I wandered over to this forum and am simply amazed at the stupidity of you people doing this diet!! Of course you will lose weight only eating 500 calories a day, you'll also lose muscle. Check with those people who posted 2 years ago, and how are they doing now. I bet most of them (if not all) have regained the weight and then some. I think most of the posts are spam. And I cannot believe people would actually inject themselves with hormones to lose weight. Talk about playing with fire. This whole "diet" is pathetic, and those who go on it and push others to ought to have their heads examined.

Yep-it's all set up. I've been collecting flameless candles for months-have loads ready to go-tested and packed up. Also have a couple dozen regular votive candles and holders, plus 3 of those long candle lighters. We're using a really cool Buddha statue that is holding a lotus bowl as the card holder. So far, the only fly has been trying to find the Yahtzee score sheets I printed up the other day. We have lawn Yahtzee dice-I have clipboards & pens...just can't find the sheets, so I will be printing up more this morning. Also going to cut a few more curly willow branches and spray paint them in a few minutes. I need to pack up my dress and stuff-then have people coming to help load up vehicles around 1pm our time.. I am *hoping* to get a small nap in...my niece finally had her baby early this morning, so I was woken by the text message at 2am my time...and didn't sleep well after that. My mind is reeling!!

Our New Years' Eve party is always a game night. The main group of contestants, our anointed Scrabble Masters, battle it out around the dining table, thrusting and parrying with their Official Dictionaries. The local Monopolists exploit each other at the living room game table. Sorry boys, but only one of you will end up as the 1%. The chatterers and gigglers gather around the fireplace and the sideboard-turned-bar. A hard core of our older guy friends loiter in my kitchen, drinking scotch and sampling the production of noshes and nibbles. Our Quality Assurance team, I suppose. People start arriving around 7 pm. At midnight there are poppers and honkers, party hats and industrial-size sparklers. We play "Auld Lang Syne" (Jimi Hendrix, Fillmore East 1970) extra loud. Injuries are tended to (those sparklers looked like welding torches), the hardest-core gamers get back to their tables, coffee is served. The last guest typically leaves around 2 am. We try to keep people supplied with food this whole time, lest they revolt and burn down our house with a sparkler. What to serve for this situation? There are usually a couple trays of SWMBO's holiday almond roca and peanut brittle. As it is in part a neighborhood gathering, several dishes always get walked over, this year some yummy bacon cheese wraps and deviled eggs. I made some BBQ buffalo wings. SWMBO made an artichoke dip and her gorgonzola garlic cheesecake. All fine and well, but after sitting out for three hours, those initial dishes aren't so appetizing. Let's not even mention what ceviche looks like after a couple hours on display. That need for continuing food is where the pizza worked nicely. All the real pizza work was done ahead. The dough, the sauce, the slicing and dicing and mincing and sprinkling. When guests started arriving, the oven was pre-heated. About an hour into the evening, I finished off my second Caipirinha and started making mini-pizzas. It was a leisurely process. Stretch out a small rectangular crust, top, slide into oven. Wander around, kibitz at the game tables, refresh my drink, cut and serve the pizza, make another pizza, repeat. My first-effort pizzas were nothing to write home about. But they were eaten all the same. We had pepperoni and mushroom pizza, olives and onion pizza, clams and olives pizza, crabmeat and scallops pizza, and for Miss Vegetarian, who wasn't wearing a turban tonight, roast brussels sprouts and egg white pizza. I ended up not making a bunch of other stuff. About halfway through the afternoon prep, the weight of three weeks' non-stop house guests, too many holiday dinner parties, too much in-law time, and work that never let up until the last couple days of the year - it all came down. I suddenly got really tired, slumping tired, aching feet tired. So all the fun and frivolous dishes got thrown overboard. I have a refrigerator full of those fixins' that I've got to repurpose over the next few days. (What to do with a dozen oysters, a dozen frozen egg yolks, chicken strips marinated in sugar, etc?) I did have fun during the party, but it was also a little bit about survival. I drank a quart of water for every cocktail. Ate mostly microwaved egg whites. Snuck upstairs for a couple of 5 minute lay downs. And now it is the New Year. I don't have a crystal ball, but I know one thing about the coming year. There's not going to be any damned dinner parties or house guests for at least a month!

Annie, how are you doing? I've gotten a lot of good input from you in prior threads about mindful meditation, seasonal depression, etc. I hope your good acts are coming around to serve you in this uncertain time. Take care.