A scary article from the New York Times via Yahoo on the catholic priest sex abuse problem, Trail of Pain in Church Crisis Leads to Nearly Every Diocese.

Points I found interesting and horrifying at the same time:

¶The data show that priests secretly violated vulnerable youth long before the first victims sued the church and went public in 1984 in Louisiana. Some incidents date from the 1930's and 1940's.

"This has been going on for decades, probably centuries," said Richard K. O'Connor, a former Dominican priest who says he was one of 10 boys sexually assaulted by three priests in a South Bronx parish in 1940, when he was 10. "It's just that all of a sudden, they got caught."

¶Half of the priests in the database were accused of molesting more than one minor, and 16 percent are suspected of having had five or more victims.

¶Eighty percent of the priests were accused of molesting boys. The percentage is nearly the opposite for laypeople accused of abuse; their victims are mostly girls.

¶While the majority of the priests were accused of molesting teenagers only, 43 percent were accused of molesting children 12 and younger. Experts in sexual disorders say the likeliest repeat offenders are those who abuse prepubescent children and boys.

¶The survey also shows how pervasive the abuse has been. Using information from court records, news reports, church documents and interviews, the survey found accusations of abuses in all but 16 of the 177 Latin Rite dioceses in the United States.

¶The church is still covering up cases. Despite the pressure on bishops over the last year to reveal the extent of the abuse, some refused to release the number of accusations or the names of the accused priests.

One question keeps echoing through my head - what if they didn't get caught ... how long would the catholic church have allowed this go on if no one had said anything?

Power is back on, and now I'm watching this interesting movie called "Enemy of the State". I'm going to have to rent it to see the beginning.

Power Outage

There's a power outage in my neighbourhood. It happened just as I watching the Eagles/Falcons game. I'm sure hardcore football enthusiasts not to mention bars are upset by the lack of power.

I'm listening to the news, and surfing the net on my baby laptop. The phone lines are still working, and I just put some batteries in my portable cd player in case I want to listen to music. The radio news is reporting that PG&E has no idea how long the outage will last or why it happened.

I'm very well prepared for emergencies, so I'm okay. This is a good test of my preps, but what an inconvenience. I've been thinking of buying a battery operated TV for emergencies, and now I think I will.

So on a wild whim, I went back to Sears to try on a Lands' End size pants. And they FIT!!! The waist is snug, but that's okay because on the Lands' End website you can buy pants with stretchy waist. I like buying pants from Lands' End because they have stretchy waist pants, and they'll hem your pants to any length. I can buy pants to fit my bum, but then the waist doesn't fit or it's too long and usually both. You can now even order jeans and chinos fit to measure your body exactly on the Lands' End website, if you have serious problems with finding pants that fit.

So I'm my fantasy size 8, which I've always wanted to be for such a long time and I'm not even at my goal weight yet. I think Lands' End sizes run big so I'm probably still a size 10 in other brands, but who cares. I'm my fantasy size 8. What a trip! There was a woman on Craig's List who wrote a post about how much easier it is to navigate the world of men and dating in a size 8 butt, as oppposed to a size 16 butt which is what I used to be. I think I copied it, so If I find I'll post it. It was a good writeup.

The whole thing new size thing is blowing my mind because at my thinnest in college, I was a size 4/6. My butt measurement is one inch away from my butt measurement in high school, which is really cool.

I was sitting at the mall eating my veggie delite subway sandwhich, my heavenly baked Frito Lay Dorito nacho cheese chips (one bag is 170 calories), and drinking diet pepsi and thinking to myself, is working out and eating low calorie for the rest of my life worth a fantasy size 8 butt and miraculous maybe size 4/6 butt. And my answer was "HELL YEAH!".

Now if I could only just get that washboard abs look I've always wanted, but have never had.