The incident happened over the summer, and the story?s now getting coverage in mainstream media (as well as atheist blogs), and putting pressure on the American Cancer Society.

From the Religion News Service:

Todd Stiefel, who channels tens of thousands of dollars to atheist causes from his Raleigh, N.C.-based Stiefel Freethought Foundation, had wanted to organize as many as 100 teams for the ACS? Relay for Life under the banner of the Foundation Beyond Belief. Stiefel said his family would match up to $250,000 raised by the national teams.

After getting an initial nod from the ACS, Stiefel said the charitable group told him in August that it would not support a national team or help keep a tally of donations raised by local relayers.

The American Cancer Society said a relay team sponsored by the Foundation Beyond Belief didn?t fit its new policy that organizes national teams only from corporations, not nonprofit groups?.
This is the second time Stiefel has had trouble donating to a prominent nonprofit group, which makes him wonder if atheist money is tainted. Last March, the Mississippi branch of the ACLU turned down $20,000, saying too many people ?tremble in terror at the word `atheist.??

Last week, ACS addressed the issue with a status update that?s generated hundreds of comments on their Facebook page, many critical of their decision to turn down the group and its money. The society, though, says members of the Foundation Beyond Belief are welcome to join local teams as individuals, just not form their own national team (for which they?d be listed in ACS literature, etc.)

?It?s clear that the American Cancer Society and Foundation Beyond Belief share a passion for saving lives,? the update said. ?We welcome FBB?s participation at our local Relay For Life events and we have not turned down their donations. We have shared this information with FBB and hope they know we welcome their ongoing support and involvement.?

Though atheists have been quick to call foul on this one, others are chiming in too. Fundraising for cancer research helps people of all faiths, regardless of who donated the money.

?The last time I checked, atheists are human beings plagued with all the same ills of humanity; cancer is no respecter of persons,? wrote seminary professor Brandon Withrow, for the Huffington Post. ?And while most people would likely understand not taking money from recognized criminal and terrorist organizations, this situation does not apply. So is ACS essentially slapping the hand of the Good Samaritan? A half-million dollars can go a long way for cancer research and why the ACS would turn this down is (wait for it) beyond belief.?

I weigh in tomorrow but as of last Saturday, I have lost 29.6 pounds.

I can't see much of a difference yet, but I can sure feel it.  

Go me! 

I really need to stop buying the good stuff. I got a bag mix of Kit Kats, Reese Cups, Hershey Bars and Almond Joys. I bought a small bag of Skittles today to increase the pot, but I think we're going to need more

 What do you guys usually pass out?

http://consumerist.com/2011/10/would-you-pay-someone-4card-to-write-and-send-your-thank-you-notes.html

I was on a two-lane road (I was in front) and she kept stopping, letting me get a few yards ahead of her, then she'd floor her car until she got right on my bumper and hit the brakes.  I kept bracing myself for impact every single time.  Not only was she scaring the shiit outta me, but I was PISSED that this was happening just a few days after I bought my brand new car.

I have no idea what set her off.  She had turned behind me not too long before she started this behavior.  Eventually she grew tired of the game and then passed me on a double-yellow line (and almost collided with an oncoming truck).  As soon as I saw her license plate, I was on the phone to 911 in a hot second.

WTF is wrong with people?

What do you guys think?  Is this normal to call each other names?  I know I'm probably butting in, but she's my little sister and I love her and want to see her treated right and not be called a ***. 

 I'm going to my psychiatrist today for my regular check in, so I will definitely bring this up to him. But it's been this way since about my birthday. I think it's family/holiday related. But I am really getting tired of it, and I don't know what my doctor can do other than up my Klonopin, but if I take much more than this, it just knocks me out.

 Ugh. Just a rant. 

It started out normal. H and I got up and got ready for work. He took the trash out to the curb while I got DS ready and fed him. Then we drove down the hill to my mom's house to drop DS off for the day. They've been replacing sewer lines in our development over the past few weeks and they're doing a schitty job at cleaning up after themselves. Right now, there's a mini-trench in the middle of the road... it's about an inch and a half lower than the rest of the road and about 2.5 feet wide.

H parked across the street from mom's house, I got DS out of his seat and was carrying him across the road. Yep, tripped on the stupid trench. I managed to keep myself upright long enough to get off the road and then I flung myself down on my mom's driveway, back first and held DS' body and head tight so he didn't get hurt.

He's fine. I landed on my left side and my back, DS was against my chest. I finally came to a stop and DS pushed up off of my chest and looked at me like "WTF was that all about mom". Then he grabbed my hair and started laughing. We went inside and he started scooting around and finally ended up sitting with my step-dad, ripping his newspaper apart.

My back is sore, I think I sprained my ankle and I have nasty road rash on my hand. This sucks. But, the weather was schitty last night so I have lots of left over candy since we didn't have as we usually do. I think I'll leave work early and go nosh on mini Hershey bars and peanut butter Pumpkins.

www.moonpig.com

It will be very simple, all black and white, with a little corny phrase on top, and our names and dates below with a little scroll graphic.

Bwoop. Thanks for the input!

Enjoy!

I'm a long time lurker on these boards but don't really have too much free time to post. I decided to come here to get advice because this is one of those situations where if I ask people I know, it'll get back to the person it's regarding.

Background info, my fiance and I have been together since early 2003. We met in college and he lived in a house where there where 4 other guys, a few of their girlfriends, pets, and the occasional straggler that 'lived' there.  Fast forward 7 years, we're all almost 30 and the fiance and I own our own house.

One of his roomates from college moved to the Chicago area from downstate. He and his long term girlfriend live about 10 minutes from us at her mothers house. The roomate and girlfriend have an incredibly irritating relationship, they are one of those couples thats just together for the sake of being together and he never brings her out with us, they always complain about each other, etc etc. She is under the impression, however, that they're getting married next September (even though they're not engaged, she's making appointments for them to go look at venues, blah blah. I think there's a lot to the story we don't know or that he lies to us about.)

ANYWAYS-- long story short. My fiance's college roommate uses our house as an escape from his girlfriend. He comes and goes as he pleases, sleeps on our couch every night, bogarts our tv, leaves a bunch of his things here, the list could go on and on all day. At first we didn't mind because we understood needing a place to go to get away, but he's over here at least 5 nights a week. We don't have any privacy and it's getting to the point where I can't listen to him complain about his relationship anymore, because it's all he ever does.

What are some polite ways to ask him to stop coming over? Is the best way to just be direct and tell him to cut it out? Is it completely out of line to just start dropping subtle hints? I could care less if he's here once or twice a week but this is just ridiculous. It's getting to the point where friends who come over ask us if he lives here.....

A Zimbabwean man was busted on Sunday at 4 a.m. penetrating a donkey tied to a tree in his backyard (with his penis). The man, 28-year-old Sunday Moyo, admitted to the court that it indeed must have looked bad ? but hear him out! Because only a few hours earlier, the donkey was a human prostitute.

From New Zimbabwe:

"Your worship, I only came to know that I was being intimate with a donkey when I got arrested," [Sunday Moyo] began.

"I had hired a prostitute and paid US$20 for the service at Down Town night club and I don't know how she then became a donkey."

According to The Herald, he also claimed he was in love:

"I think I am also a donkey. I do not know what happened when I left the bar, but I am seriously in love with [the] donkey," [Moyo said.]

http://gawker.com/5853736/

My husband and I have been married for 3 years, and before that we were together for 7 more.  We never lived together until we got married, each of us lived with our parents.  We both have our issues, and have our own histories of depression and other problems (I have ADD and serious insecurity issues, he has PTSD [non-military-related, if that helps] and gets panic attacks).  We are both the only children of widowed mothers; my dad died just before I turned 16, his dad passed a couple months before our wedding.  We live in an apartment, with a disobedient yorkie, one aging pickup truck, and no kids (though we do want kids once we're more stable financially and psychologically).  He works as an ad designer for a state/local news site, a job that he hates deeply, mostly because of some of his more psychotic coworkers.  It is also a desk job, which aggravates his back problems, and the pay isn't anywhere near appropriate.  I just finished my associate's degree this spring, and am off for a semester before re-starting at a 4-year university next term.  I spent most of our relationship working minimum wage jobs in order to pay rent to live with my alcoholic (now in recovery in AA) mother, and now am working on finishing a yearlong unpaid apprenticeship in lieu of a normal job.  We're both 28.  Sorry for the history dump, but I figure anything helps when you're asking for advice like I am.

I've always struggled with my own issues, but things sort of came to a head with me in the last 12 months or so and I finally broke down and started therapy this spring.  Scott was having trouble too, and upon getting to a therapist himself a couple months before me, he was diagnosed with the aforementioned psych issues.  So it's safe to say we've both got a lot to work on, but we're really trying to work on ourselves...both for our own individual good, and our marriage.

Things had been going rather well lately, but this weekend things got unbelievably bad.  Between me stumbling lately with my own progress (I've had to cut back to once every 3 weeks at therapy because my insurance visits are running out) and him at sort of a standstill with his (he ran out of psych visits a couple months ago, and needs to be on antidepressants, but refused the idea that he needed meds until he ran out of visits, and our insurance won't cover more therapy until next calendar year)...well, things suddenly exploded.  He said he needed to take a walk and ended up hopping the bus into town.  I would later find out that he (mistakenly) thought I was picking fights with one of our friends.  (In truth, I had simply posted something vague on Facebook that this friend took as passive-aggressive [it was not meant as such], and immediately deleted it upon finding out that anyone took it that way.)  He ended up getting a drink at a bar in town (not usual for him) and sort of wandering around town before calling me.  I was a bit overemotional that morning, admittedly, but his leaving scared me, and it was reinforced when he called to tell me that not only was I ruining his friendships, but I was the reason he was stuck at his job, and thus part of why his back hurt so much, I was the reason he had no freedom in his life...there was more but I thankfully can't remember it all.  This is REALLY unusual for him...we get in fights, but he's usually my biggest supporter...I'm the one more likely to run myself into the ground by saying I'm basically ruining his life.  But for him to say it, I felt like all my worries were confirmed.  He told me I don't pull my own weight or put anything into our relationship.  Admittedly he brings in all the money right now and I'm really terrible about keeping up on the housework and such.  At any rate, essentially he said enough of that kind of thing that, bawling, I told him I would pack my things so I wouldn't be ruining his life anymore.  Before I really could, he called back and asked me to wait until after he got home if I was gonna leave.  We basically fought for the rest of the day/night.  I conceded that I really needed to be doing more to contribute, and laid out a plan by which I would do more to improve our lives.  He didn't concede much until he realized that when he had assumed I'd been arguing online with one of his/our friends, I had actually been trying to talk things out with a neutral friend...once he realized that, he felt really awful and apologized for a lot of what he said.  We didn't do make-up sex until the next day (yesterday), and I thought last night was when things were smoothed over enough to prepare the way for us to properly go forward.  That's what it seemed like.  Yesterday and today I have stuck by my end of things, getting up at a grown-up time, taking care of business, keeping myself together emotionally, etc.  But he's in one of his depressed ditches right now, and I don't know how long it will last.  When he gets like this, it's like it completely permeates both of our lives.  I made a quick dinner and we watched half an hour of TV, he took out the trash and he basically went right to bed.  It's 10, and he's been in there for over an hour.  He said he wasn't really tired, that he didn't really feel anything, and he didn't want to get me down, that he figured, might as well call it a night...said he didn't feel like watching more TV and didn't know what else to do.  (Frequent boredom is a problem around here, but I've always been a bit of a homebody and don't tend to mind the same way he does.)  I sat in there with him for a little while, not wanting to end the evening so soon after he got home (he doesn't get home from work until around 7) and thinking that this was sort of alarming behavior...though he's done it before, usually if he had a really bad day, is really tired, his back hurts, or all 3.  He told me to go enjoy myself...I was obviously worried about him, and told him as much.  Eventually I let him be, feigning contentment with it for his sake.  I ended up here.

I don't know what to do.  Am I a bad wife?  How can I help him?  What should I do when he gets like this?  Should I still be worried about that fight that nearly sent me to my mother's, or should I just let it go?  Has anyone here been in a similar situation?  I'm sorry again for the novel, but I just needed to get a lot out.  Thanks in advance.

(Unrelated note: is there ANY way to change my username?  It seems silly 3 years after the wedding.) 

I have a friend whom I work with who is single.  She has become very buddy-buddy with another colleague who is married with a 1 year old.  She and our colleague have started hanging out a LOT.  His wife finally met her, yet he continues to lie to his wife about hanging out with her after work.  They get drinks together, he invites her to the movies, the text message all evening...

If I were his wife, I'd be pissed when I found out all this! 

I don't think she has feelings for him.  I think my biggest problem is that colleague is lying to his wife about the amount of time he spends with her. 

What do you think?  Is the friendship completely platonic?  Do guys who lie to their wives have alternate motives? Would you be pissed when/if you found out?  

The problem is holidays. In the past we have spent T-giving with my FIL and husbands extended family in his hometown. Then Christmas with my family. This was never a problem.

 The issues started earlier this year. Mothers Day came around which also happens to be my mom's birthday and my grandmothers birthday. I wanted to go home to see my mom and grandma, as we were also celebrating Grandma's 95th...My husband threw a fit saying my place was home with him and the kids and Mothers Day is for 'immediate family'. His idea was that if I wanted to see my mom, my mom could travel to see us. I reminded him that my mom has a mother who is still alive and two other kids she would want to be with who live near her. I'm close to my mom and this really hurt me, especially because she doesnt live right around the corner. I can't just see her anytime I want.

My FIL was able to come for Fathers Day, that wasnt a problem of course. Now we just had our 3rd baby, and travel will be tough for the holidays. My husband went ahead and already invited my FIL for Thanksgiving and Christmas. When I tried to talk to my husband and tell him Christmas wasn't ruled out entirely as far as travelling to my parents. He said that his father would have to be invited by my parents if we were going to travel there for Christmas. My parents house is not big and its difficult enough when my husband and I were there with 2 kids. Now there are 3 kids, my husband and myself AND my FIL. Not only that I feel that I should be allowed a holiday with JUST my family. My FIL has been with us every holiday this year, and he does have a sister who he normally spends Christmas with anyway.

 Well the problem is my husband is being a $%@#$^ and says that if my family wont invite his dad this year or any other year then none of us will go again. My response to that was my family is not obligated to invite his dad. If they dont want to invite him, why should my husband take it out on me. As for mothers day which was discussed also. I can go see my mom, but I have to leave the kids with my husband. I almost cant believe this as I'm writing it, what a jerk he is. This has been becoming a pattern that is getting worse. Think I know what needs to be done....just need to hear some backup.