Sade Live in Pittsburgh...

I must say I feel so sorry for the younger generation that has no idea of what a real concert is.  I have been to many a concerts and it wasn't until now that I can truly appreciate what I just experienced.  The price of the tickets were up there but this is one concert I wasn't going to miss by a long shot.  By the way this is my birthday gift from me to me.

For one we know how to show up fashionably late and dressed to to the 9's!  But this time me and the company I went, was early.  Eating out a decent sit down meal and bypassing the traffic to get a good parking spot, locate the nearest restrooms to our seats and most importantly our seats.  Some would say that showing up early is tacky.  But for us it wasn't.  Our section 202 row D seats 1-3 got upgraded to complementary section FLR 4 seat 3-6 , about 20 minutes before show time.  So being early for once is not tacky!

Lights start to dim at 8 o'clock on the dot!  All eyes turn to the stage to see John Legend ready to get the crowd going.   He started out with Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" .  Not to shabby of a rendition of the song, that is if you like other artist doing cover songs.  Of course he ended with 'Green Light'.  Now your energy is on a high and you seen the run for the bathrooms and drinks, or others texting to find friends (yeah I did the latter of the 3).  Now John L. set was 1 hour, a little short if you ask me for someone with 3 albums plus did 3 cover songs!  A little disappointing but hey if that your style I'll ride along.

From 9:30 to 12 Sade had the crowd standing, sitting and dancing in the isles.  This was the set I wanted to see.  And believe she did not disappoint, and did not stray from her albums (like people who think crack is wack, or artist that forget their own lyrics to their songs!).  This woman who as been out of site for too long started with 'Solider of Love' and ended with 'Cherish the Day'. There were several wardrobe and set changes, and the woman still has it!  The voice, the looks and I'm not ashamed to say even the body!  For 52 years young I hope and pray I can still bounce round like her!  Daymn!  Do you feel me?  52 years young, with the voice, the body and agility to just get out there and do the daymn thang!  The background videos or short stories for each song was fitting.  Don't even get me started on her live band.  Not a DJ standing in the back spinning and scratching.  Not some fool running around the stage with his pants down to their knees spitting every 3rd word or some half dress hoochie momma standing around praying she doesn't have a wardrobe malfunction.  But a live band that compliments a beautiful voice.  Now the crowd around me was for sure an older and mixed crowd with the Sunday best on.  No not everyone when to see another act that was playing tonight at the football field.  Just to sit back and watch the faces light up when the first few notes are played like it takes them back in time to a happy memory is just priceless and give me tears of joy and a chill in my bones.  To see that her music is appreciated by many for their own reasons just brings me peace.  I'm sure that anyone that was there would have to agree, it was well worth the money no matter where you sat!  So if she should happen to come back to Pittsburgh, yes I would still purchase my ticket the same day they go on sale.  She is just that bad hands down. 

Yeah by the way, if you left before the house lights came up then you missed 'Cherish the Day'.  That is her doing her raised above the stage singing 'Cherish the Day'.  So many were ready to leave before the house lights came up totally missed the best of the best.  ~QP

QP on The HCG Diet...

Thanks to our fearless leader Lexxx I too am now on the HCG Diet.  For those that have not heard or know about it here is how it goes ...the short short version.  You take the HCG drops 3 times a day with B12 drops once a day.  Your only to eat 500 calories per day (yeah freaked when I heard that too).  Instead of telling you what you can have in the 500 calorie day, it's better to tell you what you can't have.  Cheese, pork of any kind, lunch meat, marbled steaks, butter, bread or breading of any kind, rice, cake, cookies, pies, milk (no ice cream).  So basically everything you love to have on a regular you must quit cold turkey.   Or load up on during your loading days.  So if you think you can handle this don't go stacking your pantry with all the goodies to stair at you or call your name in the middle of the night.  Don't try and start if you know you are going to be pigging out at an upcoming cook out.  Yeah put that sloppy bar-b-qued rib down and drop the potato salad.  Just make sure you can set aside 23-24 days of emptyness (acually 26 total if count your 2-3 days of loading).  So here is week one for me...

Week 1 is in and I got a little less than 3 weeks more to go.  And so far so good.  I am down 10 pounds in 7 days.  I opted to do the 3 day load up sooooooooo actually it's 10 pounds in 4 days!  I hate to tell anyone that I am on a diet.  Only so I don't have to run and hide if I want to treat myself to something other than a cardboard flavored meal.  But to hell with that I am proud of the results thus far and will not deprive myself of a little indulgence.  I do watch how much of it I eat.  You may just want a bite just to satisfy that urge and then it's over. I am finding after a 2 bites, I am done and proceed back to my regularly scheduled diet.  I am now getting the questions of side effects.  The positives to the negative so to speak for week one.  The up side: yes I am down in weight and lower in blood pressure.  And my clothes are starting to fit looser and my neck waddle is starting to fade.  The down side: The oils are coming out and all over my face!  Sometimes my face feels like the left over bacon grease left in the pan.  I can't watch ANY food commercials anymore (and it seems like there are more of them jokers since I started this diet).  And last but not least I'm about ready to kill anyone that says "YOUR NOT ALLOWD TO EAT THAT".  First of all I am 38 years old, and second I am allowed to eat anything that I want to shovel in my mouth!  I suggest that you don't go putting anything like a finger near my mouth or you will draw back a nub.  And do you know how many calories I had today or even how many calories is in what I am eating?  No, then sit your skinny ass down and let me do my diet my way!  Even with the side cheat I am still loosing weight.  Now I don't recommend that you run out and get anything that will derail your diet.  But, if you are in tune with your body like I am then do you.  Cause you can best believe that imma do me.  And if my body says that I want a cod fish sandwhich then my body will get it.  I know that if I have a treat here and there, that there is a better chance of success in my diet.  This is not my first go around with a diet but it will be my last.  I only have 20 more pounds to go and the chances are better that I will see my ideal weight than another failed attempt. 

If you think that this is somthing that you can handle see Lexxx with the Durty Truth and get your bottle of HCG the soon to be called mirlce worker diet.  For now this is week one, in and done.  Stay tuned for week two...  oh and pics to come once I am done. QP

Valentine's Day - Should Christians Celebrate This Holiday?

Hello All,

As many of you know, today is Valentine's Day. What does that mean to you? I know some people celebrate it and some don't. What I'm wondering is, do you believe Christians should celebrate it? In order to answer this, let's look at the origin of Valentine's Day.

Emperor Constantine the Great legalized Christianity and ended Rome's persecution of Christians. In 380 A.D. Christianity is made the OFFICIAL state religion of the Roman Empire. This allowed the teachings of Christianity to spread and for non-christians to convert. The pagans, however, who adopted Christianity as their religion did not entirely abandon the traditions and practices they held before their "conversion."

A Pagan holiday known as Lupercalia (fertility celebration) was celebrated on February 15 and continued to be celebrated until (Catholic) Pope Gelasius , in 496 A.D., changed Lupercalia on February 15 to St. Valentine's Day on February 14 in honor of St. Valentine as the patron saint of lovers. It stayed on the Roman church's Calendar of Saints until 1969 A.D. The day was removed from the calendar by Pope Paul VI.

Does it matter? Does God care what holidays we celebrate?

Deuteronomy 12:29-31 - "When the Lord your God shall cut off the nations from before thee, the nations which you go to dispossess, and you displace them and dwell in their land, take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed from before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, 'HOW DID THESE NATIONS SERVE THEIR GODS? I ALSO WILL DO LIKEWISE.' "
"You shall NOT worship the Lord your God in that way; for every abomination to the Lord which He hates they have done to their gods . "

The warning is to not adopt CUSTOMS used to worship or honor other gods in order to serve and worship the true God. Valentine's day and its symbols are rooted in the worship of false gods and has no Biblical basis. So....should Christians who celebrate Valentine's Day and consider themselves believers in the God of the Bible take a prayerful look at no longer observing the holiday?

Here's what I think. Valentine's Day is a day where people express their love for others. I don't think there is anything wrong w/that. I've never considered it a religious holiday either. I also don't consider it something that has to be celebrated, so to each his/her own!!

Tickle
2.14.11

Monogamy - Why Do You Think It Started?

Monogamy........In our society it is known as both a secular and spiritual way of life, and in marriage, a law, but what do you think? If you've read the Old Testament, most of the founding partiarchs were openly polygameous and still found favor and were loved by God. So, why did this idea start?

Here is one theory...........

Christianity was propagated from the Roman Empire into the West and from the West into the rest of the modern world. And wherever the gospel is preached, Roman monogamy was portrayed as God’s only divine standard. But because the major part of the world is still unchristianized, there are actually much more societies of the world that are polygamous than monogamous. "Should-be" monogamy never gained worldwide attention until the last few centuries. The should-be monogamy idea was not popular in previous generations, not until its strong uprising in the last 150 years or so. In fact, polygamy was still openly practiced in the last generation in non-western countries, and is today still practiced in modern societies, even though not so openly because of the outcry it would cause. A worldwide ethnographic survey of 849 human societies show 708 whose customs are polygynous (more than 1 wife), 4 polyandrous (more than 1 husband) and 137 monogamous. Other than the religious and supremacy factors, there can be a few other reasons for this.

Another theory..............

In real modern day practice, monogamy is but the exaltation of free love and the justification of self-love. Possessiveness is not only condoned, but glorified. That’s why it is so appealing. It readily satisfies the inner desire of a woman to possess her man exclusively, and the inner need of a man to please and idolize his woman completely above all other things, to be completely engrossed in her only. Dr Nathaniel Branden, an advocate and authority on the subject of romantic love, has well defined it in his book, Taking Responsibility, "Romantic love means finding a soul mate – someone whose values and sense of life mirror our own. We feel a drive to organize our life around this person and no one else. If someone says, ‘I love you’ in a romantic context, this what they are understood to be saying."

Control.....Some say that the concept of monogamous marriage ultimately stems from men's attempts to keep track of the lineage of offspring in early historic times. Given the nature of sexual reproduction, women always know which children are theirs, so as long as a family's name and wealth are passed through the female line (matrilineal descent) there is no problem. But if men want to pass the family name and inheritance through the male line (patrilineal descent) then things get messy. Even prior to the rise of civilization and the concept of inheritable wealth, one can detect obvious biological pressures to keep female sexual behavior committed to a single male, but once civilization takes hold and great sums of wealth are on the line, the biological pressures are supplemented by very powerful social and political pressures. What this ultimately means is that, for the purposes of biology and patrilineal decent, men don't have to be monogamous, but women do. If that was the reason, then with the advent of DNA Paternity testing, would this still apply?

On the other hand......Most women would benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy. HOW!?! You Say...........When there is resource inequality among men—the case in every human society—most women benefit from polygyny: women can share a wealthy man. Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man. The only exceptions are extremely desirable women. Under monogamy, they can monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygyny, they must share the men with other, less desirable women. However, the situation is exactly opposite for men. Monogamy guarantees that every man can find a wife. True, less desirable men can marry only less desirable women, but that's much better than not marrying anyone at all. Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny. What they don't realize is that, for most men who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under monogamy.

Whatever your feelings on monogamy, it is the way of life now. By the standards of our modern sensibilities, monogamy may have been an improvement over what appears to have been millions of years of polygany(the practice of one man having two or more wives, which is often confused with the term polygamy, which means have more than one spouse).

You Decide!!!!

Tickle
2.13.11

When is the best time...

When is the best time to pick that wedgies what you just can seem to get loose by wiggling around? ANYTIME... I see it like this ladies, hell we can't look good all the time doing something lady like. Sometimes those thongs or boy shorts just don't stay where we put them. SO I figure if a man can stand there in front of you and scratch his balls then dig away my friend, dig away! That also applies to adjusting the puppies. They like to shift too!

When is the best time to let out that pressure on your stomach and you just can't seem to get out of the situation your in. Do what I do... test a little first if it makes no sound then let her rip! But not too fast or it will make a sound.


When is the best time to tell someone they have a booger hanging? If you like the look of the booger cause it looks like Denzel then say nothing. But if it's distracting you from the conversation you can do the finger to nose gesture and try not to embarrass them or do what I do and just flat out tell them that there is a hankie that wants to boogie. And if all else fails and the hints are ignored just tell them that you cannot continue to talk to them until they take care of the business in their nose that wants to escape.

When is the best time to tell someone to shut up? I find myself having the same person wanting to talk to me first thing in the morning. Now I clearly have on headphones for a reason. They are buds but you can clearly see them or hear the tunes coming out of them. Or when someone around you clearly has had NO singing lessons in their life and can't carry a tune even in a bucket! Or the overly nice person that you could really care less about what drama is going on in their life but they insist on telling you what is going on in their pointless world. ...now this one I have trouble with. You may be the only bright spot in someone’s life and they want to share the good, the bad and the ugly. And with this YOU should be the one to shut up and let them let you in. We are all so caught up in ourselves that we don't stop to think that we could be doing good to others no matter how bad it is. They cold be doing you some good too. Take time to open your ears and shut your mouth ...who knows they could be that bright spot to get you going, put a new song in your heart or make you stop and think what your doing wrong in your life. Don't let time melt away from you because you didn't take the time...
Now this is the opinion of Quit Playin' and some of the things that go running threw my mind. Let me know what is running threw your mind