most money get what they want. As such it's extremely easy to organize them, even at the local level. They all submit to whomever has the fattest wallet / is already in power, and then work tirelessly (even against their own interests) for his betterment, I guess hoping to one day be that person. Democrats, on the other hand, are inherently un-directable. They each have differing views/priorities and the only thing they may all agree on is that everybody's views are important. Luckily the tea parties may be bringing much of this chaos into the Republican circles. But without the good aspects such as intellectual debate/honesty and with a core of personal power at any cost it can't lead anywhere good. They're doing a great job of getting the meme out there that the *other side* are the fascists, which immunizes them against the truth for a while. And I think you left a crapload of zeors off the deficit there...

One of my favorite facts about Fiorina is the extraordinary amount of money people who know her personally have given to her opponent. Especially within HP. Can't wait to vote against her and Whitman in November. The scary thing is I've heard Whitman might have a chance. Because last time we voted for a Republican political neophyte of independent wealth it worked out *so well*... As for the original topic of the thread, there's always plenty of lip-service about how banks are (or by logic must be) willing to work with those in trouble, but the people I know who've tried report otherwise. The banks don't seem to be in much of a hurry to be divested of the foreclosures they're holding either, at least in my area.

A couple times I've felt that my modest contribution to a cause was then wasted almost entirely in trying to solicit me into further donations! I'm tempted to join ACLU fairly often, and really need to give something to EFF one of these days.

I wondered how long they'd last once I heard Firefox was integrating the feature. Too bad though, a multi-platform system for syncing bookmarks or even sessions would be nice to have available.

There have been a large number of new posts in the main forum every day, making it somewhat hard to keep up with, and then people commenting on the photo posts, and often quoting the pictures pops them back up and could waste bandwidth for certain users... but so far it's not been a real problem for me. I'm not a fan of conflating escorts/strippers/guys we could hire with random pics of hot studs though.

It's owned by Rupert Murdock... given that, it's impossible for it to sink to a depth that surprises me.

About a week or so ago my cookie must've expired and I am back to having the exact same problem. Can not 'remember me on this computer', have to login each time. Often it tells me I must set geographic location, but won't let me. Just tried both browsers again, in firefox I select North America and then it goes nowhere, never lets me specify city. In IE it goes back to the main page, also never asks for city and doesn't remember North America either when I check/try to change through 'my profile'. Here's the page Firefox can't show: http://www.maleescortreview.com/index.php?file=reset_location&MSG=p Could an Admin set my location in my profile? USA/Los Angeles. I'm curious if clearing that hurdle will let the site give me a cookie. It's still really annoying, and I don't understand why others aren't having these problems also. There's nothing special about the Win7 install I did nor the security settings in the web browsers.

If the man being interviewed against the lockers is an administrator he should be fired, right fucking now. Who the fuck blames the victim in this situation (other than THAT GUY)? From comments on the Advocate online story about this: From the story: [High School Principal Phil] Chapple said that no one had been punished for picking on Lucas, and that bullying had not even hit their radar. "Sometimes he created that atmosphere around him," Chapple said. "Kind of like a little tornado because he went around doing things that made dust fly, I guess." How is Chapple still the principal of this school? It seems to be the systematic abuse and bullying was not only ignored, it was approved of! I'm no Dan Savage, and I don't have the reach he does, but everyone that reads this story should write him at pchapple (at) greensburg (dot) k12 (dot) in (dot) us, and tell him exactly how you feel about blaming a student for being bullied!

http://www.coolgaymovies.com/watch/video/MTcwNzVt/CollegeDudes247-video

Ha! I learned that Viagra gel packets exist!

Looks cool and compact! Does it also run OCR on the text so it's searchable? I got an HP all-in-one a year or so ago at Costco, it's no speed demon but it can also scan from 2-sided to searchable PDF, think it was around $160 (sometimes goes on sale or they mail a coupon). Also a good printer, with 2-sided printing, CD/DVD printing, and a little tray for photo printing which it does an ok/good job at too. It is damn cool what's out there now!

Accountability and the teabaggers in the same sentence is an oxymoron. Look at O'Donnel's finances, or Palin's half-assed half-term of service to her state. Look at teabaggers not getting called on open racism or stating that violence is the answer if they don't get what they want in the election. Look at their Republican puppet-masters' 10 or so years of leadership of most or all branches of gov't that exactly coincided with getting us into this mess. Putting THEM *back* in control of the majority of the 3 branches of government is taking OUR country BACK HOW, exactly? Oh, wait, I get it, you obviously can't mean that; you must mean white Christian America taking itself *back* from uppity educated Negroes! Extra ironically, BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY!

I LOVE how people bring up $800,000 NOT $800,000,000--or even 1 Million fucking dollars--for a program to encourage people to do something that may be a cheap way to prevent the spread of STDs as if it's a bad, horrible example of gov't gone wrong. Well, here's the pushback on the BULLSHIT that the puritanical and vaguely racist coverage deserves from every corner--but is only getting on an escort review board's politics forum. In sub-Saharan Africa, genital washing has been theoretically proposed as a way to reduce STD and HIV incidence. Lack of circumcision in men may be a risk factor for development of chancroid, a common cause of genital ulcer disease in Africa. Genital ulcer disease appears to be a risk factor for contracting HIV. Health advocates suggest that education about postcoital and precoital washing with instructions on how to clean the area beneath the foreskin of the penis might be one way to reduce the incidence of STDs in east, central and southern Africa, where male circumcision is less common and genital ulcer disease more common than in west Africa. --O'Farrell N. Soap and water prophylaxis for limiting genital ulcer disease and HIV-1 infection in men in sub-Saharan Africa. Genitourin Med 1993; 69:297-300. ----It's still under study, there are some conflicting views, but that's the point, a STUDY to see if something almost everybody has access too can lessen the chances of STDs. I think it is shameful that somebody who participates in our subculture would further the belief that anything which may prevent an STD (especially AIDS) spreading is bad, especially for a measly $800k to serve a hard-hit subgroup! But hey, let's instead deride the government for funding research in an area that directly benefits US, and leave all medical research up to private pharmaceutical companies so we can get 3 more erection pills and another pill for restless leg syndrome! Forget unprofitable public health initiatives!

Whatever you do don't blame your bank, blame Obama! There are credit unions and plenty of other banks that would treat you better, and I agree with TY that you are reading the situation wrong. And certainly blame Obama for current interest rates! Doesn't every economist in their right mind agree that a raise in interest rates would crater the economy? Having to agree in advance to a defined fee for overdraft is better for the poor than growing to live on them and being eaten alive by hundreds of dollars in fees every month! Especially when the bank does all kinds of shady things to heighten those fees, which thanks to the much needed regulation you refer to they're no longer allowed to do, such as clearing big payments before smaller payments so you get multiple overdrafts. How the fuck people can sit a crater caused by deregulation and insist that it's the answer, that it *will* work ONE OF THESE TIMES when so far it never has is dumbfounding. It is by definition not a right, but a DUTY of government to regulate or even run infrastructure critical to the nation: Environmental impacts of oil production, especially near critical wetlands. National security including the screening of airport passengers. Anti-trust actions against monopolies and companies that get too big to fail. It's funny how your invisible hand never actually works yet you have endless faith in it.