Stilewalker – I totally agree with you. I think it’s largely due to the fact I feel sorry for the bakers in this country. But seriously, you’re dead on. Atkins is a fad diet, and what fad diet has lasted against the test of time? Yes, it works. All diets, fad or otherwise, work. I watched a special on PBS (with Alan Alda!) comparing a bunch of diets with test subjects. The result — all that followed their respective diet lost weight. Those that didn’t admitted to secretly binging or just giving up.

As a little kid I had major weight problems and my doctor pounded the food pyramid into my brain along with the importance of exercise. Now, through trial and error, I’ve lived a number of years with the one diet that works. And it pretty much matches what Stilewalker suggested.

What I’ve done:
1. Moderate eating habits. Fresh veggies, whole grains, fish, chicken, and skim milk – in small amounts. Eat slowly, you fill up quicker. When I need a soda, I have emergency supplies of the 8-oz Coke bottles in the fridge.
2. Bored? Exercise. If it’s raining, clean the house.
3. Plenty of sleep. 6-7 a night is my goal. Gives me energy to get through the day and exercise in the evening.
4. Don’t be your own slave. If you’ve had a good week, have an even better weekend. Eat out, get wasted, etc.

By living with these guidelines, I’ve been able to maintain pretty much the same weight I’ve been since I was 16. Not lecturin’, just suggesturin’.

Chestnuts roasted by Nachokhaki @ 02/02/2004 4:27 PM

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Those store addresses aren’t very detailed… I don’t know where "Brandywine Parkway" is. Anyone else live in Delaware? (If you do, you can read X-E in the local paper. Suck on that, other states!)

Chestnuts roasted by Welsh Rabbit @ 02/02/2004 7:36 PM

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"Lionel Kiddie City turns that frown… (kangaroo jumps on the huge ‘frown’)…upside-down!"

I never saw the stores, as they were all in Philadelphia and up around the cities, but I knew the commercials well. They ran during Saturday mornings on all the Phily stations. I had no idea they even shut down until a few years ago.

Chestnuts roasted by starwenn @ 02/02/2004 10:46 PM

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KB sucks. They’re closing because they are TOO HIGH. This is the only mainstream retailer that has the balls to charge $54.99 for some new video games. If it’s over $35, they’re jacking the price up by $5 on almost everything. I still remember buying the original Tor, from Power Rangers, for $69.99, then seeing it a week later at Toys R us for $59.99 AND on sale for $54.99. Thier stores are always dead, even at Christmas. I was in my local one at the mall the other day and NOBODY else was in there, so I was stared at like I was going to steal and then followed, for god’s sake. Don’t know why I went in there… looking for wrestling figures from 2002 that are still $8.99, I guess.

So, goodbye KB, you suck.

Chestnuts roasted by Rein @ 02/02/2004 11:03 PM

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cyberelf- I actually have not even gone to the International Mall yet! I hear it has some great stores so I am looking forward to checking it out! I will let you know if I find any good deals. Plus, I work in Clearwater, right down the street from the Crossroads Outlet Mall. I went to that KB during Christmas and I did not find jack. I wonder what the prices will be like now?

Nachokhaki – I almost forgot how important sleep is. I’ve had insomnia since I was 11 years old. I would normally get a few hours of sleep a night, and sometimes I would go days without sleep. Sleep deprivation does some very weird things. Hallucinations are fun!!
I did some calculating. If the average person gets 7.5 hours of sleep a night, and I was averaging about 3.5 hours a night:
25 years old (when I finally slept regularly) minus 11 years old (when I think the insomnia started) is 14 years of bad sleep. 14 years times 365 days equals 5110 days. multiply that times 3.5 hours (my average sleep per day) = 17885 hours of sleep in 14 years. doing the same calculations with the average person’s sleep I get 38325 hours of sleep for the average person. subtract 17885 from that and I get 20440 hours difference. divide that by 24 and I get 851 2/3 days. divide that by 365 and I get 2 1/3 years.
So I have had 2 1/3 more years of experience than the average person at that age. The drawback? Many poeple guessed my age at over thirty. One lady guessed my age at 37 when I was 25 years old. That sucked.
I went to the doctor to cure my insomnia and he told me (after some tests) that I had massive liver damage and I might have AIDS. After two months of freaking out and more tests I went back to the doctor and he said, "Oh, sorry. Your tests came back fine. Maybe you had a cold." I was so relieved that all my innards were intact that I forgot to mention that he had not cured my insomnia yet. Later that night, I realised I would have to make ANOTHER appointment to take care of that. I decided against it and just fixed it myself.

Now, two years later, I sleep very well, usually…when I am not keeping myself up watching some stupid movie or finishing Metriod Prime. Stupid TV.

Chestnuts roasted by Stilewalker @ 02/03/2004 9:06 AM

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I currently work at the KB Store in West Babylon, NY, and I’m GLAD its not closing! And almost none of the other KB stores around me will close either! (except for the Great Neck and Huntington ones, but I’ve never been in them)I’ve been shopping in my KB store since as long as I can remember (I even vaguely remember buying many early Transformers figures)

And if your mission is finding old, cheap, toys, that’s the place to go! My store has just about everything that was posted before: MOTU toys, Beastly Bears, MANY toys that you’ve never heard of, useless "craze toys" from years back that we’re still trying to get rid of (like the Poo-Chis), etc., as well as Marked Down Transformers for the month of February :p

Chestnuts roasted by Invader Norbert @ 02/03/2004 7:01 PM

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That link was outdated since it didn’t seem mention one near me which is closing.

Anyway K-B has always annoyed me. The store is claustrophobic with crap everywhere and aisles that are barley big enough for one person let alone a whole family of 9 with one of those giant strollers just standing there with a glazed look in their eyes and drool piling at their feet.
I went in there once while working at a now defunct competetitor and the K-B not only looked like 2 earthquakes and a hurricane had hit it but smelled like a combination of dirty diapers and puke.

My only guess as to why they are not making it is because they don’t sell Thomas the Tank Engine crap. For those of you normal people who have no little kids or toy store employment experience, Thomas is the cheesy little wooden train set, featuring some dorky characters that come in videos. The trains not electric or cool in any way just plain ordinary wood, but for some reason people pay from 40 dollars for one train and a track that goes in a circle to several hundred dollars for a bigger sets with a tracks that have tunnels and stations and the like. Whenever it goes on sale people literally get into fist fights in order to pay 300 bucks for something their child will outgrow in 6 months.
I have 2 words for these dense people.
Big Lots.

Chestnuts roasted by toy girl @ 02/05/2004 2:56 AM

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i am a kb manager and been with the company 16 years, I hate that some stores are closing, my store is not thank god, and we do sell thomas the tank toys, lots of them from track to wooden trains and plastic one to that are not as expensive, so dont everyone give up on us yet. Please i think we can pull out of it

Chestnuts roasted by cyndi @ 10/27/2004 1:03 AM

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i am a kb manager and been with the company 16 years, I hate that some stores are closing, my store is not thank god, and we do sell thomas the tank toys, lots of them from track to wooden trains and plastic one to that are not as expensive, so dont everyone give up on us yet. Please i think we can pull out of it

Chestnuts roasted by cyndi @ 10/27/2004 1:04 AM

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