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Showing posts with the label Index W

Weather -- The Great Ice Storm of 2014 (Photos)

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Our Front Yard Ice-Coated Tree Limbs! York, Pennsylvania, February 5, 2014 ______________________ Miss T! Poor Lonely Cold Car York, Pennsylvania, February 5, 2014 ______________________ Our Backyard York, Pennsylvania, February 5, 2014 ______________________ More Backyard Note the Ice-Coated Wire being Held up by a Tree Limb York, Pennsylvania, February 5, 2014 ______________________ These photos look lovely, but this is actually a very dangerous situation. Many trees and electrical lines in our area are down. All the power lines and tree limbs are coated with ice, and high winds are expected tonight. 150,000 households are without power and the electric company officials warn that restoration may take days. We live across the street from Met-Ed headquarters, so maybe we will be okay. Wish us luck! Cheeky Google! This Photo was Added as a "Awesome" Photo Then Falling Snow Was Added _____________________ Those Google boys a...

“Water Lilies, by Monet” (Jennifer Semple Siegel)

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Water Lilies (Claude Monet, 1906) Wikipedia _____________________________   “Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.”  —Dr. Seuss I saw this wise quote on my Facebook timeline, and I just had to ponder it. In 2013, I lost two important people in my life. The “how” is not important to anyone but my small circle, but the loss itself is important. Their death has left a large gap in my life. This Christmas was a stark reminder of how important this holiday has been in my life. Forty four years ago, I showed up in Pennsylvania – no money, no friends, and a lot of emotional baggage – to meet my boyfriend, later husband, now ex-husband, and still my friend. I also met his parents, two gracious people who accepted me into the family and continued to accept me – and my second husband – long after my divorce from their son. With a few exceptions, Jerry and I spent every Christmas Day with Sherm and Jeanette and the family. On Ch...

WSUX.com – WSUX

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WSUX -- WSUX.com _________________ This is NOT a porn post; sux is simply a term that means to stink, reek, and all things that might be terrible. There is current thought that AI sux/sucks; perhaps it does or perhaps it does not. Question: Is the actual radio station KSUX considered to go against community standards? Would you put their website behind a warning? I hope not. Asking for a friend... I recently acquired this domain; I’m not sure what I want to do with it. Sell it? Develop it? Set up a humor website? A review website about all things that “suck”? Write a humorous book using WSUX as a title? Obviously, for fiction, the domain suggests a dysfunctional East coast radio or TV station, perhaps both. There is a real radio station in Sioux City, Iowa, with KSUX as its call letters; it makes a kind of sense, given that the airport designation for Sioux City’s Gateway Airport is “Sux.” (I grew up in Sioux City, but the Sux designation came about long after I moved away...

Weight Watchers' Weight Maintenance Program: Success or Failure?

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Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other. --Abraham Lincoln How well does Weight Watchers do in helping their members manage maintenance? I know for a fact that Weight Watchers offers a good maintenance program for its graduates, a.k.a. Lifetime members, but why do so many members fail at maintenance and, as a consequence, end up returning again and again to WW to lose the weight they have regained? To understand WW members' frustration, one just has to go on this posting on Weight Watchers' Facebook. When Consumer Reports rated the best diet programs, the editors rated Weight Watchers as the second best program, basing their opinion on the fact the fact that soup, high in sodium, was offered as a menu option to help dieters to stave off hunger. Never mind that this was just a sample menu among many other sample menus. In other words, Consumer Reports was splitting hairs and needed to justify selecting another progr...

What I Write When I'm Not Sure What I Want to Say: On Weight Maintenance and Vanity Sizing Redux

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Do not wait; the time will never be "just right." Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along. --George Herbert What a strange power there is in clothing. --Isaac Bashevis Singer On Wednesday, Dr. Oz featured Susan and Pete, a couple who started Weight Watchers three months ago. So far, they have done very well, lowering their weight (Susan, 18 pounds lost; Pete, 33 pounds), BMI (she, from 29 to 26; he from 35 to 29), and body fat (she, from 41% to 37%; he, 33% to 28%). Kudos to them! The truth of the matter: all diets work very well at taking the weight off. However, what I would like to see: follow-up shows on Susan and Pete, a year and two years from now, to see how well these Weight Watchers members have maintained their weight and healthy lifestyles. You see, I am convinced that this is the missing element from all commercial diet programs, and I'm trying to unde...

Would YOU Eat Lab-Grown Food (a.k.a. "Frankenfood")?

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I like meat--I never became a vegetarian. But it is hard to justify the way animals are treated on this planet. Growing meat without inflicting pain seemed a natural solution. --Willem van Eelen* In the future, lab-grown food may be coming to your local supermarket. According to a May 23, 2011, New Yorker article ("Test-tube Burgers") by Michael Specter, scientist Willem van Eelen has developed "in-vitro meat" by scraping a few cells from the muscles of animals and placing them in a special solution, where they are grown into a hamburger-type substance, which could be cooked and eaten just like hamburger from slaughtered animals. Of course, growing lab meat on a grand scale is not likely to happen any time soon, but PETA and various environmental groups are interested in promoting research efforts that would result in mass market lab-grown meat becoming a reality. At first, van Eelen's colleagues scoffed at the idea of growing meat in a petri dish, b...

Thought for the Day--May 20, 2011: An Invitation to the Mallory Family Reunion!!!

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You Are Invited! ♣ --- ♦ --- ♥ --- ♠ WHO : The Mallorys, Bacons, O’Flahertys, etc. WHAT: Family Reunion. WHEN: June 20, from 10:30 a.m. to ????? WHERE: The Lake. COST: A favorite dish, plus $25.00 per couple, $7.50 per child, to help defray the cost of renting The Northwest Quadrant of the Winnehaha Pavilion. RSVP: Sally Millhouse, (712) 555-1234 SPECIAL NOTE: We’ll be sitting for family portraits! ________________________________ Follow Samantha as she prepares for the family reunion. As she hunts for artifacts for the family display, she finds this old letter: Oct. 29, 1959 (I am sorry this is late) Dear Auntie, Thank you for the $10 for my birthday. I will buy a pretty red pink blue dress you will like (I hope). I am skinney now, dr. Noonan put me on a strick diet (ugh!). Lettuce, cellery and cottage cheese. I HATE Mrs. Niles died last month, Nana says she wieghed over 500 lbs, I would DIE if I weighed over 500 lbs. I am in the St. Bonyfi Boniface chior now, we sang at Mrs. Nile...

Thought for the Day--May 18, 2011: What the Hey? Homeless Woman Arrested for Sending Child to School

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I'd go to, like, six different schools in one year. We were on welfare, and my mom never ever worked . --Eminem You can spend the money on new housing for poor people and the homeless, or you can spend it on a football stadium or a golf course . --Jello Biafra I thought I had heard everything, but this story shocks me. As if it's not bad enough to find yourself and your kid without a place to live, now you're being arrested for enrolling your kid in the "wrong" school. According to News of the Weird (this specific snippet published in the May 17, 2011, issue of the York Daily Record ), Tonya McDowell, a homeless parent, was arrested for "felony theft" for "stealing" $15,686 in educational services from the Norwalk, Connecticut, school district. Read more in HuffPost Education McDowell, no fixed address, has apparently lived, off and on, in Norwalk, but at the time of registering her son at Brookside Elementary School, she was living with a fri...

Thought for the Day--May 14, 2011: Watching the Watchdog? A Call for Consumers Union Action: A Plea for Transparent Research Protocols

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I think it's a good thing that there are bloggers out there watching very closely and holding people accountable. Everyone in the news should be able to hold up to that kind of scrutiny. I'm for as much transparency in the news gathering process as possible. --Anderson Cooper For my May 12 post Shame on You, Consumer Reports... , I was surprised at how difficult it was to track down Consumer Reports' primary research source for its diet rankings in the June 2011 issue ("Pick Your Ideal Diet"). I cite two reasons: 1. Consumer Reports omitted the name of the author and title of their primary source, the very source used to "edge" Jenny Craig into First Place. (Cheryl Rock, et al; "Effect of a Free Prepared Meal and Incentivized Weight Loss Program on Weight Loss and Weight Loss Maintenance in Obese and Overweight Women." (1803-1810) 2. The CR source appeared in the October 27, 2011, issue of JAMA, which published 2 articles and 2 op...

Thought for the Day--May 9, 2011: What If Osama bin Laden Had Never Grown Up...?

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Is this Osama bin Laden's baby picture? Before deciding, consider the Source __________________________ What if you had a chance to go back in time, to save millions of lives by killing one man? Andrea Collins will soon discover this mission to be more difficult than she ever imagined, as she takes a one-way trip into The Twilight Zone. --Opening Narration to Cradle of Darkness , 2002 A week after Osama bin Laden's death, it has been strangely quiet among the conservative bloviators, although that is likely to change soon, as the "birthers" begin to re-form as "deather" conspiracy groups, despite al Qaeda's confirmation (and subsequent threats to the U.S.). Meanwhile, how about a little speculation? What if bin Laden had never been allowed to grow up? If you were able to go back to 1957, the year of bin Laden's birth, and given the tools you need for your mission, would you kill baby bin Laden, even knowing what you know now? It's an interestin...

Thought for the Day--May 6, 2011: Why I Have Decided to Lose Weight...

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Every person has free choice. Free to obey or disobey the Natural Laws. Your choice determines the consequences. Nobody ever did, or ever will, escape the consequences of his choices. --Alfred A. Montapert Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach. --Tony Robbins No matter what we weigh or how we look, we can improve ourselves: our health, our values, and, yes, our bodies and bad habits. Last year at this time, I had decided to accept myself just as I was, overweight and all. After all, I was exercising regularly and I felt pretty good. I lived in a third floor flat, and I had no problems navigating the stairs. I loved walking. "I am what am," I told myself and anyone else who was interested in hearing it. For the first time in my life, I was happy with who I was inside; my body was just the exterior, and if anyone disliked me because of my weight, then so what? Then in September, 2010, I had a wake-up call, a health scare; it turned out to be a fal...

Thought for the Day--May 3, 2011: What is/was One of the Most Joyous Times of Your Life?

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1st Row (left to right, seated): Afrodita Nikolova, Jennifer Semple Siegel, Zoria Petkoska 2nd Row (left to right): Vesna Ilievska, Marija Dudan, Ana Lakaliska Photograph taken by Maja Tomovska and used with permission. ___________________________________ Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls . --Mother Teresa The above photograph represents one of the best times of my life; in it, I'm posing with some of my students from Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, where I served as the Fulbright Scholar to Macedonia for 2009-2010. Other than giving birth to my son, my undergraduate and graduate college years, getting married to Jerry, graduating from college (both undergraduate and graduate), and the direction my life is taking right now, my Fulbright year has to rank as one of the happiest times of my life. Every day, I would wake up, jump out of bed, and say to myself, "I'm here in Skopje, Macedonia, and I can't wait to get my day started." I cou...

Memoir Madness: Driven to Involuntary Commitment