And the PayPal tip jar Is where?????:confused:

Look for the "PayPal Donate" icon at the very bottom of this page.

Thanks, Pas! I looked at the bottom of the Cellar page and didn't see it, even though it's there. must be a freudian thing. :D

Tony, I'm sure things will turn out okay. They always do. I wish I could be there for you in person, but unfortunately I'm too far away. If you need any advice or just an ear, though, I'm here. If something starts to get to you, just tell us about it. Just communicating problems sometimes helps. It certainly doesn't help to keep it bottled up.

In summary: Everything will be okay, and I'm here for you.

How much weight have you lost? That number is going down pretty steadily.

Depends whether one's countin' by my high water mark of two-fiddy, or the point at which I decided to start losing weight this time, 240.

Goin' by the latter, and my body's response to two pieces of pizza and a Coke (today's lone meal) I will have lost 10% of my body by tomorrow morning. Not bad for starting 6 weeks ago.

Wow.. nice job. How exactly are you doing it? The two-pieces-of-pizza-and-a-coke-a-day-diet?

      You're a good man, UT. More so because you did this because you believed it was right, but didn't do you any good.
      You are also a wise man. Recognizing what we have done that is right, especially when we are in pain is one of the most difficult things for one to do.
      You'll be okay. Life is life, it's not easy nor fair. Personnaly, I've always believed that what matters is living a life you can respect yourself for. Sounds like you are doing well by that standard, even if you do say you're confused.

Thanks guy. I have always kind of found the broken women and tried to help them. My most serious girlfriend in college had been sexually abused by her father. My greatest hope is that she's happier today because we worked on it together. We are so often broken people, in a shattered society. I want to believe that we get what we give... it's only a little harder to believe that now.

      I know what you mean. I gave up on the idea of karma or any other form of universal justice a long time ago. I just couldn't find any evidence for it.
      The funny part was that facing a world with no exterior reason to be good, just or honorable I found the only decent reason to be any of these things: self-image.
      I'm an honest, decent guy. I am so because I couldn't face my reflection if I wasn't. In the end I doubt you'll have a lot of regrets. You sound like you know you've done the right thing all along. It's sad when things fall apart, but since you've followed your beliefs you can still face yourself. In the end everyone is ultimately alone. You are the only one you truly have to answer to. From the sound of things, you've been living up to your own standards. That's really all that matters.

      I was writing this in response to UT as OC posted... Talk about different approaches...

Tx OC! We will meet someday... I want to see if you talk in purple too.

Juju - I was on Weight Watchers for a while a few years back and I learned their points system, and it works quite well if one is committed to it. It's really just a simplified concept of calorie counting where they limit you to the right levels. Syc pointed out separately that I am blowing it by not getting enough calories, and he's right too; I've been under the WW lower limit for the last two days. Today I will eat.

It never fails that I lose weight best through 3 squares, about 1000-1700 calories a day, 30 minutes of walking every day, and 8-12 glasses of water.

UT's gonna be alright. We're gonna roll down to AC this weekend, eat at the White House, we'll get him a hooker...it'll rock!

My first wife wasn't exactly broken when I found her, but she was, shall we say, undereducated in the finer side of life? She was terribly naieve, a bit coarse, and really, really tunnel vision afflicted.

Over the course of our marriage, I tried to open her eyes a little; things like the philosophy of world religions (she was a Lutheran, period), tolerance of differing sexual identities (early in our marriage, she met a friend of mine who had had a couple of lesbian experiences, and was repulsed...later, they became best friends), a broader range of arts, etc, etc.

Like UT, I took some pride in her changes even after she'd gone. Then, one day, four or five years after we split and she had remarried, I drove up in front of her trailer house to find her sitting in a lawn chair on her porch, shucking corn into a paper sack, a cigarette hanging from her lips, a beer can between her feet, and her husband's rusting 70's vintage Ford Fairmont with a deer skull in the back window parked on the lawn in front of where she sat. I might have been able to bear all of that, but knowing that her last name is now Clampitt kind of finished it all off for me, and I drove away shaking my head, mumbling "13 years of teaching down the drain."