Just wanted to praise Cynthia Nixon for her great performance on ER even though it scared the bejeebers out of me. I try not to watch that show, but heard she was on and wanted to see her in something other than Sex in the City. Her character had a stroke at age 35 from a blood clot in her brain that paralyzed her right side and she couldn’t speak. Yikes. She was hustling around her apartment and just fell face forward. They were able to ‘bust the clot’ and she became unparalyzed. Interesting how she spoke in her head throughout the show. I do this to myself at night! Wish they had said why that may have happened to her.
Survivor is on again! It looks like a good season this time. They kicked off three people right away. Palau looks awesome.
We are looking for a vacation location for a grad present for Sean. We have probably narrowed it down to the Bahamas (I personally wanted to go last year for our 20th anniversary) or the Universal Studio area of Florida. Maybe Mexico, but I’ve been there and got sick from the water. We’ll see.

Bill Cosby-are they kidding me? Hasn’t this man been through enough in the last decade when his only son got killed? One of the women is a lawyer and ‘something inappropriate’ happened 30 years ago. Bill Cosby, come on, didn’t he have a show where he asked little kids questions and did the Picture Pages to help them learn their colors and shapes? This one is so far-fetched, but I hope there isn’t one smidgen of truth in it. Leave my fellow Philadelphian alone and let him have pleasant times in his golden years.
Update:2/17- the investigation was dropped because of insufficient evidence (the charges filed from the Canadian lady).
Charles and Camilla-Wow! I am so excited!!! NOT!! Why the hell didn’t he marry her 30 yrs ago, the twit? At least she was somewhat better looking back then. Maybe Diana would still be around, though not famous, but maybe Andrew would have snagged her! Brian points out that in her time in the spotlight, she helped a lot of people, so not to complain about her marrying big ears. I found this interesting off of Yahoo:Her great-grandmother Alice Keppel had a love affair with King Edward VII, Charles’ great-great-grandfather. The young Camilla is said to have brought that up after meeting the prince at a polo match in the early 1970s.
Read that one of the boxers, Najai Turpin from the new reality show The Contender hosted by Sugar Ray Leonard killed himself on the 14th in front of his girlfriend. He was only about 23. Wonder if he lost on the show and was so humiliated that he did this? It’s gotta be pretty deep. Hope it wasn’t drug related.

On a personal note, my 81 yr old uncle hasto have drastic measures taken with his bleeding bladder, he is having surgery to make his
bladder less caustic. If that doesn’t work, he has to have it removed. We are so sad for him. You get to be that age and something like this happens. He did have prostate cancer and had radiation which caused the slow death of his bladder.
Update: They call my uncle and tell him they have no more of the caustic stuff left, so he goes in and gets his bladder (again) and prostate cauterized because they can tell where the bleeding is coming from. He lays on the table for 5 hours…waiting. The doctor still wants to do the caustic procedure on him later. He’s home.

Happy Valentine’s Day 2005 from the old married couple! 

So today the priest was talking about Roots, the Alex Haley book about his ‘family’ (was said to be somewhat fictional if I recall)-a black family whose roots were traced back to a slave ship and Africa. Now my own roots are very diverse. I did know more about my mom’s family then I did my dad’s family. That was until my cousin out in Oregon was nice enough to send us (as a Christmas gift) this huge family photo book that included a family genealogy traced back to the 1600s which makes that side of my family one of the first families in America. My cousin had included some photos of ‘us strangers’ here on the east coast (she had made multiple copies for the whole family out west and gave us two copies of the book). She didn’t have any photos of my younger brother at all. I had corresponded with her over the years, and she used mainly my photos. I sent her a present back. I made a little photo album with over 30 photos in it with my brothers and their families and newer ones of us. She didn’t get back to me right away as she was sick with the flu, but she appreciated my gift. Here’s my personal legacy-my father, who had fallen down and broken a bone in his upper right arm, was in the hospital and then nursing home, drying out. Nice, huh? Ann sent me the address and phone # like I was going to call or write to him. Hmmm… I knew this was happen. A man who abandoned his 4 kids and didn’t care if we had food on the table needs some comfort as an old man. My hands are tied. To bother with him would be like putting a knife in my mom’s back. She isn’t well either. She was there for me, she gets my love and attention. I looked up at the stained glass window in church and prayed for my father asking for God’s comfort because I could not give it to him.

I asked Sean to get ‘The Notebook’ for me yesterday and we watched it today (he was off from school). We didn’t watch it all at once, so even Brian got to see the last 40 minutes of it. I had read the book right after I lost my grandmom and the movie made me feel the same way-bawled my eyes out! It was good, I didn’t care for the young actor who played Noah, he was a mumbler (but cute), but young Allie (she was the lead in the movie ‘Mean Girls’) was fine. What is cool about the DVD is the author Nicholas Sparks actually makes commentaries and such while the actual movie is going on if you want to watch it that way. We watched about half an hour on this portion. He has the greatest speaking voice and we enjoyed that part.If Brian talked like this, I’d be in dreamland! So mellow and caressing. Ah!
Sean also rented ‘Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow’ which I had seen in the movies with my mom and commented positively about it back in October, 2004. He hated it. He didn’t get it at all as he’s never seen any of those old comic book style movies from the 40s and 50s. I thought it was really clever, the cinematography was really outstanding. Most kids of this era don’t seem to have the imagination to enjoy this kind of production. I think it’s important to see movies from every era they have been in existence to truly appreciate where movies come from. I did a report on Silent Movies as a high school junior, so I’ve always appreciated them myself. Find some old movies and sit down with your techobrain kids today. I need to do that with my own son.

So I watch all these shows at night while I sit and cross stitch my charity quilt squares. I hardly watch any sitcoms now. These are real people and you can somewhat relate to them. They pulled a fast one on the families switching a conservative, Bible smacking, interracial married woman with a lesbian! The conservative woman was from Texas and married to a white man. They had 3 teens and lived in a mansion! Guess who did all the cleaning and yard care-the kids! The other woman lived with her girlfriend and her 8-yr old daughter in a ranch style house. The Texan lady was so bitchy and everything she said or did ‘was the right way’. The other lady (from Arizona) switched the rules and let the kids have parties and friends over. She put a computer in the one boy’s room and he was overjoyed. At the end of the show where the couples reunite, Mrs. Texas laid it out about how wrong the two women were and that ‘they were shacking up’. Said she was ‘scared’ to have a woman like her around her daughter! She caused the woman who swapped with her to tearfully defend herself and her partner (which she didn’t have to do). Not once did they mention about her being Black, and the way Mrs. Texas was talking, I would have used that just to get back at her. Guess she was more dignified than that. This almost brought me to tears it was so moving. My conservative Brian just sat there speechless.
I hope this show sets an example, esp for the bigots out there. There can be same sex families who can raise children just as well as a traditional husband/wife union and there can be interracial couples too. Right Mrs. Texas!?

A recap from an older post:
I am so pleased to have found out a few weeks ago that Paul DiMeo from the ABC show Extreme Makeover:Home Edition graduated from the same high school as me, but a year ahead in 1976. I have been trying to find the yearbook which I had purchased because I knew so many of the people in his class. Think I could remember Paul? No! So today I prayed to St Anthony and within 1/2 hour I found that book buried in a big plastic box in the basement. And Paul was a big cheese in his class. I went through the entire book tonight. He was the VP of his class, voted most talkative, was in the choir, chamber singers, district choir and drama club too (had leads in two shows)! And there are 13 photos of him in the yearbook! My brother told me that he remembered Paul and that he was buds with a guy Bob. Bob’s sister Carol Sue was in my class. Don, my brother took Carol Sue to my prom. What a small world.
I really love EM:HE and said I’d love to do any job on that show, before I knew about my old classmate. This really blew me away. Little bits of Paul are coming back to me now, esp him in Finian’s Rainbow.

Paul the leprechaun kissing Amber A my classmate from a scene in Finian’s Rainbow.
 

Finally found the yearbook with Paul’s photos in it! Seems he was quite the thespian in high school. He had the lead in his senior play ‘Guys and Dolls’ as Nicely Nicely Johnson. Also was in the choir, chamber singers (hard to get in to) and drama club where he played the leprechaun Og in Finian’s Rainbow.