Someone at work recently told me that Shania Twain was getting divorced from her husband Mutt (what a name, if true it fits) after discovering he had a dalliance with another woman. Is he insane? Looks what he's losing. I don't know how many times I've watched her in concert and especially the videos. I especially loved the video where she dresses as a man in a tux with the top hat, tails, tuxedo shirt and tie along with the little black shorts and heels. It was a take off from a Robert Palmer video where he was fronting for women behind him playing (not) instruments and she turned it around and had scantilly clad men doing the same thing in the background. It was a copy of an idea with an original spin put on it. The desert one was my second favorite. Did Mutt feel like he was being left out while she brought home the millions? What a dope. I know he has his own thing in the music industry but let's be adults about this instead of teens. Good Luck, Shania. Let him have his chippy. you deserve better.

My friend of many years is disabled. He got that way by shear stupidity, he'll be the first to admit it and does. The problem Steve has is that he can no longer work at his stand up all day job, he's a machinist. He's not eligible to receive Workman's Compensation because he got hurt outside of work, showing off on his watercraft. Did I mention Steve has a wife, 2 kids, and another due in weeks? I guess I forgot but Steve knows what's coming next, no income. He's been trying lately to get social security disability but he's been getting the normal government run around and denials. I did some research into attorneys and other types of advocates and did find one company that's been around since 1984 and has a 98% success rate for over 100k people. I gave Steve the information and hopefully he can get something going to take care of his family until he can get rehabbed or she is able to get some work. I don't know what they're going to do with the employment situation the way it is right now and hopefully they can get some medical benefits in the interim. Good Luck, Steve.

Why is this a painful weight loss update? It's because I haven't been able to drop any more weight. On the up side, I haven't put any back on either. I was hoping for a fast weight loss when I was doing all the nasty yard work like weeding and mowing and maintenance on the house. Wrong! Not exactly though, I did see a weight drop immediately afterwards when I'd hit the scale before jumping in the pool to cool down. The next day I'd be back to square one again. I wanted to do some walking but this part of Florida (probably most parts) has this freaky thing where the later in the day it gets the hotter it gets until the sky's open up and the rain pours down, usually daily. This makes for an interesting situation as to how far can you go before the heat catches up to you and the rain soaks you. Did I mention the biblical lightning we get too? I guess not. I think the outdoor exercise will need to wait until mid September when the rainy season starts it's decline. Hurricane season, which adds it's own spice to the mix, will be done in October/November apprx.

What I would like to see in my lifetime are vast and great and probably a pipe dream. I would like to see automobiles that are affordable to everyone and not just a select few who can afford to waste gas on vehicles that are either too big or too fast for the streets our family's live on. Those people that can afford the oppulence of expensive gas burners should pay a luxury fee for the right to occupy the streets with these signs of decadence (did I mention I'd love a Bugati?). I would love to see people with big mouths from a northern states big city finally close them and lower the noise pollution in America. I would love low cost health insurance that would allow everyone to get checked even if money was in short supply. I would love to eat food that hasn't been biologically engineered or treated with carcinogenic pesticides that will give me babies with 15 toes and a flipper for a hand. Remember the multi eyed fish on the Simpsons? We're not that far away from that. I would like butter to be the top selling spread for bread and baked potatoes and margarine is used for a cheap lubricant for plastics. I would love to be able to bank some of my paycheck in the bank for me instead of the creditors. Finally, I would love it if there were really commercial free TV. I remember when cable television came to my neighborhood in Massachusetts when I was a youth and it was advertised as COMMERCIAL FREE TV! That lived about as long as it took to be advertisede and they relented and put the ads back, but the picture was superb!

I am a Gadget-aholic! There, I said it! I can't get enough of them and what's out there now will, if I allow my primal gadget buying impulses to range out, break my bank account. You have to admit that what we had as kids (if you grew up in the 60's and/or 70's) is nothing compared to what's available right now. To top it all off you have to consider that the new item that comes out today is already outdated and when enough are sold the newer model will be on the way. Remember the iPhone versions that were hot on each others' heals? The smart buyer just had to wait it out until the versions slowed down and buy the latest and greatest (less buggy) version. We have portable DVD players, MP3 players like the Sansa Fuze, MP4 players like the Apple ipods, texting based phones from Nokia and Apple and EVERYONE else. I was lucky when I purchased my Motorola Razr when it came out because I can still update it, especially since I cracked the lock way back and could modify till my hearts content and the best add-on was my Samsung WEP200 bluetooth headset. Talk about making my arm feel better and less distraction on the road and both hands on the wheel. Flash memory has hit the 256 gig mark and my 19" LCD computer monitor is the balls! I have video surveilance around the outside of the house that's wireless and infra-red and it took 2 hours to setup, at a cost under $200. You can even get military grade night vision for hunting and security. I have to stop looking through the Best Buy ads in the Sunday paper!

Why on Earth would someone who makes over a million dollars a year (lots more than me) put their career at stake to use an illegal growth hormone? It just doesn't make sense because they face contract termination and even jail time not to mention disqualification of awards and entry into their respective Hall of Fame being removed. Look what happened to Pete Rose for making a bunch of bets. Gambling is a sickness but they didn't care because it said in the rules that you couldn't do it, no matter what the situation and the same goes for HGH injections. It creates an unfair player advantage and will also cut ones life short. Remember Lyle Alzado? He died of brain cancer due to HGH injections just to be a better football player. Just plain stupid but from their perspective I can kind of understand it, not condone it, just understand it. When the players start to back away from their career highs they start to fear non renewal of contracts and being put out to pasture while the younger, stronger person comes to take their place. They don't need to be taking what is illegal when they could take HGH releasers that works to allow their own body to manufacture what is illegal to take, HGH. HGH manufactured by them in their own body. If the body still won't produce it with the use of legal supplements than it won't produce it! Keep working out and pray you didn't make a wrong decision by not going to college when you had the chance. It's not worth the risk to you or your loved ones to get 'juiced'.

Okay, here's the situation as it stands right now, and I'm kind of enjoying it finally. The sink is pretty much set as well as the faucet choice. The tile is still a work in progress and is not going to be rushed, the old sink hasn't fallen into the cabinet yet, I don't think. My wife, in recognition for all of my hard work, as she put it, has decided to award me a prize for outstanding patience in the face of appliance adversity. She's going to give me the gift of something that every modern kitchen should not be without, an LCD HDTV! For the past 8 years I've had to crane my neck to see a news story or what have you on the television in the livingroom and she knows my neck has probably grown in length because of it. I was, in the past, against the idea of a TV in the kitch because of old school upbringing and all but this is the information age and I live in a hurricane state that has weather changes on the fly. Most of the time we spend is usually in the kitchen with work schedules and differing responsibilities. Often I end up eating dinner alone while she's at work so it's not really an anti-social contrivance. Now I have to place the swivel mount so it's easily seen by us and not by anyone outside looking in. Oh man, another decision to make. I wonder if she'll let me put surround sound in the kitchen?

I tentatively have a sink and a faucet that I've chosen. The next thing I need to do is chose a back-splash material. I could go with synthetic material such as vinyl, stone such as granite, porcelain tile, ceramic, mosaic, or quarry tile. The prices go up the more natural you go and making a complimentary color/theme match becomes a lot more difficult to achieve. I think I need to eliminate the quarry tile even though it is more rustic and probably would go with the copper but that's a lot of busy colors going on in one area to tussle with. Vinyl is cheap and easy and that's why I need to remove that from the list. The sink/faucet combo is not cheap so why make it look cheap. Case closed on the synthetics. It boils down to the tiles and trying to make a good room/fixture match. I want to use a lighter color but not white in order to set off the copper in front and above without taking the emphasis away from the metal. I want it to be there but not there, no fighting for attention. I think I'm going to need to talk to a decorator for this decision because a mistake in color and texture could be expensive to fix indeed.

Well, I've researched the sink situation and I'll do the copper if I can find an appropriate faucet setup to go with the sink. I'd like something that has a removable spray head for clean ups that the faucet can't reach. I really want a sprayer, even if it's separate from the faucet. I went to Lowes and looked at Moen, Delta, Kohler, Price Pfister, and Peerless. The selection wasn't what I wanted it to be for the material/finish I wanted so I went to the Internet to have a look-see. I did find an old style copper setup on the site I found the Pfister faucet and I also was looking at non copper complementary such as bronze (too dark). I would have loved to have found a tarnished copper fixture, that would have been way too cool and very complimentary for the sink. I'm still undecided but I still have time to decide. I think my tile selection will be just as important. I don't know if I want to use a natural stone finish or a porcelain tile. Decisions, decisions!

I've been patching and caulking and tightening to the point where the old sink is calling it quits on me. Three years ago I removed the InSinkerator garbage disposal partly because I hated having to un-jam it and mostly because a disposal in a sink that has a septic tank is just plain stupid. Why would you want to put ground up vegetables and meat into a tank that needs to liquify it's contents under a bacterial process that will not decompose for a long time, potentially causing the tank to fail under stress. I threw it away and I'm still thinking about what I want to hook the switched outlet to now that it has no appliance to power. Small considerations. It's time to replace the stainless steel sink I've grown to dislike. I dislike it because it's shallow and I'd like a deep tub to put a stock pot into to fill without holding it on it's side to fill. The thing is, do I want another stainless sink or do I want to get a bit exotic and try to match some of the decore in the kitchen. I recently discovered where I could even get copper sinks that would compliment the copper pans I have hanging over the island. That would look cool. I do ned to think about resale as well but I can do complimentary tile work and faucets as well and that would seal the resale deal for me. I'll let you know what I end up doing and what else I'm going to upgrade.

I went looking for a good medicine for my cat for fur balls and didn't find many products that differed from store to store with minimal brands to choose from. I did get some flea meds for both cats at an online store that had some really good prices, wish AI could remember who they were, and they offered a free item with the purchase and I chose a malt based fur ball treatment. The mineral oil treatments we had been using must have tasted like rancid cheeks because she would put up a fight with every dose of this black greasy concoction. The surprise came when we gave her the malt extract one and she actually liked it and didn't fight or run off. I'm convinced that the walkin stores have the vanilla based products while the Internet has the chocolate and strawberry flavors that are enjoyed by pets. I do believe that wheter you need fish supplies, horse supplies, bird supplies, lizard or even snake supplies that the Internet is the preferred store front. I also find that the pricing is more attractive since the overhead is greatly reduced and the selection is far greater than a store can offer or the manufacturer can pay slotting fees for to get shelf space like at that big Wal* store. They have everything you could want but nothing you need. C'est la vie!

I started my quest for weight loss in April of this year, of course, and I've really hit the wall. For the past couple of months I can't get away from one weight , no matter what I eat. I'm even feeling awkward when I cheat because it makes no impact. I know fat has a memory and when you force weight loss in a hurry you will almost invariably always return to your base weight, the one still in fat memory. The secret, if you can call common sense a secret (well, maybe you can), is to establish a 'new' base fat memory. This thinking has brought me to another conclusion. Once my new base has been set I need to jump start to my new lower base number, which I'll probably do with a weight loss supplement of my choosing. I just have to watch out for the herbal items as they can interfere with blood pressure meds, not to mention several others. My honest opinion to anyone contemplating this course is to make a list of your medications and go to your pharmacist and ask if there are any interactions between your Rx and the herbals in the supplements your interested in taking. Better safe than very sorry. I'd rather be overweight with normal blood pressure than skinny with a stroke, or worse. Pharmacists are your best information resource because that's what they do and what their trained to do!

White Rabbit! The Brits will know what I mean. :)