Hi again, James!  This is the final chapter in the current series:

JB>  I'm sure I mentioned it; but the "No pain: No gain."
JB>  (How's the punctuation - if I can shift gears?) is
JB>  what put me behind the eight-ball.


           I would have used a comma in place of the semicolon because
"but" is a conjunction.  I would not use a period at the end of a
quotation, even if the quotation itself is a complete sentence, when it's
included prior to the end of the sentence in which it appears. 
Traditionally, the comma substitutes for the period in such cases if the
quotation is a simple statement of fact or opinion. A quotation may also
end with a question mark or an exclamation mark, e.g.

       "Eek!" screamed Mary.  "There's a fly in my soup!"
       "Not to worry," remarked Sid calmly, "it's been
pasteurized."
       "You're such a clown, aren't you?" protested Vera.
       "I'll bring you another bowl of soup," said the waitress.

In your example "No pain [insert preferred punctuation] no
gain"... although it could be regarded as a complete thought...
includes no obvious subject or verb. It's a slogan which may or may not be
a sentence, depending on who you ask.  If I quoted something like that
without specifying who said it I probably wouldn't use end punctuation at
all.

As for the colon, it's used in expressing a mathematical ratio... and from
that point of view I would let it stand.  A second comma might be
confusing....  :-)



JB>  Physical exertion, and walking to free parking were
JB>  tantamount to my character.


           I can certainly relate to the latter.  Years ago I often walked
long distances to avoid paying bus fares.  That was then.  This is now.... 
:-)



JB>  When neither were possible to any effectiveness, I knew
JB>  I had to learn some new rules as the game had definitely
JB>  changed.


           I understand & appreciate better now what the older
waitresses meant when they said "Use your head to save your
feet!"  Either way, it didn't make a big difference to me until I'd
reached more or less the age they were....  :-))



JB>  Now that I fired them know-it-alls and moved on to greener
JB>  pastures, diagnosis' start making sense, specialists open
JB>  the locks to the chains that were draped around me, and I
JB>  have more, and more effective strategies to barge forward.
JB>  More a drunken stupor; but I'll feed off the progress.


           If you feel you're making progress, I won't quibble about how
you're going about it.  I've derived a lot of benefit from therapies which
some people would regard (at best) as unconventional.  And you're
addressing the woman who, years ago, defied the prominent linguists of the
time who thought one shouldn't interfere with a student's dialect.  I had a
group of kids who said "axed" when other folks would say
"asked".  In full awareness that I was breaking the rules I
recited a bit of doggerel about Lizzie Borden as an example.  They enjoyed
it so much they repeated it to everybody who would listen and never again
confused the two.  Lizzie Borden was a real person, BTW.  The jury
acquitted her.  Maybe she'd killed her parents, maybe not... but if she had
they understood why.  ;-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+