MikkiStreak

Yea, complete dumbass thing to do with a ring that expensive. Sweet idea, but come on- wrap that freaking thing around your wrist all the way up to the balloon and tie it in a knot, for crying out loud. But the girls response sucks too----- no matter how disappointed I would be if I were in her shoes, I would not have responded like that.... what a bitch... she's got some screwed up priorities if she's refusing to speak to him until she gets a new ring.

LONDON (Reuters) - It is the one moment every man wants to get right -- and which London floor-fitter Lefkos Hajji could hardly have got more wrong. The luckless 28 year-old's dreams of giving his sweetheart, Leanne, 26, the ultimate proposal have literally vanished into thin air. Hajji, of Hackney, east London, had concealed a $12,000 engagement ring inside a helium balloon. The idea was that she would pop the balloon as he popped the question. But as he left the shop, a gust of wind pulled the balloon from his hand and he watched the ring -- and quite possibly the affections of his girlfriend -- sailing away over the rooftops. "I couldn't believe it," he told The Sun newspaper. "I just watched as it went further and further into the air. "I felt like such a plonker. It cost a fortune and I knew my girlfriend would kill me." Hajji spent two hours in his car trying to chase and find the balloon, without success. "I thought I would give Leanne a pin so I could literally pop the question," he said. "But I had to tell her the story -- she went absolutely mad. Now she is refusing to speak to me until I get her a new ring." He is hoping the ring will still turn up. "It would be amazing if someone found it," he added.

Love reading all the answers---- it is incredibly helpful--- thank you everyone!!! I'm at work, so I don't have much time to respond to all of them right now (but will later).... Lucy---- you guys asked for one thing that we really are dying to do: the build-in entertainment area. Did you do a full wall of shelving with the entertainment area in it? Or focus on just adding the build-in entertainment cabinet? If you don't mind my asking- was it terribly expensive to add this? Frank and I are *huge* reading freaks and have a wall of bookshelves in our apartment already. So we're really interested in adding a wall of built-in's, but have no idea what kind of pricing this would be like.

Frank and I are starting to research home building in anticipation of actually beginning the process later fall/winter. Even tho I've been a homeowner before, I've never built, and I'd like to "smarten up" about this and see what this has been like for other people. 1) Whom did you choose for your home builder and why? 2) Did you finance using your home builders mortgage company? Any pros/cons to using theirs instead of your own? 3) What do you know now (that the building is finished), that you wished you knew then (before starting the building process)? 4) What didn't you expect in the process? (or, what "surprises" did you have in the process- both good and/or bad) 5) What advice would you give to someone starting the process? 6) What would you have done differently if you did it all over again? 7) What did your builder consider "standard" options? And what did you choose for "upgrades"? What percentage of your final price was due to upgrades? (example: if the home was $200,000 and you spent $25K on upgrades...) 9) What kind of timeframe did you have for this---- from starting to research, making a decision, then actually building and finally moving in? 10) What was the easiest decisions you had to make? What were the hardest things to decide on? Any input you feel like sharing is definitely appreciated!!! This is new, exciting, but also where I have a huge learning curve to address and your input will definitely help us!

Confessions..... hmmmm.... 1) I want to move to a land far, far away --- some place where it's too expensive for my in-law's to call us. I'm tired of the 4-5 phone calls every night from his siblings, and the sister who treats FI like he's her personal "bitch." They call it being "close".... I call it "co-dependent".... 2) I hate more than anything---- living south of the manson-nixon line (oops! I mean mason-dixon!) ha! Now I understand why Dallas has such a high rate of violence per capita---- I'd be violent too if I'd been brainwashed my entire life into thinking "America" exists only between the Hill Country and the border. (no offense to the handful of sincerely nice people I've found on here who live in this area---) 3) I love my fiancee's equally warped sense of humor and the world. Leave to him to put PMS into perspective: "If I bled for a week for no reason, I'd be pissed the entire time too...." 4) Now for the real confession: I seriously want to "out" the religious hypocrite ass-wipe douchebag father of my daughter after he beat her, kicked her out, treated her like a disposable diaper for so long, while maintaining the "holier than thou" attitude to all his fellow professors at the seminary. Fucker- your day will come. And that bi-polar psychotic freak he married--- yea, she's on my shitlist too and is next on the list.... Cunt.

Just make sure you use them every once in awhile tho even if you pay them off the next month. The reason I say this is because I had a Penney's card in my early 20's---- I used it a couple times, then didn't use it for several years.... well, Penney's closed the account since I wasn't using it, and it wound up dinging my credit report. Credit bureau's don't like it when creditors close the accounts. Also, I had a Target card years ago and again, didn't use it often. Then, I went to Target one day, decided to use the card but didn't have it on me. So the service desk "looked up" the card for me to use. What I found out later, was that they couldn't find my original card number and they just opened a new (second) account. Granted, my original Target card was opened prior to Clinton's administration pushing the availability of the internet, so a lot of business'es were really just getting their accounting systems computerized. Hopefully that kind of stuff doesn't happen much anymore. But at the time, it dinged me and to this day, my credit report shows 2 Target accounts but Target has never been able to locate my original account number in their computer systems.

Working all day, high as a kite from pain killers. Apparently, my comments get pretty amusing when I'm loaded on them.

Quote: Originally Posted by Saraha 2. I was diagnosed with celiac disease, which came with many other illnesses 3 years ago, and just got back my first labs in three years that were normal today! Are you doing a gluten-free diet? Or a mix or low gluten intake and meds? I was diagnosed with DH last year and have been on Dapsone ever since. It took about 9 months before they finally found the right level of meds to control the outbreaks.

I just got this email today, only it was associating them to Missouri. I got a good chuckle out of it.

Quote: Originally Posted by starchild I love you Maria Was this in Texas? Nope--- in Iowa. I was the kid every parent was afraid their child would befriend. Ironically, all of those kids today have permanent barstools wedged up their asses, but I'm the one who moved on and grew out of it. eventually. for the most part. I always like when this thread pops back up. It's like an amusing walk down memory lane. Frank must think I'm nuts... I just sit in the chair with my laptop, thinking and laughing, then typing. I think I need to dig up my "memory boxes" this weekend. There are lots of "goodies" tucked away in those boxes---- I used to save EVERYTHING.... letters from friends in college, photos, newspaper clippings, etc.... and audio tapes of our drunken escapades (twas the age before camcorders)...

We dated for 3 years, have been engaged for 1.5 years so far, and will have another 2-3 years before we actually walk down the aisle (for a total of 3-4.5 years of engagement)...

* My favorite stuffed animal is named "fuck up the rat." * I have photos of myself and my best friend when we were 17, holding beers, and standing at the front entrance of the police station. We also went to the county jail yard, and took pictures of us drinking beer while sitting on the trunk of the cop car, while the cops were inside. * I got a littering citation in high school because I was driving my car with a load of friends in the back, when they decided to wrap their heads in toilet paper and do "chinese fire drills" in the middle of a four-lane highway. The county sheriff was delivering newspapers and we scared the shit out of him. He tore after one of my friends on foot, throwing newspapers at them. (it was 5:00am and we'd pulled an all-nighter... we were a little delerious from sleep deprivation, needless to say.)

That is too funny.... Frank and I are sitting here laughing at the used vibrator idea....

those clouds are amazing looking!

violent femmes table-top karaoke.... Add it up? I could totally see that! hehehe.... I'm thinking you must have some guests like we're going to wind up having!

Kate, that was awesome!!! We had already decided to do a video, but were only thinking of the ceremony specifically. Yours convinced me that we need to hire for the entire time- ceremony thru cocktail hour, dinner, reception, etc... and let me just say---- i love the friend of the mom who starts telling you not to feel rushed to have kids, and the other lady grabs the mic and says, "bullshit..."

Quote: Originally Posted by Morgan Angela, I will not be upset if you have Michael work on it instead of me. His 11 years trumps my 6 months. I'd be really interested to see what a pro can do with this picture. ditto--- but only if he provides instructions on how he corrected it! Michael--- I think you just outed yourself, and now you may have to gear up for the onslaught of PS questions from us who are trying to learn it!!!

Quote: Originally Posted by Morgan Wow, thanks for your confidence in me I'm still learning. Well, I'll never stop learning but I'm definitly not as experienced as I'd like to be yet. I'll post things as I make changes & get feedback on what else can be done to improve it. Maybe we can work together on it to get it good. It sounds like you have a lot of expertise with PS also. I do think it will be challenging to fix, but I know it can atleast be improved. I was also going to ask if you had another picture where his hair isn't blowing. Also, your smile seems a little like you were caught off guard. If you have one with a big smile I can probably drop it on top. I haven't worked with shadows much so this will be a learning experience. I can take the reflection off the glasses if that helps. I suck at lighting when I shoot right now, so I've had to compensate by getting some actions macro'ed to deal with fill lighting until I get into a lighting photo class to learn. Once you do what you can with the hair issue, send it my way and I can run my lighting actions to even out more, and look up-close to see if some color boosting actions or levels/curves adjustments would help, and maybe add some "softening" of the image.... I can PM you my email address if you want to tag-team this pic...

wow---- i'm not a PS guru, by any means---- but with the limited knowledge I have of PS, I would think it would be challenging--- you'd have to have a segment of hair in the photo that is flowing in the right direction to clone it.... granted, morgan knows way more than I do, so she will probably have more options that could be explored... But my wow comment is really dealing mostly with the fact that Robin only took ONE photo of Matt's dad/stepmom and didn't take better care to make it a stunning photo. Those sunglasses should have come off, and the shadows across the faces should have been cleaned up with photoshop. I have an action saved in my PS for adding fill lighting to areas like that---- but still.... damn, she should have taken more than ONE picture since it was part of the immediate family pictures. Has Robin said whether she has any other photos of his dad/stepmom? Sometimes it can be easier to clone if there's another photo where the feature looks good to start with...

good think you have a good sense of humor! I sat here cracking up because I'm visualizing this woman grabbing you like she's inspecting cantelope in the produce section.

the other ones I like are the cookbooks published for Williams-Sonoma. They have a bunch of them focusing on Grilling, Mexican, Seafood, Italian, etc....

I don't think so- that name doesn't ring a bell.... it's a black cover book that I picked up at a book fair at work back in 98.... the binder is destroyed and it's completely falling apart because I've used it so much and it's fallen down from the shelves so often when I try to pull it down.... has some really great, simple Italian dishes in it....

I gotta say.... my favorites are actually the ones I inherited from my mom and grandmother---- they're the local cookbooks from the community I grew up in. It's so cool to see the family names I grew up with from 1-2 generations back. If I had to pick a favorite that is more widely distributed, I can't even remember the actual name of it---- but it's an Italian cookbook.

Physically= my eyes (i've been told they lack color, which makes them more unusual) Non-physically = my confidence and security about myself. What is the one thing you're most ashamed of, from your past?

Human nature is unpredictable---- no matter what the intentions are about not developing sex into a relationship, it's still always a risk. When you invite other people into your marriage, you're putting the marriage at risk. The majority of people I've known who had affairs have made the statements "I didn't know it would end like this...." and my thought is always the same: "that why you shouldn't have let it start...."