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Hi there, everyone. Excuse the vanity, but I'd really appreciate your prayers and/or positive thoughts tonight. Without going into much detail, after an addiction lasting over five years, I've been completely without this substance for six days now... and counting. I've dreaded this for a while now, and am relieved to find that quitting this addictive substance has been easier then I imagined. Dearest Mods, please have compassion on me and don't bump my vanity off too soon. I really need the added support from my FRiends here. Thanks!

Sorry for the late-night vanity FRiends, but Mr. S_S29 is still on the road and not here to wish me a happy b-day thus, I took it upon myself to post this useless vanity to take the opportunity to wish a happy birthday to myself. !!!HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! Oh. Lead Moderator/Admin Moderator/Sidebar Moderator et all, P.S... Before you boot me forever, consider the fact that banning me *tomorrow* rather then today will sufficiently articulate your collective opinion regarding my (vanity) post... ... and as this thread will be a distant memory in a dew short hours, I hope that if any...

"Zozobra is a hideous but harmless fifty-foot bogeyman marionette. He is a toothless, empty-headed facade. He has no guts and doesn't have a leg to stand on. He is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. He never wins. He moans and groans, rolls his eyes and twists his head. His mouth gapes and chomps. His arms flail about in frustration. Every year we do him in. We string him up and burn him down in ablaze of fireworks. At last, he is gone, taking with him all our troubles for another whole year. Santa Fe celebrates another victory. Viva...

How many list/message board/forum members does it takes to change a light bulb? One to change the light bulb and to post that the light bulb has been changed. Fourteen to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently. Seven to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs. Seven more to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs. Five to flame the spell checkers. Three to correct spelling/grammar flames. Six to argue over whether it's "lightbulb" or "light bulb" ... another six to condemn those six as...

Dear FRiends, I am in need of all the prayers you can offer. My husbands best friend and his wife are in the midst of something w/which I have *no* knowledge and I don't know how to help. I am very afraid that I am saying the wrong things. Christie is not only a devoted wife and mother, but also a recovering alcoholic. The collective result from her determination, the AA meetings and knowing how stongly John felt about her drinking was enough to stop the drinking and keep her sober for the past 6 years. After Matthew was born,...

THE sun glowered, the traffic crawled, and the bay air reeked of salt on a wound. Things were hot again in Howard Beach, and there was nothing to do yesterday but wait once more for Sharpton. Wait, wait, wait. Two days earlier, a young white man named Nicholas Minucci had used a baseball bat to beat a young black man named Glenn Moore, who had the misfortune to stumble while being chased out of a white residential neighborhood at 3 in the morning. If he had doubts about the honor of Mr. Moore's intentions, Mr. Minucci could have called 911...

A school bus taking kids from a summer camp to an amusement park rolled over Sunday, injuring several children. All 37 children aboard were taken to hospitals for treatment or as a precaution, said Maj. Randy Nichols of the Maine State Police. None of the injuries was considered life-threatening. The two campers most seriously injured were transported to a hospital in Portland, one by Lifeflight helicopter and the other by ambulance. The other children, ages 12 and 13, were taken to hospitals in Brunswick and Lewiston. State Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland said most of the injuries appeared...

Inc. says an internal investigation has discovered that a former employee at a Jefferson, La., restaurant cut the tip off his thumb a year ago and that likely is the fingertip found by a customer now suing the restaurant chain. May Deal Chambers Johnson of Jefferson Parish claims she found a fingertip in a salad she bought at the restaurant a year ago. She filed suit against the Overland Park, Kan.-based chain on June 24 in Louisiana state court, seeking unspecified damages. In a statement Saturday, Applebee's said "while some facts are still unclear, we now believe a former employee...

The Mexican flag flew beside the American flag in Mesa on Saturday as an estimated 2,000 Hispanics pledged to boycott gasoline for two days in support of immigration reform. Immigrants without Borders, organizers of the boycott rally, asked all Arizonans not to buy gasoline Saturday and today to show the enormous purchasing power of Hispanics. "It is an action to motivate people to do something," said the group’s executive director Elias Burmudez. "We have the right to protest. It’s something to show that we are necessary." In the parking lot at Pioneer Park, the message was painted on car windows...

Like many undocumented immigrants in California, Jesus Nava drives without a license. And while the debate over whether illegal immigrants should be able to obtain driver's licenses continues in Sacramento, the Anaheim man has a more immediate concern: parking without a license. Nava's apartment complex, Hermosa Village, has begun requiring tenants to show vehicle registration, proof of insurance and a driver's license for a parking permit. Because many of the complex's residents are illegal immigrants and can't get a license or insurance, they have effectively been barred from parking inside the complex, tenants and city officials say.

A Boy Scout died Thursday in a rafting accident in the Animas River. State police said Chase Hathenbruck, 15, of Farmington, N.M., died when he, a scout master and four other boys got their raft trapped in the churning waters of a diversion dam for the Farmington Pump Station on Penny Lane near Flora Vista. Hathenbruck and a 14-year-old boy who was not identified fell out of the raft, ripping off Hathenbruck's personal floatation device. The 14-year-old swam to shore. The remaining three scouts and scout master remained in the raft and were caught in the churning waters of the...

Agency says she is an unfit parent; four of her nine children have died in her care A judge granted Child Protective Services permission Thursday to temporarily remove a newborn from her mother's care because CPS said she is an unfit mother. Four of Sylvia Cardenas' nine children have died in the past 20 years, including two killed in a fire in April. The fire is under investigation. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services described Cardenas in an affidavit supporting the request for removal as an unfit mother whose children have either died or been removed from her...

The white teenager jailed without bail after a baseball bat attack on a black man was also prosecuted in a bias incident outside a Sikh temple on Sept. 11, 2001, and was put on probation for a 2002 stabbing. Nicholas Minucci was 15 when he and another young man allegedly shot paintballs at worshippers as they left the Sikh Cultural Center in Queens, hours after terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, a law enforcement source told The Associated Press. Minucci was convicted as a juvenile but the verdict was overturned on appeal, according to the source, who spoke on the...

Iraq's U.N. ambassador accused U.S. Marines of killing his unarmed young cousin in what appeared to be "cold blood" and demanded an investigation and punishment for the perpetrators. In an e-mail to friends obtained Friday by The Associated Press, Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie said the killing took place in his ancestral village in western Anbar province, where U.S.-led forces have been conducting a counterinsurgency sweep aimed at disrupting the flow of foreign militants into Iraq. His cousin Mohammed Al-Sumaidaie, 21, a university student, was killed June 25 when he took Marines doing house-to-house searches to a bedroom to show them where...

Should a Vermont couple, wedding planners, be forced to host a same-sex civil union ceremony at their family-owned inn, if they object to such unions? A lesbian couple says yes, and it has filed a discrimination charge against the innkeepers, accusing them of violating Vermont's Fair Housing and Public Accommodations Act. The innkeepers, identified only as Jim and Mary, say they did not refuse to plan or host the reception - but Jim did tell the woman who called him that he would have a hard time putting his heart into the event, given his Roman Catholic beliefs about marriage....

One of Orlando Romero's calves has a leg up on the other 25 calves born within the last two weeks on his ranch east of Tucumcari. The calf was born with an extra leg, with two hooves, growing from its back. Ranchers in the area aren't quite sure what to make of the little Limousin heifer. That is, if they can catch her. "She moves like a damn deer. I had a heck of a time trying to catch her," said Jess Weaks, the ranch caretaker. "She's pretty ornery, that's for sure." The week-old calf's extra leg does not touch...

The latest attempt to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants in California cleared a Senate committee on Thursday but with provisions that restrict how the licenses can be used and what they would look like. The bill, by Sen. Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, would bring California into compliance with federal law. The REAL ID Act, signed by President Bush last week, requires states to verify that people who apply for a driver's license are in the country legally. It also allows states to choose whether to issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants as long as they have different markings —...

The death of a 4-year-old boy that police initially thought was a tragic accident turned out to be something more sinister--the alleged murder of a child by his mother, officials said. Police on Sunday charged Nicole Harris, 23, with first-degree murder in the death of her son, Jaqueir Dancy. Prosecutors allege she killed the boy because he would not stop crying. Police originally believed the boy died after he became tangled in the elastic of his bedsheet, but the investigation took a turn after an anonymous tip, police spokesman David Bayless said. Harris allegedly admitted to wrapping an elastic band...

Poor, unmarried women with children may have receded from the public alarm list thanks to increasing numbers of them leaving welfare for work, but that doesn't mean that they are yesterday's problem. In some respects, little has changed: A third of all children are still born to husbandless women; and those children are far more likely to grow up poor than the children of two-parent families--and to become impoverished single parents themselves. If anything can revive interest in this vexing subject, it is "Promises I Can Keep" by Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas. The book is the product of five...

paycheck stub, a phone record, a money transfer receipt - all they needed was some piece of paper to prove their loved one existed. Yet for families of Mexican migrants killed in the Sept. 11 attacks and seeking compensation or just a death certificate, even those small requirements have been impossible to meet, especially if the victims were in the United States illegally. Without Social Security numbers, tax records - and in some cases not even a birth certificate - grieving family members have been unable to confirm their relatives were at the scene of the 2001 terror attacks, or...