Has anyone else ever had their SheMail account go "suspended?"

If so, how did you (tee, hee) rectify?

Hmm the Friends feature in the lounge - does anyone know what it does?

I'm not sure if it was the site's attempt to be like other social networking sites by adding friends to your profile. Not alot of us used the feature. I don't use it.

It's just like Facebook or MySpace where you can have a friends list- I avoid it. I think it could cause too much trouble.

I've tried to Google this but I can't seem to put together the right combo of words for what I'm looking for. So here comes my simple question. If two people are getting married in a synagogue do they both have to be Jewish? Is it possible for a non-jew to get married to a jew in a synagogue?

From http://www.jewfaq.org/gentiles.htm on Marriage

"Most movements of Judaism don't allow interfaith marriages to be performed in their synagogues, nor do they allow their rabbis to perform interfaith marriages."

Okay, I think this has been addressed in here before... but how do you get chewing gum out of clothes? I sat on some yesterday and it's now a holy mess on my trousers. I've heard freezing the garment and then hacking off the frozen gum can help, or is that candle wax?

This site says to try freezing it (just rub an ice cube on it), then use one of those stain treatment sprays or even WD-40 or cooking oil (but wash it immediately after). I've heard peanut butter will work, too. This site has a bunch of suggestions.

Good luck!

CCG,
Reform Rabbis are usually willing to marry a jew to a goy, but not in a synagogue. My sister married a goy and was married by a rabbi but not in a synagogue. Reform Rabbis who perform the marriages are hard to come by but they do exist.

Thanks for the info ladies. I guess it doesn't matter to me as much anymore because my brother just broke up with his gf. My mom and I had always been wondering about it because she was always insisting that she wanted to get married in the synagogue whereas my brother doesn't even believe in organized religion so yeah, a bit of a clash there.

Is there something good over the counter for lower back pain? I don't know if it makes a difference, but it's not pre-menstrual related pain. (In fact I don't know what it is, but I've just run out of the Tylenol 3 I had left over from my tooth extraction, and I can't stand it.) I'm not used to taking any pain killers at all so I'm a rube here.

I take Aleve on occasion. I also find a good hot shower & a heating pad helps. Unless it's something like sciatica, which requires cold instead of heat.

Yeah you're right I'm finding hot showers really help, lying in the sun in the right position too. Well at least I know it's not sciatica now. Thanks. I hate pain!

Edit: They didn't have Aleve at my pharmacy, but I found something called Robaxtacin (sp?). There's also a heat inducing cream A535 which I'm relieved to say actually does what it says on the package, so I've been able to avoid the painkillers for a while.

A535 is a life saver. I'm glad you're feeling better GL!

I think I have sciatica -- in my left butt cheek I feel a piercing pain if I move a certain way. It's not as bad as it used to be but it keeps bothering me. I'm not sure what I should do to make it go away!

Daily stretching, excercise like swimming that elongates your muscles, & ICE. No HEAT!

i have sciatica from a couple bad sk8 falls, lan. there are certain exercises that really help. as a general rule, exercise is better than bed rest for sciatica.

here is a page on yoga for sciatica

and here is a more detailed look at specific exercises for certain kinds of sciatica. i would recommend talking to a doctor or chirocracker to find out what specific kind you have.

Thanks ladies! I talked to one doctor who said it would just go away, but turns out it hasn't so I guess I'll go back. I'm going to head to the gym tomorrow too and go for a swim

My one & only flare up of sciatica lasted for a year & a half. I got my back cracked, I got massages, I swam, I stretched, I lost weight, etc, to no avail. Turns out mine was psychosomatic. My heart/mind weren't happy, so my body chose to stand up for them when I was ignoring my troubles.

My MIL went to a chiropractor who gave her some kind of ultrasound treatment for her sciatica. She'd had it for a couple of decades, since having kids, and it was gone. The doctor told her it might take 3-5 rounds of treatment, but it was gone after just one. That was about 5 years ago and it hasn't been back. I'm not sure the name of the treatment, but it might be worth researching.

sciatic pain is rather inconsistent.
i've had one year no pain, then something makes it flare up again, and back it comes. but for me, when it's here, it's brutal, and lasts off and on for days. but when it's gone, it's gone for a good long time, months or years. so much so that i forget i have it....until i recurs. but that's a good thing. i'm much rather have the on again, off again thing where it's off for a year and a half, then a week of hell, then off for two years. i wish all pain was like that.

Are you sure it's sciatica? It may be sacroiliitis. I had it after a fall off a ladder, and it can cause some fairly significant pain.

if you were asking me, it was diagnosed as the former, and resting does nothing to help it. exercise, strangely does wonders. although i've had some back pain too, but that seems to be separate and spine related.

no, I was actually directing that to lananans, because I got the impression that there wasn't a definite diagnosis. Sorry..I should have specified who I was responding to.

Thanks for all the advice everyone.

treehugger -- I think I'm going to go see a doctor and see what they say, maybe it is sacroiliitis...

I'm going to start exercising more if I can. School is just kind of nuts right now.

Hello. I am doing a project on acid/LSD for my substance abuse class. I would love to show a simulation program to my classmates but I've never done acid so I can't tell how realistic the ones on-line are. Does anyone have any they might be willing to share? You can PM me if you'd rather.

The YouTube clips I have found so far are:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxQ10lDsIJI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE-xvZCP-_Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJLVpAFD6rI

I'm also looking for a way to simulate any sounds and/or taste experiences. Thanks for your help!

I need some edumacation, busties....from last night's episode of Kathy Griffin, I found out that it's no longer just LGBT, it's now LGBTQI, for queer and intersex. What's "queer" and "intersex"? I'm aware of "queer" being reclaimed as a positive word, but I wasn't aware that it's different from L, G, B and sometimes T.

I think they're both to do with gender. I know of a few people calling themselves queer when they felt that the male/female, straight/gay/bi definitions were too simplistic to accurately describe their identities.

The only time I came across 'intersex' was in a documentary about different children being born with gender abnormalities. There was a loving and enlightened family with two daughters, who were both genetically male but unable to absorb testosterone so they developed as (externally) physically female (like a model in an episode of House). They looked like very pretty, slightly androgynous girls. Because they would have characteristics of both, the family raised them both as intersex. They told all theirefriends and teachers at school about it, and everyone seemed to be cool with it. It was a lovely story, especially in contrast to some of the other people on the show who struggled with surgery all their lives to be peoperly male or female.

Intersexed means someone who is born with ambiguous genitalia. Sometimes (moreso in the past but it still happens) doctors and parents will agree to alter an infants ambiguous genitalia so that it is clearly male or female. What can happen then is that, as the baby grows up, it becomes clear that the baby was assigned the wrong gender. The person who was assigned girlhood will actually feel like a boy and vice versa. I think that is the case of the character in Middlesex, a really great book.

Queer tends to be a more politicized term. I let people use it but, as a straight girl, do not feel that I should use it unless I am referring to a political group or action. Anyone who feels outside the gender norms can claim it for themself.

i wish i could help you pink but most of my acid exeriences were freaking Awesome! i'm not sure that's appropriate for a substance abuse class. i mean, you're trying to dissuade people from taking drugs, right?

the first video was mostly bunk but the visuals where things were slightly shifting like the curtains and the mirror in the begining, the carpet under his feet and the arms of the drummer sort of trailing behind while he was drumming, those were accurate. i never hallucinated anything solid or saw people that weren't there. one time i thought my friend had on a pair of reading glasses from across a dark room but when he got closer there weren't any. it was just an impression of glasses though.
the second and third video weren't like any trip i ever had. i did used to see a sort of shifting geometric pattern of rainbow lines in all the shadows of everything everywhere. that was fun.

Ah. Like that poor Brenda guy who had the botched circumcision. I think I have the audiobook of Middlesex, I just haven't listened to it. Thanks for the info, kitten & persiflager!

polly, actually, the order you have those initials in, is a bit.... odd--- usually (but not always) it's either LGBTI, or LGBTQ, but that depends on the context.

the Q is NOT QUEER, by the way, but questioning, i.e. questioning either gender or sexuality, who may not have any idea where they fit on the gender or sexuality spectrum, or who feel no need to fit anywhere. gender blenders, gender fuckers, and gender benders and queer youth usually self-define as questioning, but if someone is exploring their sexuality but do not think they are bi, then they might identify as questioning.

queer, as you know, is a somewhat innocuous umbrella term used by lgbtq people under 60's for anyone in in the second set (LGBTQ). intersexed people (formerly known as hermaphroditic, but is now considered passe/offensive) usually chose to see themselves, in large, as a separate from the lgbtq community, although it is not universal, their concerns do tend to overlap somewhat with queer folk, most frequently with trans folks, for the reasons kitten said. there is an overlapping history as well, since at the turn of the last century (circa 1900), anyone you would now call queer was labeled an "invert" these growing initials (lgbtiq, etc) are just a symptom of these histories separating themselves out, and those people clarifying and defining themselves. i could go into more depth-- particularlly about the history intersexed, and it's union with trans history but it's a bit complex, and would take up a bit of space.


******************************

as for lsd experiences, kitten, i hallucinated quite a bit-- but i do that on a high dose of liquicaps. i'm kind of a light weight in that way. :/ for me it's mostly patterns on surfaces. or perceptions of those surfaces. the 2 ways i most frequently hallucinated were pattern based.

case one: it was as if someone took a grid of christmas lights over the surface of everything i could see. at the corners of the squares in this grid were the lights, whose color was red, green, blue yellow. but these patterns were always consistently spaced. imagine you were sober looking at a chain link fence with a dense hedge in front of it, and on that hedge you would see little berries. but you would see no pattern. on acid, i would notice that all of the places the chain link intersectected would be marked by those christmas lights, and on the bush of all those berries were spaced equi-distant, and they looked like those christmas lights as well. i would also notice that there was no interruption in the pattern between the different textures. all things, living and inert shared this unified pattern.

case two: if you've ever seen someone who has a textured wall (not popcorn ceilings), it's that kind of wall or ceiling that has a kind of barely raised surface of no particular pattern. imagine seeing a photograph of that surface repeated over the surface of a movie screen, now imagine it double exposed, but with both of the patterns moving independantly. the photos are so small that you can barely pick out the surfaces. together it sort of takes on the appearance of a wave. now, imagine this film of ours projected on a room. visually that film would make it appear as if solid surfaces were moving like waves. although they were solid under your hands or feet.

occasionally when i was coming down it was pretty innocuous, it was as if the room was tinted, but the color would change every few minutes.

visually i've had some pretty interesting trips, the first time was my favorite: i was sitting on a friends roof with some friends at a party in the mountains, talking, etc, i became fascinated with the shingles which were round, and white, as the acid really hit, those shingles became more ornate, looking like delicate round paper doilies, with those christmas lit bright dots, evenly spaced on the doilies intersections, holes or edges. as i watched, those doilies began to move, like waves, the edge of the roof being like the shore, some would wash beneath me, gently lapping at the shore. it was so very beautiful.

other times i would stare at black and white marble tiles on my dorm floor, and art would "bleed" in from the cracks, filling up the tile, only to fade in time for the next picture to take it's place.

as for bad trips, i had a few. on that first trip after the doilies, we were heading back to town down a long mountain road, the sides of the mountain looked like skinless flesh, the christmas light dots were the pupils of eyes, opening as we passed. pretty disturbing, pretty disgusting. the bad trips were all along those lines, usually involving eyes appearing on surfaces, the pupils of which, again were those chrismas light/dots.


those where my experiences, and i've heard of people seeing music, but i never did. sensation wise, it felt like feeling connected to every living thing in the world, then later feeling "plastic" as if i was feeling all sensations second hand, and then when coming down, it was just jaw clenching tension, but i think that acid had some speed in it. good acid was smooth and would fade as subtly as it started.

Girtrouble - I can't speak for everywhere in the country but in Chicago, where I've experienced most of my political "awakening" Q means Queer far more often than it means Questioning. Almost all of the LGBTQ agencies that I am aware of out here use the Q to cover Queer. I have heard the list as LGBTQi and they will state it as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Oueer OR Questioning, and Intersexed (no idea why the "i" is lower case) and I have also seen LGBTQQiA (A=Ally) but after awhile it gets too long for practical useage.

Thanks everyone for giving me info on hallucinogens. My goal isn't to deter people from using it. We are all in grad school and I fugure folks can make their own choices. I just didn't want to try it figuring there is a limit to what I want to do for a good grade.

hah. *shrugs* ok, maybe it's just different in seattle or maybe just my environment. when i was doing support work with trans youth it was always questioning, never queer. to put it at the end of LGBTQ, well, that'd be redundant. that's not to say we didn't use the word queer, that just wasn't what the Q in LGBTQ was for. but perhaps that's just a seattle thing. round these parts queer means all o' y'all.

Acid will do that. I doubt it had speed in it. Especially if it was blotter.

etiquette question: when you get an invite for a party and it says RSVP, do you contact the party to let them know you cannot go. i realized that i didn't rsvp no for a wedding. so, with the bride to be hounding me, i had to let her know i couldn't go. btw, um, what is the etiquette for inviting people for a wedding? i spoke with polly about this. i consider this girl a friend, we met through work. haven't hungout in 3 years and haven't really kept in contact with the occasional forward cute things emails? so, i guess i've been struck by the amount of pressure i feel to attend this wedding. i thought i would hangout with her on the bachelorette party even though i know none of her friends. it will be an interesting night. i couldn't say no, well, i could've, but, she's been tracking me from fb to my cell. ugh.

I think it's best to contact the party either way rather than leave them hanging. People in my culture are notorious for not rsvping to weddings and then showing up anyway.

Just wondering, what exactly do you mean by the etiquette for inviting people to a wedding? Do you mean that people should only invite very close friends and family as opposed to also inviting acquaintances?

RSVP usually means to say whether you're going, yes or no. If you haven't responded, they don't know if you're just taking a long time to decide, or if you've lost or never gotten the invitation. And yeah, I've shown up without RSVP-ing before (oops!), so they never really know what's happening if you don't say one way or the other.

Some people can get really into weddings, but in my experience, it's really not a big deal to not attend a wedding if you haven't seen the person in a few years. There are a million excuses you can use to skip out on it. I think it's only considered bad etiquette to miss a wedding if you spend a significant amount of time with the person outside of work, or if you had already RSVP-ed yes and don't say no until the last minute (once they have booked caterers and stuff, it's a waste of money for them if you back out).

Thanks cc_girl and & angie!

Can anyone recommend a good camcorder? My cousin is getting married next year and I've been feeling like I want to make a little documentary out of the whole event. Usually when someone in my family gets married it ends up being like a family reunion and I want to get it all on tape....er, digital memory or whatever.

I saw a cool looking camcorder called MinoHD but it only holds up to 60 minutes of footage and it doesn't say if it uses a memory card or not. Do all digital camcorders use memory cards?

And does anyone know if there is a Mac program to edit all the footage?

In a similar vein, I would like to buy my first digital camera and I would like suggestions. Just a simple point and shoot that I can download to my computer. Thanks!

I rock a simple little Nikon Coolpix. It's easy to use, moderately priced, & fits in my pocket. Even the pictures taken whilst drunk were pretty good!

Canon also makes a nice digi camera, I have a canon and like it.

Go with a company that, first and foremost, makes cameras, like Canon or Nikon. I'm partial to Canon. Sony is okay, but not great. I wouldn't go with anything else. Getting something with a good lens is going to make the difference. You want something that has an optical zoom for as great a range as possible before it switches to digital zoom. Basically, optical zoom is the zooming that created by the actual lenses in the camera. When it switches to digital zoom, it's zooming in closer, but it's sort of "creating" the details of the image digitally, with the computer in the camera. The image quality won't be as good as it will when you're still in the optical range. So you want one that has as great an optical range as possible (obviously, more optical=more money, usually.)

Here's the one I've got (in blue ) We've had it since April and love it. It takes great pictures and is easy enough to use, once you get the hang of it. It has some great features on it.

cc_girl, I can give you some advice on camcorders tomorrow when LeBoy is awake.

TREEHUGGER! My AC has died! It's maybe four years old, I dunno what the fuck is going on. Yesterday, it just decided to stop working. I keep it at a constant moderate temp in the summer, 74f & I keep it downright COLD in the winter at 68f. Dude can't be here until Wed afternoon! Any ideas? I am sweating like a hog!

I crossposted this in the NYC Busties Thread but thought I would post here too.

I'm headed to New York next Monday thru Saturday afternoon and am looking for some ideas of what to do, in addition to the typical stops of the Empire State Building and Central Park. I'm staying in the Lower Eastside.

Any favourite/must-see spots would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

and auralpoison, that sucks about the AC. I had to turn on the heat in our house this morning as it was so close to frost last night. And it's still August!!!

AP, can you get on FB so we can chat about it?? It'd be nice to be able to go back and forth so I can ask questions/you answer/me deduce further and ask more questions, etc.

Check your PMs

Probably a dumb question, but there's no website where you can upload a picture and it will do a search to find the image on other websites? I have a picture I downloaded from somewhere and I want to find where I got it. Google Images has not helped so far.

ETA: There is such a thing! A reverse image search engine! And I found what I wanted!

when a Myspace user does not specify in their profile whether they have children or not, does anyone know if the site defaults to "proud parent", or does my boyfriend have some explaining to do? Just found an old profile of his...

I think the default is normally no children, but I've made mistakes on profiles before. Or perhaps he means it metaphorically - is he the proud parent of a piece of art, or a really immature friend?

Good luck...

I want to learn how to not cry? It is affecting my credibility at work. Whenever I get into a confrontation or a situation where I get angry, I start to cry. I work as the only woman in a male shop. And I am getting to a point where there are underlings and I need to keep them "in their place". One of the newbies screwed up one of my projects after I had left, and I really need to be able to tell him that is NOT COOL, without breaking down into tearss. I know if the newbie sees tears rolling down my cheeks, I will lose respect.

Sooo, how do I steel myself when I am angry and allow myself to just plain be angry? Kick holes in walls, punch things, as long as I don't CRY. ???

Psychologists? Tradeswomen? Mothers? Supervisors? Anybody?

ETA: I don't want to totally stop crying, I have no issue with crying at a sad thing. I just don't want to cry when I really just want to kick somebody's butt. Same also kind of goes for crying during happy things, but not as important.