Tiny's Tantalizing Text

Good morning. I've been debating whether to do this or not, but I finally decided to. About a month ago, I got banned from a message board that I liked to post on. I realize the post that got me banned had a sort of harsh tone to it, but I didn't attack anybody on the board, and I didn't use any profanity in that post, so I really didn't expect to be thrown out. After posting said message, I went to wait on a couple of customers, and in doing that thought of something I wanted to post to clarify my position on the subject being discussed, but imagine my surprise when I tried to get in and post it, and couldn't.

So far I have e-mailed both administrators to ask them what I had to do to get reinstated, but haven't heard back from either of them. I miss talking to some of them, but I know they read my ramblings here (I hope you know who you are, and how much you mean to me).

If I had known I was going to get banned over that particular post, I would have taken on another post that I'm quite positive that my reply at an earlier date would have gotten me banned. The topic was Weight Loss Surgery (WLS), and it was stated that 90% of the people seeking it are just looking for an easy way out and don't really need surgery, they're just too lazy to do what it takes to lose the weight. Another part that ticked me off was some replies in which the poster was against surgery because so and so died, surgery is a joke, causes hair to fall out, softens your teeth, etc. Another poster took a cheap shot at it, saying something like "well, that'd be attractive".

Now, I don't know the percentage, my personal belief is that it is lower, but I do agree that too many people are seeking WLS. I think the minimum weight to be considered should be 350 or so, to my knowledge, the criteria now is 100#'s over "normal", with co-morbidities. I also agree that some types of surgery (the lap-band, for instance) are a joke. This is about where my agreeing ends. WLS is far from an "easy way out". The surgery I'm considering is major surgery, and quite frankly, scares the hell out of me. But, while I'm in good shape for my size now, I know time is running out on that, and I want to have a good chance at spending another 50 years on this earth.

To the person who said their friend (or friend of a friend) died from the surgery, are you sure it was the surgery, or was it possibly one of their co-morbidities that struck them down? I guess I do have to admit that one reason surgery scares me so much, is that my mother never recovered from an exploratory surgery to see if her cancer was gone, and my sister passed away after having 3 surgeries, the first of which would have basically cured her diabetes, if not for complications that brought on the need for the additional 2. It has taken me 5 years to see that surgery can possibly be a good thing.

I'm going to tackle the comment that really didn't pertain to surgery next, the one about "that's attractive". Well, how many of us that qualify for surgery are either supermodels or dating them? Assuming you love your significant other and would never leave, which would you rather have them do, lose a little hair and have imperfect teeth, or carry an excess 150+ pounds that are causing them health problems? The hair loss is, more often than not, temporary. Usually from either the anesthesia or changes done to the body during surgery. In the year I've been researching WLS (mainly the Duodenal Switch), I haven't heard of people having problems with their teeth. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, in fact, I can see how it could. With the procedure I mentioned, many people become lactose intolerant, at least temporarily. They also lose the ability to absorb a large quantity of the nutrients required to live healthy, thus needing vitamin and other supplements (like calcium).

Well, I feel a lot better now that I have that out of my system. Keep in mind that I openly admit that I don't know everything about anything. I hope, if nothing else, this has been informative...I tried not to let too much anger interfere with writing it, and feel I did a much better job now than I would have even a month ago.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you have a Happy New Year. Be safe if you are out partying.

Good afternoon readers. Welcome to the final Wednesday Whatever of 2006. I don't really know what to talk about today, so I guess I'll go over what I got for Christmas.

I guess I made out pretty good. From Dad and his girlfriend, I got a smoker (ordered it from Cabela's yesterday) and a $30 Best Buy gift card, a bottle of something to make some beer bread (I don't know if everything is in it or if I need other ingredients, haven't read the instructions yet), some candy (like I need that lol), and a wooden Sudoku board. From Dad's girlfriend's kids, I got a couple of DVD's, a box set of Garth Brooks CD's, and I thought something else, but I can't think of it right now. We hosted other family members and had a small gift exchange, in which I received a set of "Space Bags", those bags that you pack stuff in and vacuum out the air so they compress. We haven't had our get together with my late mother's side of the family yet, but the only gifts there are either for Grandma or usually a popcorn tin or similar item from her to each of the rest of us.

I really wasn't that into Christmas this year, but I wasn't really anti-Christmas either. It seemed to sneak up on me somehow. I never had the opportunity to go out and see the Christmas lights people had up, and I didn't get to the City for any shopping or supper with Dad like normal. Did all of my shopping during the week leading up to Christmas, Internet for some gift cards, and a trip to the grocery store and Wal Mart for some other things.

New Year's Eve will be different. The past few years I've gone to the bars, but with it falling on Sunday this year, the bar I go to when I go out isn't going to be open. I've also been cutting way back on drinking (no special reason other than I don't feel like doing it very often any more). I've decided that I really don't want to stay home, but I'm not really planning on drinking. I'll probably have to discuss it with my fishing buddy tomorrow to see what he's doing.

Ideally, I'd like to find a Honey and end the year with a bang, as well as start the year with another one. The chances of that happening, though, are slim and none, and I just saw slim leave town. Even if I found a willing prospect, I'd probably be too shy to make it happen.

Hope you enjoyed today's post, and that you have a safe New Year's Eve.

Hi everybody...bet you didn't think I'd post again until at least next week, did you? Well, something happened today that I wanted to share with you. I was out on my sales call today, the guys that work in the shop were giving me some crap about not being very much in the holiday spirit, and "The View" happened to be on the TV they had on. Don't ask why, I can't answer that one. Anyway, toward the end of the show, Rosie had a nice interview with a 12 year old girl who has Cystic Fibrosis, and they were going to end the interview doing a duet of a song from the musical "Rent" (the girl's favorite show). A few lines into the song, Rosie got up from her stool and walked away leaving the girl wondering what was going on, at the same time, the cast from the musical came onto the stage to surprise the girl.

I've never been a big fan of Rosie, but I thought that was a pretty cool thing for her to do. My attitude also got a little bit better after seeing that, I even actually wished the guys a Merry Christmas as I was walking out the door. Quite the change from when I walked in, and upon hearing them ask what I brought them for a gift, told them "a kick in the ass".

Thanks for stopping by.

Good morning. It's the Wednesday before Christmas, and I have yet to finish my shopping. I only have Dad left, but have no idea what to get him. He said a gift card would be fine, but I don't know how much or where from. Pretty much have to decide today and get it ordered online.

I think last week I mentioned my "good" leg had some problems. Well, here's an update. While the color is still a little off and there's still some heat in the area, it doesn't feel near as bad. Had a couple of spots that seemed to be pimples (or zits as I like to say), but when they popped, it wasn't the usual crap and core that came out, it was almost watery and then the solid resembled fat from a raw steak and had a smaller piece that looked like the lean part of a steak. The whole thing was smaller than half of a pea, but it was still wierd.

I also mentioned that my uncle had passed away last Wednesday. The funeral was held Saturday morning in a very small church. They had to bring in about 20 folding chairs to hold the crowd (in addition to the pews that were full), so it was a very nice crowd. One thing I thought was very appropriate, was that we took the long way to the cemetary. One thing he enjoyed was driving through the country, and instead of a 12 mile drive if we'd taken the normal route, it was closer to 30 miles. The reason for this was that the Funeral Home in charge of this had another funeral at the same time with the deceased being buried in the same cemetary.

Yesterday Dad brought my old football cards up from our old house. Just by doing a quick look at ebay.com, I think I have about $300 worth of late '70s and early '80s cards. I don't know whether to try to ebay them myself, or take my chances and try to find a dealer that won't screw me on them. 99.9 of the cards are what I would consider mint condition...I don't have packaging, but the cards have the original color and are not bent or creased in any way. I haven't made any spectacular finds, but an interesting one is a 1979 Mike Patrick...I didn't know he played. I also have multiples of some that I think should be worth something (Franco Harris, Danny White, etc.).

Well, I gotta go for now. I wish you and your family(ies) a Merry Christams, and if I forget to post next week, a Happy New Year.

Greetings dear readers, sorry about no post last week. I told you about Dad retiring from his job as City Clerk, right? Well, as a result, I had to give up the City's DSL Internet Service, so we called to get that disconnected in addition to getting hooked up with our own DSL Service here at the store. We wanted them deactivated/activated on the same day, but eveidenlty there was some confusion as the City's DSL Service died Thursday afternoon, and our store's wasn't going to be active until today.

Thursday also started a string of unfortunate happenings that I would like to have stopped immediately...if not sooner. While finishing up the phone call on the DSL Service and a couple of other items, my Fire Department got called to an accident on the highway just inside the City Limits. A pickup had pulled out from a gravel road in front of a dump truck, and of course the driver is deceased. He also happens to have been the father of one of my High School classmates. Since that accident, 4 other people that I know have passed away. 3 of them, I only knew well enough to know who they were. The 4th is my uncle. He was scheduled to have surgery today to fix a leaky valve and a clogged artery, but he didn't make it into the hospital, he collapsed around midnight at my cousin's house where he was spending the night, and we got the call at about 2:30 this morning.

Dad did holler down to let me know about it, but since I didn't answer, he decided to let me sleep. While I'm grateful that I got the sleep, I kinda wish I had known earlier instead of just getting to the top of the stairs, saying good morning, then BOOM. That always makes the day suck.

Well, now that I've depressed ya'll, and myself, let's move to some happier stuff. Thursday night we also found out that the people interested in buying our old house are going to buy it. Our Christmas tree has been standing for nearly 2 weeks now, and not even a ball has been moved by our lovely little angelic kitties (now watch, I'll go home tonight to find shiny ornaments scattered throughout the house, lights strung all over the floor, and artificail pine needles everywhere).

I guess I'm happy that our DSL Service that they said would be active by 5:00 this evening was up and running when I got here at 9:00 this morning (I just had to check). Found out that we do indeed need the filters on the phone lines here...got a call just after I was done and all I could hear was static. It continued after I picked up our cordless that I put a filter on, but ceased after hanging up the other one. Unfortunately, whoever called got tired of waiting before I got that done and hung up.

This one doesn't really fall under good news and I sure wouldn't put it with my bad news that I posted. My legs are conflicting. My good one has been kinda sore for the past week, with something that I've been treating as an infection...it was red and hot on the upper inner calf area, not to mention painful. The pain has subsided a bunch, but really hurts today because I have a huge zit on it right now...can't wait for that sucker to pop. The bad leg, however, really looked good this morning. Not as good as the other one when it's the right color, but better than it has for a while. From the knees up I feel surprisingly good, just wear down quickly (as anybody my size would). Sleep seems to be coming easier and it's been a long time since I've scared myself driving down the highway by nodding off for a second or 2. I've gotten this far on my own, just think how much better it'll be when I can get a new mask and start using my CPAP machine.

Well, there's a glimpse into my life over the past couple of weeks. Thanks for reading.

Remember last month when I bragged about getting the City's Utility Bills done in record time? Well, I just finished doing them again today, I didn't keep track of time and had a few more distractions, but that's not why I'm so happy. I'm happy because now I'm going to have a lot more time on my hands. Why you ask? Because I just finished those bills for the last time. You see, 32 years ago, my dad became City Clerk of our little town here in Iowa. 18 years ago when I graduated from High School, I pretty much became his assistant in this job, as well as a partner in our 2 retail businesses. Over the years, the Clerk job got more technologically advanced, resulting in the City buying a computer in 1993. Guess who got to figure out how to do the billing at that time. Me. Slowly, he started giving me more things to put on the computer, and/or get figured out with the computer.

Earlier this year, about the time I mentioned that Dad was running for County Supervisor, he told me he was going to resign as City Clerk, regardless of the outcome of the election. When the election bid fell just short, I thought maybe I could talk him into reconsidering, but no, his mind was made up, and he tendered his resignation this past Monday.

It's going to be different come January 2, when I don't have to bust my butt to get the Utility Bills out, but somehow, I think I'll manage to handle my giddiness. Dad might be the one who really has a problem getting rid of the smile on his face. You see, in Iowa, there is a pension fund (Iowa Public Employees Retirement System, better known as IPERS) that is paid into and available for Government workers, from State down to the local level. From this fund that he has paid into for the past 32 years, he will be receiving a monthly check for roughly the same amount he was taking home as City Clerk.

Well, it's after 6:00, and I've actually been off the clock for the past half hour, so I think I'm going to head home now. I just wanted to get this posted tonight while I'm still happy about being done.