BikerBabe

Did I ever mention that I was kicked out of almost every twig I ever attended? I've always had a real hard time trusting without verification on anything I was told when I was younger, so usually got in trouble for questioning what I was told to believe. The only tithe they got from me, was when my mother gave me money and didn't look away so I had to put it in the horn of plenty. *sigh* I was 16 back then in 1974 and there were some cute guys at fellowship. I lost interest almost immediately in TWI, but humored my mom, took the class (John Lynn ran it) and she thought it was great for me. I figured by the end of that school year I'd be long gone ... then they got their hooks into my mom shortly after my dad passed away. I spent the next 30 yrs trying to get her away from TWI and she did finally stop attending, the day she died. She was F. Corps 12 and I barely made it thru the Intermediate class. I prefer space and strategy sim city type building games, connect 3's when braindead and all kinds of open world games. I test games for various game Devs too. When I feel up to it, I plop on the Vive headset and play some Virtual Reality games. Not to mention all of that is much more fun than watching paint dry. :)

I have 941 games on Steam atm. 70 more games are on my wishlist. Then there's GOG, Epic and a few others I have some other games on. LOL. Both of my sons bought the game when it was first released. I have been building my own gaming computers since 1998 and over the years helped many game Devs by Alpha and Beta testing their games. I was in a cult for way way too many years. Why would I want to play a game about something I already lived thru? Hahahaha. /sarc off Let me know what it's like to play if one of ya'll buy it. In Steam I use the nick I use almost everywhere online, LComeno. :)

Trust ... but verify!

LOL. It varies from day to day what blades I may have on me. I have various sizes ... small clip on, buck, carpet fold up, one similar to a buck I got from a friend, my bayonet, or my spear. :) Never had any reason to use one, except for their intended purpose, cutting objects I need smaller. My past rapes though, memories will pop up from time to time and it just makes me feel better to have a blade on me. 70's, 80's, 90's ... it will NEVER happen again.

... and some people wonder why I always have a blade somewhere on me when I'm outside my home. There's another one in my wallet should I need a back up. Keeps these types away from me. Narrowminded people and I rarely get along. Just fired my doctor yesterday after silently putting up with 3 months of her crap. (Knowing I can't live without my thyroid meds every day, since mine was removed.) Easy enough to find a new one, but it's senseless for a doc to take me off 20 years of proven successful treatment and start from scratch, plus stop the meds I am on or cut the doses in half ... just because I am now 65? Really? Sorry, all of this has done nothing but make my Crohn's Disease flare up. I gotta run. LOL. (No peeking while I'm gone!)

I had contact first with The Way. That led my mother into joining, then as I got older, my kids were exposed when young. My kids and I got out are fine and have no lasting effects, but my mother died still believing everything the cult told her to. I'm left to ponder if I will see her again when I get to heaven. *sigh*

I've been gone for years from here. I see this thread and I feel like I never left. I've so missed you guys and gals! Have a pretty sunset from last night on me.

I remember my mother hitchhiking from Indiana (Rome City campus) to Gunnison, Co. to do their fitness program there. She was 61 years old back then. Today I'm 65 and the last thing on my mind is hitchhiking anywhere!!! I do remember enjoying picking on my mom by informing her she spent years teaching me right from wrong and hitching was cool in the 60's and early 70's, but by the time she did it, it was NOT safe. She went anyway, I just prayed she'd make it back alive and in good condition.

Thanks guys! You are correct in that they weren't pleasant to go thru Twinky. It does have a humorous side though .. I lost a little over a foot of my small bowel back in 1999 and I ended up getting put with the most wonderful surgeon named Dr. Shamos. He's originally from South Africa, so has a really nice british accent when he talks that I just love listening to. I could talk to him all day! He made that horribly painful experience much easier to deal with via the love and care he showed to me. He came and saw me more than any other doctors ever have. Fast forward to 2011 or 12 (I forget exactly) and I got new pain in my gut, but it wasn't the Crohn's Disease .. it was gallbladder. I was totally full of stones and infected! There was nothing that could be done but to remove my gallbladder. The question was, who would do the surgery and would the doctor do it the old fashioned cut you totally open method that is considered the most painful surgery there is, or would he opt for trying to get it out via belly button surgery and just a few holes in my belly. Enter Doc Shamos to my rescue! LOL, no kidding. I got the same surgeon all these years later and he was just at wonderful today as he was back then. He and I had a great time catching up on our lives as he visited me during my five day hospital stay. He did manage to get that darn gallbladder out via my belly button, but it took some persuasion as he put it, which meant he had one hell of a time getting it out, but worked at it until he did because he didn't want to have to cut me open badly. I didn't mind being bruised up a bit around the holes where he took it out at. That was so much less painful than being cut open across my entire belly would have been. I never want to go thru that again if I don't have to. Once for the gut surgery was plenty thank you. Heh. OK now we are at this past year in June when I'm at my Thyroid doc's office and she's telling me I could have it removed and I said that is what I wanted. I then asked if I could use my own surgeon and she said 'well, the hospital has certain ones that normally work here' and I said 'yes, like Doc Shamos?' and she goes 'Ohhhhhh, you know Doctor Shamos? He's the best!' I told her 'I know he's the best and that's why I'd want him as my surgeon once again.' She arranged it and for the 3rd time Doc Shamos was removing body parts from me and he got rid of the Thyroid and it's tumor. When I saw him at my post op visit I told him I was starting to run out of available body parts to donate to his cause and I may need to find other reasons to come see him, LOL. He laughed and said maybe I'd get lucky and never see him again ... I told him I thought I never would after the *first* surgery but after three I was beginning to consider moving into his office. Hehe.

Put me down as survivor .. twice. The first time was in 2004 after I had my uterus removed after it became tilted, a side effect from my Crohn's Disease. Pathology let my OB/GYN know post surgery that they found pre-cancerous cells on the cervix, but I didn't need to worry since that was removed with the uterus obviously. I wasn't too shocked hearing that news, since most of the women in my bloodline have had hysterectomies for cancer. I think I'm the only one who didn't have one for that reason .. me, ever being the oddball. LOL. Then this past June I had to have my Thyroid removed for Grave's Disease/Hyperthyroidism. Again, we didn't think too much of it, I'd dealt with the crap for 2 years and the doc gave me a choice, have it removed or stay on the meds for it. Well, the meds weren't working well and the side effects of the hyperthyroidism weren't kind to me .. to the point my personality totally changed and I became a person I didn't know and whom I didn't like. The easy going lady was replaced by a *itch, from hell to put it nicely .. and trust me that IS the nicest thing I could say about the way I was. As soon as the surgery was done and my hormones went back to normal ranges, I got myself and my peace back. I'd missed it. Then I went to the post surgery checkup and my surgeon told me that pathology had found the cancerous tumor in the right side of the thyroid when they did the exam on it. I'm really starting to hate those guys in pathology. Hahaha. The good news is since the tumor was intact and my surgeon removed the Thyroid all in one piece, it was totally removed. I was considered 'cured' right away since it was totally gone and they felt no further treatment was needed. To say I'm thankful after reading thru this thread would be a huge understatement. My heart goes out to each and every one of you whom posted here. Cancer is a horrible thing and if I had my way, no one would ever get it again.

Just curious what you ended up getting. I have Win 8.1 now and totally love it. Of course I avoid everything to do with it's stupid apps, which I have no need for on a PC with a non touchable monitor. There's no way I'm giving up my 28" monitor and losing it's wonderful size just so I can touch a tiny monitor and spend half my day cleaning up fingerprints from it. Heh, *not* my idea of fun. That said .. I LOVE the other stuff win 8 has given me. The graphics of Direct X 11 are so totally cool for the games that are now being made and I'm loving it. Win 8 is also so much faster of an OS than any of the other Windows versions that I've had, but keep in mind I went from Vista to 8 and skipped 7 totally. I have used 7 when working on other peoples' computers, but never did have it myself. I'm rebuilding my computer, as it's been a few years and it's needed to be done for awhile now. LOL, I'm still running an old dual core, 3.0 CPU system here. I think the only part of it I'll end up not replacing will be my power supply and even that may go as it's only a 700 watt and it's being pressed to it's limits in order to push enough power to run just 3 of my 4 hard drives. I will need a new one if I decide to add in the 4th drive full time and not just use it on an occasional basis (when I can turn off one of my huge fans that's extra, thus gaining enough power to run the drive for a short amount of time without doing any damage to anything). If you are a person who likes apps, then you'll love Win 8. I can't afford them, being on SSI, so I knew from the git go I'd never have use of them and I turned all of them off that I could on day one. LOL. You can also configure your system to boot straight into the desktop, something it doesn't do by default if you aren't aware of that. I found the instructions on the web and they were very easy to follow and do. That was one of the best things I found to help me out and thus I now avoid the app window totally unless I choose to go to it, which I never do. Other than the Win 8, I've gotten a new video card. I found a good deal on an ATI Radeon 7850. Next I will get a new motherboard, CPU and RAM, then made the decision about the power supply. That will set me up for another few years of gaming fun. Hah, at least I'm honest about what I do most. Anyone who has 4 hard drives 2 small ones each around 250 gig in size, one that's 500 gig and my new one that is 3 T in size. I have one partition I use for programs and one for misc. stuff like pics and videos I see and want to save. The rest is all games that I've gotten thru the years and saved. I never delete games unless they are really that bad and instead have just added more hard drive space as it's been needed. A few of my old games I do have on disc, so they aren't always installed, but the majority I've gotten off the web or via downloading from Steam. Over the years it's added up to where I probably have around 200 games on my system right now and up to 50 more not installed. I need to burn them to a DVD I guess one day, but I'm always afraid the minute I delete anything off the hard drive, the DVD would get destroyed and after losing one hard drive full of games in the past, it's an experience I never want to go thru again. To this day I still haven't been able to find all the games I lost copies of and replaced them. Last that reminds me, Win 8 doesn't work with all programs. If you have older programs you use daily/often, research it first to make sure that win 8 or now you'd want to check win 8.1 to be exact, can in fact run the program correctly. I've had quite a few of my older games that just totally refuse to work on Win 8. I am thinking of putting win XP back on one of my smaller drives and doing a dual boot once I get totally rebuilt here and then I'll be able to play the other games again when I want to. Just sucks that I have to do that. It's not really win 8, it's Direct X that changed I think I read and if the game/program makers haven't put out a patch, then once you upgrade from Direct X 9 to 10 or 11, some programs no longer work. I've heard that is true with XP, Vista, 7 and 8. So anyone reading this that suddenly finds a program that isn't working, think about upgrades you've done and if one of them was Direct X, then that is probably the problem. You could downgrade and old programs will work again or go to a dual boot system and run two separate Direct X versions that way as I will do and then be able to run everything old and new.

I DO have a verified healing I can attest to! This past June I was cured of cancer ... just as soon as my surgeon removed the cancerous tumor infested thyroid of mine. Bwhahahaha. Once he cut my throat open and yanked that sucker out, no more cancer ... I was cured!!! Yep, for those curious enough, I do have pics I can share of my throat, taken a few days after the surgery before I was healed up much, showing my cut throat. They aren't bloody or gory, but plainly show where I was sliced open across the entire front of my throat. Sorry, I *had* to post this. It called to me as I read thru the thread and once healings were mentioned. Hehe, I thought of this 'healing' of mine and thought I'd give everyone a smile and hopefully a laugh or two at my expense. While I can laugh about it now, at the time it wasn't fun going thru surgery. Thankfully, I wasn't aware the tumor was there until after the surgery was done and over with, so I didn't have the 'cancer worry' or whatever you'd call it that so many cancer victims must deal with. God was looking out for me I feel. Losing my gallbladder the previous year to infection and then facing yet another major surgery was enough on my plate to deal with mentally. (Pre-surgery sonograms and x-rays never saw the tumor, even though it was big enough they should have.) Pathology actually found the tumor when they received the thyroid and checked it over post surgery, as they do for everyone who has something removed. They notified my surgeon who then informed me when I saw him at a post surgery visit a week or two later. He was as surprised as I was to hear there was a tumor there. We were both under the impression it was just messed up due to my Grave's Disease, but it was even worse than we ever suspected. Anyway, here's a healing story for the thread. *Not* exactly the type of healing meant, but as close as I can come to it. Heh. One thing I'd love to know -- what ever happen to the original poster? Has anyone heard from him over the past couple of years? I wonder what ever happened with him and the girl he was dating. Maybe he'll stop in one day and give us an update, I'd love to know if they are still together or not ......

After 40 years of smoking I quit using ECigs. I did a whole lot of research before buying and went with http://www.firelight-fusion.com/ as they sell USA made ECigs and have the lowest prices around. They are out of Florida, so consider that if you order from them .. there will be up to a 4 to 5 day delay from the time you place your order until your ECigs arrive in the US Mail, depending on how far away from Florida you live. I'm in Phoenix, so it usually takes about 4 days for product to get to me. I didn't intentionally start out wanting to quit smoking. It just got too expensive, so ECigs were the way to go. Our cig bill went from $250.00 a month down to $30.00 or less after the initial cost of buying an ECig kit. We went with their couples kit which was just shy of 100 bucks. Over time I just started using the ECig less and less and one day I put it down and never picked it up again. My hubby will uses his, but not at anything near the amount of real cigs he used to smoke. Neither of us liked their pre-filled filters and so we buy the empty filters and liquid, then fill them ourselves. We are both menthol cig users and prefer the taste of the liquid they sell over what is in the pre-filled filters (I'm thinking maybe cause the filters sit around for a longer time and it gets stale, while buying the liquid and filling filters ourselves gets us fresh liquid that tastes even better than real cigs we think). The best way to start using an ECig is to get your kit, but do NOT start using it until first thing in the morning on the day you decide you are going to make the change. Doing that neither of us had any problems changing and in fact prefer the ECigs over real cigs. Hope this info helps people who are thinking about going to an ECig. It's sure the best thing we ever did in our lives.

Being poor sucks, I must say. Being too sick to work, I depend on SSI. They give me a whole $670 bucks a month to live on and the state kicks in with $125 bucks worth of food stamps. For those engaged in this thread, the chruches only serve a small majority of the poor. Your local non church food banks are the ones serving the majority of the hungry in your city I'd bet. The churches will help the poor members of their church first, then take whatever is leftover in the poor fund to donate to other poor in the town. I don't disagree with that at all, but if you are expecting your donation to go out to the total poor of your city, you need to know how these things work. Then there are those like me who don't have a car. Can't afford one after paying 500 for rent each month (it also covers utilities for my tiny studio apt). What is left goes for toilet paper, paper towels, extra food that I need at the end of every month since the food stamps don't last a full month ever. My electric wheelchair won't make it round trip to the food bank places in the city and I can't afford the bus ticket. Someone needs to figure out who to get help to those who can't go to a few select areas of each city to go get food or whatever. There should ALSO be an option that if the food bank type places try to give you a box of food stuffs you don't ever eat, you should be able to trade that product(s) for some they have that you do like. Trust me, I tried that years ago when I lived somewhere else and after a fire needed a bit of help getting above water again. They expect you to take what they give you and be happy. All the poor I know and many in this building use food banks monthly, take almost half the 'food' in their box and throw it away each and every month. I've seen what some put out on our community free bench and even when hungry I wouldn't take it home. What good is there to a small bag of pasta if there's nothing to put on top of it or mix into it? Besides, pasta and my Crohn's don't like each other very often and I know better than to eat it and risk getting sicker than I already am.