Thursday, July 30, 2009

Witchy or Improved Self Esteem ramble

I had a WONDERFUL time shopping yesterday. [/sarcasm]In my ongoing quest to find good walking shoes, I went to a shoe store in my small town.. trying to buy locally like they urge us to do.

There were two clerks working(?). One was checking out a customer and another was standing there twirling his keys around his finger watching. I had been in the store a good 5 or 10 minutes looking at shoes and being ignored. I finally went up and asked if he was working...or if he was just spending his day twirling keys!!

He said he was working, but didn't move to help me.. just continued twirling keys. I said something to the effect of "your store just lost a customer" and walked out.

Makes me soooooooo mad to receive poor service in this economy. I went home and wrote the store a love letter on their website.

My husband says "Don't make Lisa mad" as if this is a bad thing. I don't know. I'm finding I have much less tolerance for incompetence and poor service the older I get. On the other hand, perhaps it's improving self esteem from weight loss. I still have a long ways to go, but I also don't feel I have to be "nicey nice" any longer to make up for being fat.

Strangely enough, I rarely run into discrimination due to my obesity. I don't know if that's because I don't go out much in public (due to high gas prices) or if because I refuse to accept poor treatment. I'm not sure.

The PA at my doctors office said to me that I should learn to accept compliments.. I don't think I have trouble doing that. I think she was speaking from a one size fits all patients, she has only met me twice, I don't think she knows me very well.

I need to get busy with doing the mental work of weight loss too. Another thing to add to my schedule.. busy busy.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

felting with I Love This Wool

Bag is Paton's Merino (black), HL's I Love This Wool (lavendar, pink & yellow), and a variegated wool blend, don't remember the name, but it's by Yarn Bee and is sold at Hobby Lobby.

Had to run through wash cycle twice.

I don't know why my post felting pics are so dim. Same room, same everything.. only about 30 minutes later. sorry bout that.

as always, click the pictures to see them bigger.



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Prefelting. Bag is pretty big, almost covering the entire lid of my washer.

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With magazine showing prefelting size.
About 18" tall, 22" wide near base & 14" wide near top.

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showing the stitch detail

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more stitch detail and handle edging.
I did the top edge the same way, just neglected to get a photo.

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Stuffed and drying.

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Bag didn't shrink much at all horizontally, but vertically it shrank about 5 inches.



I think I would compare ILTW to Lionbrand wool, but the colors are a little bit more subdued. It's ok to work with, but I still prefer Paton's Merino. Cost wise, unless Paton's goes up, I think they are comparable. I'm lucky to have a Michaels and a HL in the same town.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Free Our Health Care NOW

In one month, over 330,000 people have signed saying no, to government health care! We are now receiving between 15,000 - 20,000 signatures every day. We ask each of you to reach out to at least three friends this weekend, as time is of the essence. With your help we will have 1 million-plus signers to deliver the petition to the Congressional leaders and the White House. http://www.freeourhealthcarenow.com/

For our 437 Tea Party Patriot chapter partners, we have prepared a health care power-point presentation with teacher's notes for your health care day, on Friday, July 17th. Every one of you can be an expert on free-market health care! http://actionpack.ncpa.org/ Don't forget to ask everyone to sign the petition, and have their voices heard. http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/healthcare_petition.pdf Remember to return the completed petitions to us!

We are in the battle of our lives. President Obama and Congress want to force employers to pay for health insurance reform. Although the details aren't completely settled yet, the idea is to create a new federal mandate that would force employers to provide health insurance for their employees - or pay a penalty tax to the government. Of course, they don't actually use the dirty words "tax" or "mandate", rather the legislation uses words like "shared responsibility" and "contributions" to the government. Of special note, members of Congress, are going to vote for you and me to have a government-run plan, but not going to join us - they are going to keep their current taxpayer-funded plan.

If that doesn't get your attention, this will! The government is about to force employers to pay for employees' health insurance with an average cost of $12,000 per employee per year or $6.00 per hour. This new health care mandate will effectively increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $13.25 per hour. There will be massive layoffs and entire industries who employ hourly employees are at risk. This is a direct hit to small businesses, the job creating sector of our economy!

This is truly a partnership! If you have not signed, please do so! If you have signed, forward the petition to three friends who have not signed and let's move those numbers. www.freeourhealthcarenow.com You can keep track of our progress on our website www.ncpa.org - just click on the ticker link under the Eagle. 500,000 - 1 million, here we come! We are fighting for our freedom!



Jeanette Nordstrom
National Center for Policy Analysis

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Mandatory Volunteerism?

compulsory volunteerism was passed by house & senate and signed into law in april 2009.

Can anyone explain to me how being forced to volunteer is any different from slavery?

I had heard someone say that Obama hates the white man. At first I thought that was just fear-mongering. I'm beginning to wonder now if it wasn't truth.


Title 18, U.S.C., Sec. 1584, makes it a Federal crime or offense for anyone to willfully hold another person in involuntary servitude.

Where are the bloggers that used to post on how badly Bush sucked. They are all strangely silent now. Happy with your choice? I'm not. Cannot wait for an opportunity to vote the man out of office.

Music

Just wondering why it is that blues speaks to my soul so strongly.

I'm sitting here making a playlist at playlist.com and every song I can think of to put on the list is sorrowful, dark and full of emo.

Strange when I feel generally content and happy.

Sunday, July 05, 2009

It's so simple.. socialism does not work

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.

The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that.

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I've lost one of my followers on this blog (a big 50% loss.. I only had two.. lol). I don't know if they don't agree with my political views, got tired of the lack of crochet content or what the issue is.. and whatever it is.. it's OK.

I'm just so very worried about the direction our country is taking that I don't have the urge to type about more fun things right now. I am feeling literally ill at times seeing what is happening. While people have their hearts in the right place.. the way things are being approached is wrong wrong wrong.

Just praying that we survive until the next election.

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Third Fill

I went for my 3rd fill today. Got a very small one, only .25cc added.. but that's because I am losing still at a good rate, but am still having hunger issues 2 hours after eating a meal.

So I didn't need much added.. just a little fine tuning. And I'm glad only .25 was added.. I'm just a tiny bit sore on the inside.

I'll update this tomorrow.. I'm really tired and going to go lie down now.

Ok.. I'm finally rested up and here's the update......

As of July 1, 2009.. I've lost 56 lbs!!! That's about 14 lbs a month, or approx. 1/2 lb a day for the past 4 months.

Last appt was June 2nd.. between June 2nd and July 1 .. I lost 8lbs. And I didn't try all that hard.. just stayed with my 3 (sometimes 4) ounces of meat and 1/2 cup of veggies.

I am hoping to really WOW my oncologist when I go back in August.  I will
actually be able to be weighed on their scales!! She wasn't all that supportive
of me getting a band when I asked if I was healed enough to get one. She said
"if that's what you want to do to yourself". I'm thinking that maybe she was
confused and thinking I meant a different surgery.. but she's a normal weight,
so she's probably not well informed on this aspect of medicine.

Isn't the band amazing? I lost 8lbs and wasn't even trying all that hard. Even
fell off the "band-wagon" one night and ate about half a bag of flat-earth
chips. At least they were baked. I try not to keep such things in the house,
but we were having taco salad, and I really miss having SOMETHING crunchy/salty
to eat with that.

I'm not beating myself up over it.. but I keep thinking.. what would've the
numbers have been if I hadn't indulged in the chips. hmmm.. what a great
motivator for me.
I'm going to try and figure out how to get my walking ticker posted on here.. I'm trying to walk at least 20 min/day.. the past two days I've walked an hour each day, but that was shopping. I don't think the budget can stand me to shop daily.. lol.

It's so hot here.. heat index for the next two days is going to be from 105 to 109.. so exercise has become difficult if not impossible during the day. 3am walks.. here I come.

When I forget to time my walks.. I go by steps. Past two days I've done 4000 and 4500 steps. woohoo!! I'm on my way to another 8 (+ ??? I hope) lbs gone.