oscar picks

ok, so mm has some oscar picks...having actually seen many of the films this year.......for best picture.....there is only one choice..the final installment of lotr.........no more need be said....for best director...peter jackson, for obvious reasons....it was his monumental undertaking to bring this epic to the big screen in a breathtaking way...........and therefore, he should be rewarded for best screenplay using adapted work....even though i am not so sure that he was nominated.......for best original screenplay....sofia coppola for lost in translation...which is as original as it gets.......best actor...johnny depp for pirates of the carribean......not the most dramatic performance, but by far the most memorable and the most enjoyable....charlize theron for monster as best actress......renee zellweger for best supporting actress, and tim robbins for best supporting actor.........the rest i have no clue about.......i am sad that american splendor was not represented well with nominations......i really liked that movie..............sunday night..........we shall see........

emptying nest

ok, so we had a taste of an almost empty nest, what with the middle child out of town at the nhs convention and the oldest at college.........supper with just one child at the table is just so strange.....especially one who wants to eat multiple servings of meat and no vegetables.......thankfully, said child will be back this afternoon......which reminds me of kind words that one of his teachers remarked as i left the big american studies project on wednesday.......'he is such a sweet boy.....such a sponge...he wants to absorb everything....how can you bear to let him leave home and go to college.....'..........gentle readers........these words are music to a mother's ears.............which brings me back to spring break......if we drive, we may be able to go to places we have never been......like winterthur in delaware, and similar historic homes.......few people in my circle of kin or friends enjoy going to such places as much as the middle child.......

spring break

ok, so mm is sketching out spring break, which will be a mother-son college tour up east.........southwest from louisville to long island/islip is about $200 r/t.........train travel from penn station to princeton junction, or grand central to new haven appear reasonable, but amtrak from nyc to boston is outrageous.......................i like the idea of flying to nyc and making forays out to select colleges, but i am unclear how to include boston area schools............should i rent a car from long island and drive? the estimated drive time from danville to 'upeast' is 17 hours.....everybody i ask says 17 hours..............that means 34 hours round trip....or several days out of my life............if anybody out there has an idea................frankly, i would prefer the train because i can read and relax rather than drive.................thankfully, my mother has already taken the child in question to the ohio schools....oberlin, wooster, kenyon, miami of ohio, and dennison..................centre is still in the running, but it is down the street...............

la dolce vita

ok, so one my birthday cards had a sweet roman mosaic of fruit in a basket on the front, with the sentiment.....Oh, the sweet, sweet pleasures of this abundant life................inside.....today and always, may you savor every moment..............sweet because the card was from my spouse, and sweeter still because it is so true....despite my aches, and pains, and petty complaints, i do live la dolce vita here in danville...............of course, a short visit to florence next january would enhance this conclusion................i am grateful for all of those dear people who called, or wrote, or sent cards........and i am looking forward to my birthday book club tonight.......where 17 of my special family/friends will dine on pecan encrusted honey-marinated chicken, bourbon and maple sweet potatoes, country-style mixed greens, cornbread muffins, red cabbage and blue cheese slaw, and a cold rice salad...................sound like enough?i hope the wine and beer is completely consumed, as i have to go 39 days or so without..................yeh, yeh, i know that lent started today, but on the kcw calender of life, it starts when my birthday is over..........................and i am not even catholic...................

birthday blues

ok, so you say it's my birthday....iam a gonna have a good time..........cut&pasted is the writer's almanac for today...i knew about anthony burgess, he of a clockwork orange, but not the others..i like the guy who wrote travel experiences.....he may also be kin, as may is a family name......sounds like february 25 is a good day for prolific people to be born.....i am not past chapter one in my novel.......

It's the birthday of novelist and critic Anthony Burgess, born in Manchester, England (1917). He was an incredibly prolific writer: he wrote more than thirty novels, hundreds of essays, film and television scripts, translations, and a two-volume autobiography. He once said, "I refuse no reasonable offer of work and very few unreasonable ones." His first love was music: he studied music in college and tried writing symphonies without much success. When he became famous as a writer, he started writing music again with the hope that he would be able to get it performed because of his name recognition. He once said, "I wish people would think of me as a musician who writes novels, instead of as a novelist who writes music on the side."

After fighting in World War II, he worked for five years as a colonial education officer in Malaya. While he was there, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and a doctor told him he had only one year to live. He later wrote: "I had been granted something I had never had before: a whole year to live. I would not be run over by a bus tomorrow, nor knifed on the Brighton racetrack. I would not choke on a bone. If I fell in the wintry sea I would not drown. I had a whole year, a long time. In that year I had to earn for my prospective widow. . . . I would have to turn myself into a professional writer."

Burgess wrote five novels in the year 1960 alone, and continued to write at a frantic pace for the rest of his life. He's best known for his 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange, about a violent gang in a bleak futuristic world. It begins: "There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter."


It's the birthday of the "Father of Modern Pathology", Giovanni Battista Morgagni, born in Forli, Italy (1682). He's remembered today for his book On the Seats and Causes of Disease, published in 1761, in which he describes in great detail the results of 640 autopsies he performed on patients who had died from diseases. It's considered one of the most important works in the history of medicine.


It's the birthday of novelist Karl May, born in Ernstthal, Germany (1842). He's famous for writing dozens of novels about the American West at a time when not very many Europeans had been there or knew much about it. He was raised in poverty, and during the 1860s and '70s he spent a lot of time in prison for petty theft and fraud. It was while he was in prison that he began to read about American pioneers and cowboys and Indians. He got the idea for a series of novels about the adventures of a heroic German immigrant named Charley and his Apache Indian friend Winnetou. As soon as he published the books, they became hugely popular, especially among German adolescent boys. His novels became some of the most widely read books in Europe.

Many Europeans first learned about the American West through May's novels. All of his books were subtitled "Travel Experiences" rather than "Travel Novels", and most people thought that May was writing about his own travels in the West. But he had actually never been to America when he started writing the novels, and when he finally did go he never made it farther west than St. Louis.

May's novels are still incredibly popular in Germany. Since his death, about 100 million copies of his books have been sold. Many of his novels have been made into movies and TV shows, and in northern Germany, thousands of people still go to see an annual festival that puts on plays based on May's plots.


It's the birthday of comic playwright Carlo Goldoni, born in Venice (1707). He's one of the greatest playwrights in the history of Italian theater, the author of The Liar, The Coffee House, The Beneficent Bear and many others. In the eighteenth century, most Italian plays were farcical comedies in which the actors wore masks and fancy costumes, and improvised jokes on stage. Moldoni was one of the first playwrights to write more realistic comedies, with believable characters and natural dialogue.

kudos to edith wharton......

ok, so mm treated herself to the video for the age of innocence, starring daniel day-lewis and winona rider...and michelle pffieifer (sp).........edith wharton really knew how to construct a tear-jerker..................i walked on the treadmill during the first 30 minutes, then sobbed into the paper towels for the remaining hour.......................such a sad story of unrequited love................of course, this was not edith's best story..................i especially like a short story that has its crescendo in rome........2 former debutantes who lived across the street from each other, escorting their daughters on the grand tour......who discover that the brightest and the most beautiful is actually the 'daughter' of the husband of the most proud of the mothers..........................back to age of innocence................i really needed a good cry.............many thanks to edith for the catharsis.........................

ralph is running against my wishes...............

ok, so mm has a bone to pick with ralph nadar, who announced his run for president despite my plea for him to just sit back and be pro-consumer rights from the non-candidate section.................however, this time he is running without any backup....without the green party with organized state-by-state mailing lists/volunteers......he will have to figure out to to get his name on the ballot in each state by petition...................assuming he does not wish to go door to door getting signatures on his own.......

aging rapidly

ok, so mm went to the first of two birthday events of the season tonight........i am fortunate to share a birthday trimumverate of sorts with 2 of the running community....our birthdays fall in a 1-2-3 domino effect......and we have celebrated them as such for low these 20 years..................now that birthday #3 has gotten remarried, his new wife has chosen to celebrate his birthday separate from our usual bookclub birthday bash.........so tonight we drove to lex. for a nice dinner with the same friends we will see at our own house wednesday night........in fact...we will be setting up an auxilliary table, as our numbers have reached beyond the max. of what the stephan-family table can hold........my mother always told me that 14 was the most she has ever seen around the table when she was young......we expect 16 on wednesday.....and what to fix for dinner?......i am thinking about chicken breasts marinated in honey and dijon mustard, then encrusted with ground pecans then baked..............................though i am tempted use use my birthday grill for ther occassion........my mother and my spouse went together to buy for me the granddaddy of grills.......stainless steel, side burners.......the whole shebang.......our old grill decomposed after 17 years.....it was time for a replacement................i am also thinking about side dishes......maybe some sort of cole slaw, beet salad, and greens.....................again, i am unsure......so much pressure after having the book club at my house on my birthday for 5 straight years....................

poetry

ok, so mm has a soft spot for edna st, vincent millay..........i read this poem on line this morning, and was nearly brought to tears by its sadness.......

Poem: [What lips my lips have kissed] by Edna St. Vincent Millay, from The Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay (Modern Library).

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings so more

I can recall seeing a portrait of the poetess at the national portrait gallery in wash dc......which had a few brief lines of her verse as an epithet.........my candle burns at both ends...it cannot last the night...but ah, my friends, and oh, my foes, it makes a lovely light..................that really sums it all up for me......as a fitting description of what it means to be a working mother/business person in the ought-fours.......of course, millay was a bit more burning of her candle than i could ever desire to be....................

don't do it, ralph...........

ok, so the mm is praying that ralph nadar will not decide to put his hat into the independent ring in a bid for the presidency....which could take votes away from the democratic candidate............................didn't he do enough damage by getting the corvair taken off the market........i loved my burgundy corvair..................

w.h. auden

ok, so this poem was included on writer's almanac today, in honor auden's birthday, which he shares with erma bombeck, ja hin, anais nin, et al.........

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

the gospel according to mel

ok, so mm will not be watching the mel gibson passion of christ, or whatever he is calling it...........i have taught sunday school for over 15 years..........and i feel no need to see the 'realism' as mel gibson claims to provide in this saga...................the anti-semitism especially troubles me.........if we are to read our new testiment as written........god intended his son to be betrayed...and we cannnot blame either the romans or the jews for doing so..................really, issaih is quoted so many times..........

phase one of sign recycling-complete

ok, so the mm and her kin staged a daring daytime assault upon the only known kerr sign between town and our house.......it was in a public right-of-way......which explain why no one had yet bothered to remove it.......now all we need is a large 'y' to attach to the right side, and black tape to cross out the alice forgy and for congress parts...............saving the earth...one sign at a time...................

jane roe

ok, so the real jane roe, somewhere in texas, thinks that 30 years after the roe-v-wade decision, that she has reconsidered and wants to have a recount.......................a group of lawyers in texas has appealed/apllied to provide a dissenting testimony to this foolishness........................too much water has flowed under this bridge................too many good women's live has been revived/revitalized by that decision....................too late now for jane roe to reconsider...................

political recycling

ok, so mm has a briilaint idea.........af kerr could recycle all of her yards signs...for john kerry.....all she need do is to cross out the alice forgy part, and tape on a y after the kerr...............well, maybe SHE won't be so pleased, but i might just rustle up a sign and do it myself....................at least i can have one of my creations for my own yard..................

a democratic legacy

ok, so mm was born into a family of republicans. so she wants to acknowledge the influence of her grandmother helen kreager crown, who seems to be the sole democrat between both sides of kin......she was a died in the wool democrat based on the party's social programs.....even when whe did not know how to drive, she cautioned my grandfather that she would vote democrat if he took her to town to vote.............

no coattails

ok, so mm really enjoyed the national nbc news story last evening that highlighted the special election in ky....and predicted that it might indicate an erosion of not only dubya's coattails, but also may indicate the turn of the tide.....democrat chandler won with double-digits over republican alice forgy kerr...whose ads featured her walking nearly arm-in-arm with dubya on the white house porch................we also had an astonishing voter turnout for a special election.................though chandler's newly elected term is a mere 8 months.......anyone who chooses to run against him for relection this fall must be shaking in 'they shoes' because it won't be the cakewalk pundits predicted after chandler lost to republican e.f.for the governor's mansion...............but then, the state of fresh off the governor's mistress scandal.............and that stench appears over..........................congrats to chandler....................

identification

ok, so this morning, when the mm was at her polling place at 8:05 am.....there was a new person at the official sihn-in book......and i was asked for SOME FORM OF IDENTIFICATION.......gentle readers......mm has voted at this same location for 22 years, and only had to give id the very first time......because the polling people were either.....people who lived near to me...or people i went to church with....or people who had attended a class that i had given on cholesterol....or people who read my article........this morning there were no such people in eyesight...........but as i turned to run out to the car to get my wallet...........a little lady came walking from the vicinity of the bathrooms, and said...i know her...she once put me on a diet...........i voted my quick little special election selection............and went on my way..........the issue of identification has been huge at trc this past week.............due to an altercation in which we refused service to a young -looking person who could not produce a driver's liscense...........her parents were with her, and they became angry because we could not take their word on her age...........legally, all who have been served alcohol must have proof of age available to show an ABC inspector, who has the right to do so at any given and unannounced moment...........in fact, the 'my daughter is old enough to drink' ruse is one that was mentioned in our alcohol training class as a favorite used by inspectors..........granted...........this child had graduated from college, and could have been old enough to drink, but i personally know one darling prodegy who will graduate college before she is old enough to drink............so even that argument won't hold up.......no id, no alcohol...........this person actually lives close enough to have gone home and gotten her purse if drinks were that important...........

maybe part of chapter two

ok, so the second chapter of my great novel/screenplay will include, among other things.....recycling.......i have recycled from the second week or so.......when i realized that a large volume of waste paper/cardboard/plastic/glass/metal went through our restaurant...i decided that i could take these things to the recyling center myself..................in the past 3.5 years, i have personally taken countless loads of stuff in the back of my van to the bypass.........and still.....there are people who work with me who cannot do simple things....like empty the beer bottles before putting them in the bins......or put the bottles in the boxes rather than in the plastic trash bag that lines the recycle bin..............last saturday, i had to nearly disrobe because beer leaked down my person as i was carrying a hefty load to my vehicle..............much as i like a nice cold one........old, skanky beer that spills on one's shirt and jeans is unpleasant.........................even tonight, i had to go behind people that i pay to take beer bottles out of the trash, and place them personally in the recycling..................how is it that cictzens of this earth cannot see the big picture when it comes to solid waste?????????........yes recycling will be in the second chapter.................

gay marriage

ok, so mm has an opinion the subject.......i was so touched to read about the couple who were married yesterday in sf........they had been together almost as long as i have been alive.....and they chose to be publically cemented as person and person..................and yet the neysayers have already filed suit...................as if those two people's odds-defying relationship somehow impacts their sense of family/home/values..................how silly....................in my own life...so many hetero relationships did not last out the 1year/2 year or anywhere close..............and they spent outrageous amounts of cash on a doomed relationship..............the bottom line.............in a country where government separates church and state....how can the legislature rule on marriage anyway....................................isn't it the churche's job....................

france

ok, so mm has perused 4 separate dk and rick steves books about florence and venice.............and none of these places lights a candle to paris.............they seem like places one goes in place of paris.......not in front of paris..........or because paris was booked...................i did not see anything in the guide books that would persuade me that i should really dream of a trip to florence rahter than a 12th trip to paris........................by the way...nancy alcock today asked me how much i spent going to paris.........................and then asked me did my husband know................so laughable...............

florence

ok, so mm has checked out the prevailing prices for airfare to italy.......delta from cincinnati to paris to pisa is now $854...the least number of stops for the least number of dollars............oh my.....................

chapter one

ok, so gail and i are sitting on oprah's stage, made-over in the very subtlest of ways...with nice outfits and professional make-up...nothing poofy or rude..........and oprah turns to me and asks.....so how did you meet your millionaire friend gail?.....................i guess it all goes back to lisa......one of the waitresses we hired to get us through the very first day.............she either answered the ad, or knew joyce....i really don't remember............but early on we decided that we needed an extra person, and lisa said that she knew somebody................now lisa was wound tight, in the classic typecast of hattie mcqueen in gwtw..........she would talk a mile-a-minute....and say absolutely nothing..........and she seemed unable to think outside the box.......at the time we did not have a liquor license, and it was customary for people dining uptown to 'bring their own'..........we were unsure how to handle these bottles.......we had a corkscrew, but it was unclear as to whether our waitstaff could legally open a bottle, or if we could simply supply the corkscrew to a table with the glasses and pretend that we did not know what the guests planned to do with these items.............a table of four came in with a nice bottle of red, and began to hand the bottle to lisa to open.....the litterally threw her hands up in the air and jumped backwards.......Shrieked, and said that she could not touch their bottle for fear of losing her job...................all i could thinkabout the story when i heard it was ...i don't know nothin about opening wine bottles...........anyway...........lisa introduced us to gail...where lisa was all drama..........with her hair, her over-the-top nails, her family problems, her shrill voice........gail was so laid back as to be a slow burn................she was slow to react, slow to anger.......and so personable as to be just like family from the get-go............and then there was the figuring out just what we had in common...............at first, i found out that i had worked with one of her sisters, eartha, at the hosital for the past 18 years................they had a vague resemblance.......so that was easy..........i also think that i had met her mother in some professional capacity..............but that was not the biggest revelation................at the time trc was not open for dinner unless a private party was booked......we would create a custum menu for the group.....often paid for by a drug company rep....who brought beer and wine.......and worried over taking home the leftover shrimp cocktail..............typically such events lasted as long was the alcohol lasted............giving the lowly kitchen help time to chat whilst serving up plates or running dishes through the machine................yes.....gail has three children.....no, she had never married their father, despite the longterm relationship..............she referred to him as jimmy two.............which reminded me of someone i had worked with at the hospital in the kitchen..........she called her husband two-ly...............gail shrieked..........................just like lisa, only with more emotion.........i was wondering when you would figure that out.........................here is the bottom line.........my friend sheila had been married to jimmy two sometime before/during/after the time that gail had 3 daughters with him...............and...at the time we were speaking, gail was dating the man who fathered a child with another person i worked with in the kitchen named valerie..............whoooooooo...this was almost too much to be revealed at one time........................sheila has since been divorced from jimmy two and married a white man who fathered her child, then killed himself by shutting himself in his garage with a running vehicle..........though the family denied that it was intentional.........it happened to occur just when sheila threatened to divorce him.................according to gail, sheila now lives in lexington, had gained substantial girth, and is quite settled...................anyway....back to my friend gail....................we did turn out to have many meaningrul things in common............our oldest children were in the same class at the high school, and we also had children in the same class at the middle school.............her middle child and my youngest did not match up...but no matter.............the notion that my children went to the city schools depsite our residence in the county was a topic of conversation in it's own right-......do you have to pay to send your kids to danville?......no, because they were grandfathered in..................at the time andrew would have gone to middle school from montesorri, most of his friends were going to the city schools......the statistics on high school-to-college advancement were compelling.....many more city kids went on to college.............and then there was the 'cultural diversity' question.................the faces in the city schools looked more like the real world.............while the makeup of county classes resembled the fading memory that i had of growing up in rural ohio................everyone was white, or shades of white..........and blacks were people you heard about on tv..........i had gone to school in an integrated system briefly in the 5th grade, but we had moved back to a purely white county with my dad's work by the 6th...........i never saw another person of color until i walked into the kitchen of mount carmel medical center in downtown columbus, ready to start work at a diet technician........code for kitchen skivvy..............anyway............we purposely sent our children to the integrated school.....despite warnings...............your child will be afraid to even go to the bathroom for fear of getting beat up or having his lunchmoney stolen.................yeah, right...................anyway..........back to lisa...................her daily dose of drama became tiresome........and her last catfight with joyce soured us on even considering retaining her.........but that brought up the question of gail...............she and lisa spoke on the phone before work every day,.......and after work every day....and during work every day.........if lisa quit, would gail quit, too?...............................

disappointing birthday, mail, oprah, people

ok, so my poor 11 year-old, whose birthday was supposed to be celebrated this evening.....missed out on her class's valentine's day party because she took ill sometime after lunch..........this is horrible....to be 11, and to have both your birthday and valentine's celebrations messed up...............i gave her one of her gifts early....lion king 1 and one half.......as a consolation prize for coming home early...............and when we got home...there was the mail...............even though it was cayle's birthday.........she recieved less than 1/5 the mail that her college-prospect brother received.............which almost brought tears............we may need a wheelbarrow to bring in the college mail if this keeps up................before i got the call from school, my millionaire friend gail and i were just about to peruse the people and us issues that focused on janet's stunt, and oprah's birthday bashes.........we have decided that our longterm goal should be more than to be guests on oprah...we want to be invited to her next birthday bash....................

crescendo

ok, so i am in need of a climax................i cannot think of what a realistic restaurant climax would be............fire, water, gas leak/explosion..........none of these sound like anywhere i want to go.................maybe the climax needs to be something in gail's life............a marriage proposal/job opportunity..........or maybe our lottery win puts the future in question...i lie awake at night thinking about how i want this story line to go.......now that i have centered on the white/black aspects.........i cannot think of a climax that both gail and i would repect in the morning...so to speak..............is an effective climax supposed to be a choice, a catasprophe.....a turning point......maybe a bad health department inspection......or a drug bust with all of our night employees secretly selling cocaine beneath our radar...................i cannot decide................maybe hemingway would just have another plate of oysters and a bottle of dry white sancerre........and eventually the solution would come to him...............

so many books, so little time

ok, so i have been informed that barbara kingsolver's book pigs in heaven includes an oprah interview.............i am devistated, as my entire project rests on the fantasy converation that gail and i have with oprah on a daily basis................surely oprah is a big enough personality to handle both me and turtle from the bean trees....i apologize that i have not made time to read pigs in heaven.....in louisville last year i almost bought it at a goodwill, but i bought cayle a pair of pants instead........................anyway.......................the oprah interview is at the core of our story...right up there with our bi-racial friendship.........this march my mother is traveling to arizona to meet with her cousin who blew open the story....that a brother of a great great or something grandfather was married to a black woman.somewhere in ohio...and that the family basically disavowed them...and that gail and i have spent time trying to figure out if we are ,in fact, related.because her daddy's people were from ohio..............my middle child has looked at opberlin, which was a college first to allow black students...this is a positive connection..........as is my family history.............my grandparents home in indepedence, ohio (10 miles from lake erie) was built by german immigrants and sensitive to liberal causes....................it was a last stop on the underground railroad....my mother remembers the secret place under the steps....................when my grandpa died, the picture of the house was in the paper..........my mother cannot find it now, of course..................i am sure of one thing about my novel/screenplay.......it is an uninvestigated genre.........how many white women try to figure out who they are related to in the black community..............i say that this is uncharted waters and i will be there for the publishing of such..............

bush's national guard record

ok, so some microfiche has been located in some file in colorado that includes dates in 1972 and 1973 when bush WAS PAID for national guard service in alabama.........however, the commentator who i heard on the radio this afternoon raised the more important question......how is it that someone who served for 2 years can produce no 'buddies' of any kind who remember him? how is that the first time this issue came up..in the 2000 election...no person who remembered bush from the national guard came forward............sounds like daddy arranged for his boy to be 'paid' for dates in which he was elsewhere....and now that the pay dates are public record.....i am confident that some brilliant reportor will find some hard evidence that he was not in alabama on those days..........wouldn't that be rich...if bush had, say, a dui in new haven on a day in which he was paid to be in alabama.........i can only pray.............

Proselytizing

ok, so mm is up in arms about the american airlines pilot who asked his passengers for a show of hands on 'who was a christian'...and then commented that those who were not should be.........this episode is precisely the kind of thing that gives christians a bad name.......christians should be known by their action.............if you have to ask someone if they are christian then they are probably not good and faithful folk who understand what being a christian means.............an interesting aside.......mm recently received an e-mail from a directory of some sort that wanted my permission to list my blog as christian/methodist..................i can describe my blog in many ways, but christian/methodist is not among them.........................actually, i am aiming for egalitarian/worldly/intellectual..........................if there is such a subgroup in america............

family ties

ok, so today my friend gail and i were talking about the perfect family...what it means, to whom it applies.....gail contends that not only do i have the perfect family ,but that we remind her of the sitcom family ties......elyse and steve keaton...northern liberal idealogues................i don't know about the conservative son who wears a suit.....nobody like that here.......................

soundtrack

ok, so we have given some thought to the sounds that go through our mind during our workday....there was a time when the outkast song was really in pour heads...the one where the cat and owls on the video bounce their heads up and down.....and the older lady in curlers is a subject of mockery......well, we used to think that she resemble my millionaiore friend gail.................................other than that, songs are not a big part of our reality.................

1000 pop-ups blocked

ok, so having google as our homr page has blocked over 1000 pop-up ads as of today.....such a milestone....................i have not missed any of these ads, by the way.......in the past 48 hours i have watched the following films......l'auberge espagnole, the hours, under the tuscan sun, lostin translation, and wings of the dove.....the first 4 were rented...the last one we own, and i watched it for contrast to wings of the dove........i am still troubled for having seen the hours twice....mostlt because i so love woolf's work...i have read to the lighthouse numerous times....and her short piece...a room of one's own is a classic in feminist thought.................the way that she was portrayed by nicole kidman was breathtakingly tragic.....................she was so emotionally fragile, and too intellectually brilliant to live long.............despite the love of a good and caring man..............on the other hand....under the tuscan sun was too lame as to deserve criticism.............such a bastardization of the book/sequel to the book..................does a screenplay require a lesbian chinese woman about to deliver an in-vitro baby in order to get the desired audience?........................

the muses

ok, so gail and mm's screenplay is projected to be a blend of the following movies...amelie, american splendor, lost in translation, office space, le placard, l'auberge espagnole, and barbershop/barbershop 2...............i have not seen the latter movies, but they have been successful in their particular genre...............

top 5 lists

ok, so gail and i worked lunch today, and spent our time working on our top 5 lists...........here goes.... top 5 reasons we read people magazine 1. redcarpet fashion 2. fashion dos and don'ts 3. royal family news (we still miss princess diana terribly) 4. kennedy news (we miss john john, jfk, and jackie and like to read about caroline) 5. julia roberts news

top 5 people we are tired of reading/hearing about 1. jacko 2. janet and her breast 3. bennifer 4. jessica and nick 5. clay and reuben 6. britney's wedding 7. paris hilton and the short girl whose name we have forgotten ok, so we have 7 but there are so many people who have outlived their 15 minutes of fame......

top 5 things we will do with our millions when we win the lottery 1. pay off our bills 2. donate our due to our respective churches 3. donate a significant sum for scholarships at danville high school 4. give a tidy sum to each of our workmates 5. travel to the south of france, wearing fashion do's........does dolce and gabanna come in size 12?

the blackout

ok, so mm has thought of a way to include the fact gail and i discuss our trials and tribulations with children, but without actually bringing up anything specific about our children that would haunt them in anyway..........we will simply have yet another cartoon, of ourselves holding up a placard that reads.......this is the part where we fuss about our children...the brief lapse in the script reflects the lack of remaining dialogue after each and every child had a chance to edit out their own 'stuff'. we apologize for lack of full understanding that you the veiwer would have gained from knowing just how difficult it is to be a mother in america.........

the ending

ok, so at lunch today i sketched out both the ending and the begining of my saga....................one needs to know these things.............i like the idea of 4 endings....choices a,b,c or all of the above............gail and i have discussed each possibility at length...........in fact...........we have discussed most of this screenplay at length...we just did not know that our musings merited such attention................i would like to incorporate the best parts of american splendor...the cartoon parts.......i see in my mind's eye new yorker cartoons throughout.......the first is like this......a script thinner than a best buy ad....labeled...our screenplay as our family and friends would wish us to disclose about our lives/their lives...................the next is a whopping nyc phonebook-type script...labeled.....our screenplay about our lives as we recall it..........and the third......a modest little script....labeled compromise..................this afternoon, we watched l'auberge d'espagnole.....which had some amusing elements......then lost in translation, which my family who had not seen it before did not like at all.....then under the tuscan sun....which is a distruction of what had been a delightful novel...............lots to learn about plot development, backstory, pace.....dialogue.....if i never get this done....i have had the glee of the notion of it..................

starring......

ok, so my friend gail and i have already debated on who should play us in the movie...............gail suggested that meryl streep would be perfect as the mm.......she has such a gracious elegance laced with spunk.............gail at first wanted halle berry, but she confessed that halle was so pretty that people would not forget that she was halle berry and not believe that she was gail griffin........she she opted for angela bassett, who plays many strong black women on the big screen...............the novel will open with gail and i imaging we are on oprah winfrey, talking about our novel/film/screenplay...............we often do imagine what we will say when we are on oprah as her special guests...............mostly we are invited because we have given so much of lottery winnings to scholarship funds..................which brings me to the working title......my millionaire friend...............

more on the novel -to-be

ok, so why not a novel on a woman who has been faithful to the same father of her three children she never actually married......the father who was married to someone who i actually worked with for many years at emrmc.....whose subsequent husband killed himself, by the way...............anyway.......we really might have something here................

why the hell not?

ok, so our screenplay opens with prom night 2 years ago, when we hosted a prom dinner for many couples, but not for my own child, who went elsewhere....................when the father of gail's children arrived with many cameras to record the event.......................yes, that is a good place to start...............

the novel

ok, so my good friend gail told me tonight at the catering event, in between periods of salad assembly and such, that she likes to read my blog because she can see the novel that will come out of it..............now this is news to me.....who has finally come to grips with my personal learning disabilities.....i think that i reread novels not just to revisit the content, but because i skim when i read...i simply cannot read every word as it is presented...ergo...i must read and reread to get all of the words/phrases/paragraphs................i also wonder if i have some sort of left handed dislexia.....as my misspells are related to my left handed/right brained typing...............anyway......my friend gail and i....i should call her my millionnaire friend gail....as we play the lottery every wednesday and saturday (for the past 4 years....) we have determined just how we will spend the money to up the ante for the danville school system with scholarships/grants/book reimbursement.....we only have to win the money in order to implement our plans.........anyway......my friend gail should really write a screenplay, like sofia coppola..............like her lost in translation except in danville, ky about the people who come and go in the restaurant/catering business................that could be our niche..................and why not?.....she went to school with frank x walker...................why couldn't we hit it big, too?.................even if we do not......she was generous in her affirmation of my blog, which i consider part diary/ part cathartic outlet, and part fiction workshop...................as oprah says, everybody should have a gail as a friend...................

food and more food

ok, so mm catered a huge event at the new convention center...for 150 people...which entailed wrapping bacon around scallops for most of the morning, and carving up 'meats' most of the afternoon..amongst other preparations......there was a two hour gap between the setting out of the appetizers (4 different items....) and the serving of dinner............that is a long stretch for a caterer to keep up the appetizer table and but wait til just before dinner to assemble salads, plate desserts so they will not be warm or limp....................ah well...but the event is over and i am so glad that i am home................

court tv

ok, so mm has a waitress who will soon fly to chicago for the taping of one of those judge so&so shows......where she will appear with her ex-roommate who is suing her for $1000.........i have no idea what the suit is about..............but i will have to tape the show just to see what all the fuss was about..................frankly, i owuld have enjoyed the whole thing more if she were going on springer............

signs of the times in texas

ok, so mm is outraged about the following news from cnn.com.............


DENTON, Texas (AP) -- About 40 people gathered outside an Eckerd pharmacy Monday, protesting what they said was a decision to deny a rape victim a prescription for the morning-after pill.

A spokesman for the Florida-based company confirmed that Eckerd has taken disciplinary action in response to an incident at the store.

"Apparently there was a request for a prescription to be filled and the prescription was denied based on a moral or ethical decision made by the pharmacist, and that's not in accordance with our corporate policy," said Joan Gallagher, vice president of communications for Largo, Florida-based Eckerd Corp. Gallagher told the Denton Record-Chronicle that she could provide no other details.

The protesters carried signs. Some stood silently and others chanted slogans. Morning-after pills have been sold under the brand names Plan B and Preven since 1998. Taken within 72 hours of sexual intercourse, the hormone pills are at least 75 percent effective at preventing pregnancy. An unidentified friend of the woman seeking the prescription told the newspaper she got the drug from a neighboring pharmacy.

Gay Dodson, executive director of the Texas State Board of Pharmacy, said state law allows pharmacists to decline filling prescriptions if the medication could harm the patient. "The law does not say that the pharmacy can decline because of moral ground," she said. I find the refusal to fill a physician prescribed medication reprehensible.......it is the woman's choice to bear a rapist's baby, or not to do so, not the pharmacists.......

so many mysteries......

ok, so mmhas had her xray, and now anxiously awaits the results.......obviously, the outcome is not in my hands.....so i am trying to focus my attention on solving those small mysteries that i can potentially do something about.....like why my blog comes up in disturbingly big print on our home screen, but in a diminutive size at work......i have gone into the template, but can see no reason why 2 screens show it in different sizes...........also, there is the business of my sienna's brake light, which seems to stay on even when i know that the brake itself is not on.........and then there is that pesky missing library card..............

janet jackson

ok, so the jacksons have done it again..........and it wasn't pretty..........janet's right implanted breast popped out of her costume with help from justin timberlake at the end of their lame duet at the superbowl halftime......she was wearing a pastie, so it is likely the stunt was planned...........now the fcc is going to investigate the indecent incident, as half-time was still in primetime, when familys were watching...........so silly......as her breasts are so swollen as to be pitiable not shocking................

disapointment

ok, so mm finally got to watch le divorce, based so loosely on the diane johnson novel that i barely recognized it.......the pared-down screenplay left most of the subplots unfilmed or on the cutting room floor.......and left out so many characters and combined so many others that i had a hard time figuring out who was who in the reinvented version........the few things that remained true to the book.......roxanne is having a baby, but her french husband has left her for a crazy russian writer/painter......her sister isabelle is having an affair with her sister's husband's aging (age 55) uncle........he buys her a herme kelly bag worth beaucoup euros at the beginning and a hermes scarf worth beaucoup bucks at the end.......and the crazy russian woman's husband goes crazy himself at the finale........other than seeing fine food on lovely plates in upscale restaurants in paris...the film was a bust.....except for the fine aging uncle edgar, played by theirry ______...now he was just perfect as the 'aging' lethario..............we should all be so lucky...........

no memory

ok, so at lunch we had 'everybody' for lunch, and the discussion somehow went from the picture in the danville advocate with our little our group and nicole and her friend in montmartre........and how the meal at that restaurant was bad, and how we took the bus back from montmartre because nicole insisted, and how on this trip i finally got to see the small statue of the liberty that stands up river from the eiffel tower on its own little island.....my mother informed me that i had seen that statue in 1972 when our family of four first went to europe.............i have no recollection of this, and other facts she reclled like they were yesterday........like how i took a gideon bible from the hotel in amsterdam and left $2 american in exchange.......and how i had seen my cousin nancy in the metro on the way to the louvre where we were to meet her, and how my mother had been upset when she saw me waving to someone in a country where we didn't know anyone..............these things did not stick in my brain........either they were non-important details, or i have selected what was important to remember in my limited brain slots and have forgotten the rest, or my mother remembers things that did not happen....either way it is clear that one's relatives will always remember the oddities in one's life, even when we have conveniently forgotten them............

triple feature

ok, so the entire c-w family has rented 3 dvd's, and is systematically working their way through them.......last night we watched nicholas nickelby (sp?), a humerous rendition that was nominated last year for some golden globes........dickens really had a way with satire as well as wit and wisdom.....then we watched seabiscuit, a fine retelling of the bestselling book.....both ecw and i had read the book...........which was nonfiction.......the director did a great job of making this true story into a dramatic film........today we will watch the royal tennenbaums, less of us due to the rating and acw's return to uk....i have heard that it is humerous as well......regardly of how much i enjoyed the movies i rented, i did not go to the movie place to rent any of them.....i wanted to see le divorce, but all of the dvd copies were out and the video place hadn't bothered with vhs copies at all......i also wanted to see my house in umbria (out.....) and the one with diane lane about a house refurbishment in tuscany (not yet released in dvd form......)....so i rented what seemed like the best of the rest............

cocoon

ok, so this morning it was so hard to get out of bed.......our flannel sheets are so cozy.....like sleeping in a cottony cocoon............

freaked out

ok, so mm has just learned that denise baca, who owns freddie's uptown....has an in operable tumor on her heart and has not long to live......so sad.........such bad news on top of my own frets....i woke up two days ago with a swelling in my left rib cage.........like i am growing a third breast...........i went to see audrey darville.......who asked rick hempel for a second opinion.....now this alone was stressful, as ecw runs 3x a week with rick......but i allowed him to see my swelling anyway...............the determination made was that i had a swelling on top of my ribs, not below....if it is till swelled on monday i am to get a chest x-ray.........................i tell you this....the swelling is below my ribs.............not on top..................and i am waiting patiently for monday to find out why my ribcage is bowed out...................

too much time on my hands.....

ok, so mm has visited, yet again, the web site of dan brown, and then did a google search of the priory of sion.................and guess what........she found out that Nicholas Flamel, he who is mentioned as a noted alchemist in harry potter and the sorcerer's stone..........was a real person who belonged to the priory of sion...................the reading about the priory of sion was most confusing.......like where the masons diverged from the demolays and the templars............as a member of a sorority that began in the late 1800's, i am in awe of anybody who belongs to a secret society that dates back to the year 1200...................to be quite honest, i desire greatly that one of my offspring be inducted phi beta kappa.........................my doctor is a phi beta kappa, for heaven's sake....so why not one of my brilliant children.......................................

god bless jimmy carter

ok, so mm is so proud of jimmy carter, who has publically spoken out against the move by the department of education in his home state of georgia to ban the use of the term evolution in classroom textbooks......the following was lifted from cnn.com......................Former President Jimmy Carter said Friday he was embarrassed by the Georgia Department of Education proposal to eliminate the word "evolution" from the state's curriculum. "As a Christian, a trained engineer and scientist, and a professor at Emory University, I am embarrassed by Superintendent Kathy Cox's attempt to censor and distort the education of Georgia's students," Carter said in a written statement. ......................the christian right is such a scary bunch............to alter education to fit their narrow understanding of the world...............so frightening that people like this can make it to places of power, and enjoy control over what students read to that extent.........

snow

ok, so neither boyle nor danville have school today........who knew that snow not deep enough to cover one's shoes on the short walk to get the newspaper out of the mailbox was enough to call off school in town.........

suburban schools not safe havens.......

ok, so we, who send our children to integrated, 'inner-city' schools already knew this.............

Report: Suburban schools not safe havens
From sex to drugs, similar student behaviors in cities, suburbs
Thursday, January 29, 2004 Posted: 10:46 AM EST


WASHINGTON (AP) -- People who flee urban schools in pursuit of more wholesome settings may be surprised by this report card: Suburban students engage in just as much sex, drugs and fighting as city kids do.

"The desks may be newer, the paint may be fresher and the faces may be whiter, but the students are just as likely to have sex, use controlled substances and break the law," says the report released Wednesday by The Manhattan Institute, a New York-based conservative think tank.

Authors Jay Greene and Greg Forster analyzed student survey data collected from the same group of students in three waves, from 1995 to 2002. The survey, which included an estimated 20,000 students, was sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and other federal agencies.

Among the results of the study, which focused on high school grades:

-- Two-thirds of suburban and urban 12th-graders have had sex; 43 percent of suburban 12th-graders and 39 percent of urban 12th-graders have had sex outside of a "romantic relationship."

-- 74 percent of suburban 12th-graders and 71 percent of urban 12th-graders have tried alcohol more than two or three times.

-- 22 percent of suburban 12th-graders and 16 percent of urban 12th-graders say they have driven while drunk.

-- More than 40 percent of 12th-graders in urban and suburban schools have used illegal drugs.

-- 20 percent of urban 12th-grade girls have been pregnant; 14 percent of suburban 12th-grade girls have. Such numbers are among those that are higher than many people would likely expect, regardless of the school setting, Greene said.

"People who think they've escaped these kinds of societal issues by moving to the suburbs -- we think they're mistaken," Greene said. "The suburban schools aren't safe havens."

more davinci code

ok, so mm has read that ron howard will direct the movie, that akiva goldsmith (or whomever wrote the screenplay for a beautiful mind) will write the screenplay, and that the film will star russell crowe and kate beckinsale...................i cannot wait...........

google-proofing

ok, so mm's blog is still not google-proof......at least not with regards to the c-w name.....i have just taken pains to remove the full c-w name from every blog in which it appears.....now i have to wait for the cache process to catch up with my changes,......

bummer

ok, so mm is quite bummed about eku-danville..........eku main campus may be finally filling a vacant nutrition department position......and the new person will quite likely to be traveling to danville to teach the class that i have taught these many semesters.........the eku-danville director has offered to go to bat for me with the nutrition class, and has also offered request that i teach a required health class that is currently not taught in danville........gentle readers, be aware that the eku teaching gig is my travel money........and the prospect of losing my travel money is bum deal indeed.......

another good quote

ok, so Chekhov said, "Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out." there is much truth to this statement...........................

a new feminist heroine

ok, so mm is really keen on colette, but there is yet another feminist heroine out there worthy of respect.....emma goldman. who said the following...................."If I can't dance I don't want to be in your revolution," said Emma Goldman (1869-1940), feminist heroine, anarchist activist, editor, writer, teacher, jailbird and general trouble-maker. ......i pareticularly like the descriptive of troublemaker................................

matches

ok, so the c-w family is match-poor.........i wanted to light a few candles the other day.....so i could have a semi-relaxing bath.....and i could find no matches.................none in any junk drawer...none near the fireplace................nonme tucked away in odd places.....none.......seems like places that used to promote themselves by giving away imprinted matches haved stopped.....because so few places allow smoking in the first place.......and thus.....as a trickle down effect/affect???????.....we have no matches.............i have looked in the save-a-lot for matches.....none to be found....i have looked in the kmart.....none to be found............i read on line today that airports will soon outlaw matches in carryons.......why........??????i can;t find matches for home, let alone for travel.................................

colette, again

ok, so today is the birthday of colette, my favorite author.......the following is from the writer's almanac via minnesota public radio's web site..............It's the birthday of (Sidonie Gabrielle) Colette, born in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, France (1873). At the age of 20, she married an older man, a writer and critic who employed a number of ghostwriters. He convinced Colette to write down stories about her childhood and embellish them with juicy details. When she did, he published them in his name as Claudine at School (1900), the first novel in the Claudine series, about an outspoken, clever young woman who discovers a love affair between a headmistress and a young female teacher. Colette's early writing was forced labor: her husband locked her in a room until she had produced enough pages for the day, and he kept the royalties. After fleeing her husband in 1906, Colette became a Parisian music-hall performer famous for baring one breast while dancing. At the Moulin Rouge, she caused even more controversy when she took a woman into a passionate embrace. The show caused a riot. The curtain had to be brought down early, and Colette became the talk of the town.

Colette began to write at least one book a year, producing more than 80 volumes, including Ch?ri (1920), My Mother's House (1922) and Sido (1930). Proust admired her, and wrote to her to say that her novella Mitsou (1930), about a music-hall artist who falls in love with an officer on leave, had moved him to tears. She kept up to two dozen cats in her house, and her novel La Chatte (The Cat, 1933) deals with a kind of love triangle between a man, a woman and a cat. In 1944, at the age of 72, she published Gigi, about a spontaneous young girl who is trained by courtesans in "the honorable habits of women without honor." It was adapted for the theater in 1951, with a young Audrey Hepburn in the title role, and later made into a movie.

When she died in 1954 Colette was denied a Catholic funeral, but thousands attended the state funeral provided by the French government?the first for a woman. A plaque on her house in Paris reads, "Here lived, here died Colette, whose work is a window wide open on life."

Colette said, 'sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it."

And she said, "The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike," and "What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner."


In the short story chance aquaintances, colette recalls a vacation trip that she took to a rented mountain 'villa' along with her cat, that ended up with a stay of several weeks at a spa..........there is a touching paragraph that i will type in long-hand..............'the striped cat was called Peronella at first, then Prrou. You'll find the two names in my earlier novels; but these names fall to shreds on her like second-rate clothing. She became an unclassifiable, private-edition cat, and as is universally known- cats with strong personalities need no names. She was called "Come Here", she was called "where have you got to?".......and "lets be off...." not to mention fancy names, invented at moments of enthusiasm or tenderness, such as "light of the mountainside', or 'o striped to the utmost of stripeability' ....'birdcat'...and so on. No one made much of a fuss of her, not even me...She was never called on by reporters, and she granted no interviews. We lived together. When i had to leave her behind with my mother during a long absence, the striped cat took it into her head to die, and she died. If i mention her in this tale now and again, it is not because I want to give her any special promenance in it, but because she was a part of my life........' I have read and reread this piece numerous times, and it always brings me to the brink of tears...how Colette can describe her life and aquaintances in such a poignant manner....even down to her cat.....which she probably missed more than many/any of her husbands.......

small world

ok, so mm has just figured out that sean penn is the brother-in-law of aimee mann, who is married to his brother michael.......which explains why the sweet song 'the two fo us' was penned by mann and penn...........

yes!!!!!!!!!!

ok, so mm has finally figured out how to import comments into her blog.........i am so proud................

complements

ok, so mm recieved an actual complement today.......regarding her choice of literature at the advanced age pf 47...............'at least you read colette and not romance novels..........'there was a bit of exchange about whether colette was, in fact, a romance author..............gentle readers, madame colette was the first woman to receive a medal from the academie francaise......when she died she was afforded a state funeral..............she was lightyears beyond a romance novelist....................like the kind sold in walmart checkouts................colette was a woman of letters............a woman of ideas, of action, of passion, of substance.........to read colette is to read one's own blog.................or so i told my middle child this very day.....colette's blog would surely have sounded like mine....................or so I tell myself in my lowest moments..........

virginia woolf

ok, so today is the birthday of robert burns, somerset maugham, and virginia woolf.......i am quite unfamiliar with anything written by burns short of auld lang syne......the same with maugham......but woolf.....her piece...a room fo one's own.......is quite wonderful, especially for any woman who has a hankering to write...or blog......i am not sure that the little computer room counts as a room of one's own, as it must be shared.....but only one can sit in here at a time so there is an element of privacy...........woolf suffered greatly from bouts of depression.......a quote from virginia 'on the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points'.......i am not sure what it means but i like how it sounds.......her father published a dictionary, and encouraged his daughter to read widely......he advised her, in so many words...to read what she liked no matter if anybody else liked it, and to refrain from praising books that she did not like........there is great wisdom in those parental words.......i have read to the lighthouse numerous times, finding greater depth each and every time i pick it up.......her stream of consciousness must mesh with the way my own brain rambles......

colette

ok, so mm reaches for her colette shelf when she is tired, frustrated, and in need of familiar literature............tonight i reread gigi, a short story made famous by hollywood, maurice chevalier (thank heavens for little girls......) and audrey hepburn.........reading it as a short story reminds me of how little it takes for hollywood to make a bit of dialogue into a major motion picture..............and after seeing cold mountain, it is difficult to see the connection between this short story and a major motion picture of any depth....................even if it took place in paris...............will cold mountain be the new barometer of substance, worth, etc.?????????and this after 3 years of lotr releases???????????????too much cinematic genius in too little time......................but back to madame colette.....her short story is spare on length, but rich in substance, detail, and believability...............and it lacks gory battle scenes............ maybe i will reread my entire colette shelf...and will feel a little better about the world than i do at this very moment..............

cold mountain

ok, so my best guy and i went to the 4:00 showing of cold mountain.....we had both read the book some time ago......maybe several years ago......and were not quite clear on the particulars...but we did remember, at the end.....how the book ended.....and we were still stunned that the movie portrayed the tragic ending moreso than the book......that is really the bottom line about this movie.....it was better than the book...........visually beautiful......horrific beyond hell..........there were parts that i could not watch...and as my eyes were averted i pondered the realization that the civil war, like all wars, was certainly worse than what i saw in snatches on the screen.......and that strong women were the reason that the south survived the war, and the years after the war.............and oh, what i would not give to look and act like nicole kidman.....she will surely have the last laugh on the tom cruise divorce.....he will fade away, and she will bloom as one of cinema's brightest talents.............in this film, she is breathtaking............even in the worst moments..............and then there is jude law as inman........who falls instantly for ada (nicole) ..........and spends the bulk of the movie getting back to her................oh, my.......and then there is renee zellweger and jack white.....he of the white stripes........they add so much to this film..........it is so fitting that one hears that they are an item........gentle readers......mm is in a conumdrum (a latin term spoken in a critical part of the movie, by the way....) whilst she was blown away by this film.....she really wants lotr/rotk to not only be nominated for an oscar, but also receive said oscar for best picture based on general merit for the entire trilogy........................on the other hand....cold mountain is so true to the book, so emotionally draining, so cinematically perfect....................oh my.....................

friday

ok, so mm is so glad that it is friday, even though she will work part of saturday...............i catered a dinner at my own church this evening.......and was glad of it......for the record, my church was kicked out of the southern baptist convention for having a female minister and female deacons.....the group that met at my church tonight is of the same ilk.....all are fed up with conservative christians who seek to co-opt the church............i was glad to be a part of such a gathering..............

mm speaks her mind

ok, so mm accompanied her precious spouse to the annual chamber of commerce awards dinner......he won the first ever ethics in business award...for which i am so proud..........after the event was finally over, and the pictures were over......and ch' crowley's mother told me about how well the boy in the hat did on the psat.....then there was the after-party..........where alice f.k., was politicking with those in attendence............she who is running for congress.....well......i could not turn down the opportunity for mm to speak her mind.....and luckily i had not had anything short of water.............for i was quite cordial when i introduced myself......and certianly upbeat when i complemented her on her positive campaign.....but then i scowled, and told her that i had been quite dismayed over the weekend when her ad came on the tv, and hillary r. clinton's head popped up as some symbol of evil.........i said...'i was so disappointed that you would go that low......."......she quickly countered that it was not her ad....that it was sponsored by the republican national hoo-ha committee...........and started to turn her head and introduce herself to my ethical spouse, who would never had said these things to her.............having thought about my encounter.......for and hour or two........i wish i had introduced myself as a lifelong democrat who was almost ready to vote for her as a qualified woman, until her financial backers screwed up..........ah well.........mm spoke her mind......................

trip possibility

ok, so mm has decided that a mother/son/mother/daughter trip to florence next january would be quite nice.......especially if one of the mothers spoke italian and one of the children knew her art......the mm is having major travel withdrawal, and needs to come up with a pallative itinerary on which to ponder/plan/ and otherwise daydream upon.......i am well aware that the boy with the hat does not care if he sees rick steves on this trip, or if we even consult rick steve's florence book at all......but i must say that i missed traveling with the 'young people' this go-around..........scheduling could work out even if one of the young people involved goes to school next year in mass.........anyway.....something to ponder...........

responses

ok, so mm has had 2 responses from her graffit board entry.....one was from boulder, colorado......and her comment was eerily reminsicent of a lovely note i got second-hand from the aunt of the l.o. she must have been a lot of fun to travel with in her day.........................of course, mm's family is tired of hearing me talk about rick steves, the trip, the food, the wine, the security.........and mm is therefore starting to think ahead to next january....maybe venice before it sinks.........

interesting links

ok, so mm has enjoyed some links this weekend, mostly those suggested by the l.o. and the boy who wears the hat downtown........i particularly like somethingawful.com.......the site that parodys everything, including painter thomas kincaide.....

pictures

ok, so my friend cynthia has not only had her film from paris developed, this morning she presented me with a lovely matted frame of 5 black and white images from paris, including me with rick steves.........the b&w images were a fitting media decision for january....a dreary january.........paris looks ever so ethereal in b&w.......also, rick steves looks very tall, but that isn't the film, i suppose.................

oh, my aching back

ok, so mm has strained her back again....and this time it seems worse than the last time.....i could barely get out of bed this morning, barely get down the steps,....you get the picture.......today i have to go in to trc to start cooking for tomorrow.....this should be rich......i am not sure that i can drive......because it is my driving hip/lower back area that is in pain.......pray for me.....

day off

ok, so mm had saturday off, and planned to do as little as possible.......except that is not possible so what follows is a synopsis of what i did when i did not plan to do anything.........drove to town and took in 3 rolls of film...2 from paris and 1 that i found whilst packing for paris......who knows where or when it was taken........rented 3 dvds, then bought plastic string-closure folders so that i can reorganize all of my eku class notes, overheads, etc.......bought 15, as well as more overheads, copy paper.........went to krogers and bought stuff to make lasagna for us sunday as well as a small one to take to a neighbor who is ill.........stopped by taco bell to buy lunch for me and the children who chose not to accompany me to town.........made the lasagnas, then decided that today was the day that i would organize all of those photographs from the past 3-4 years.....could not find the empty albums that i bought 2-3 years ago.........gave up and decided to watch dvds while i organized eku stuff.........watched catch me if you can, with leo and tom hanks...the wearing the hat downtown boy commented that leo only plays people who are imposters of somebdy else..........then watched matt damon in the bourne idendity..........which was a great flick that mostly happens in paris..................watched it again with mostly everybody else after supper...............ripped apart the baby sweater that required a little more yarn......reworked the sleeves a tad smaller to allow enough yarn to make the button band.......got into an argument with my mother prior to supper about the term ms......which my mother considers an afront to all she holds dear.......i told her that i have been a proud ms for 23 years, and consider the term an honorable description of a woman is in a partnership, not owned by a spouse......talk about waving the red flag....enough of a full and satisfying day when i had planned to do absolutely nothing...............

alias

ok, so mm finally got to watch sunday's episode of alias that her children dutifully taped for her (many thanks....) this episode clears up all of the questions about what happened to syd during the 2 years she was gone.......we discover that syd had her own mind erased so that she could not tell anybody where she hid the cube containing rimbaldi's dna.......but that sloan tricked her into finding the cube in the last episode........we find out why lazarey's hand was in the box in the desert, and why syd has the scar on her abdomen.......the covenant believes that syd is the chosen one, who will give birth to rimbaldi's heir, at least her eggs will be involved.............but at the end syd tracks down sark, who has the dna, and is working with lab guys to do test tube fertilizations using syd's eggs........lazarey is there, too, as he is sark's father.....keeping up so far, gentle readers?..........sydney torches the place, but sark gets away.......sydney brings lazarey, who has been wounded in the gunfight at the makeshift lab....back to l.a.............he tries to tell her something about a 'passenger', but she tells him they will have time to talk later..........a sniper shoots lazarey as he is being wheeled into a naval hospital.........we get a good look at the sniper as the episode ends.....lauren......vaughan's wife.........now we always knew that lauren was evil.....and now we have proof........so what is her end game....does she really love vaughan, or was that a set-up for something even extra evil that will happen later in the season?.........so many routes that the show can take now.......and they all will lead somehow to sloan, who syd now knows has some connection to her 2-year disappearance.......and of course, where is syd's mother, irena........???????oh, my......2 more days until the next episode of alias.........

rick steves........grafitti board entry

ok, so here is what mm wrote on the rick steves grafitti board about the trip..... I have just returned from a whirlwind trip to Paris, a sort of theme trip with several ladies from my Sunday School class....we read the DaVinci Code over the holidays, and decided to visit the Parisian sites that were key to the story line...more on that later......I planned several lunches at restaurants on-site at major museums. The first day, we lunched in the incredible dining room at Musee D'Orsay.....This room must have been either a dining room or a ballroom when the D'Orsay was a hotel/railroad station.....the ceiling and walls are quite elegant, and diners relax in huge wicker armchairs...we each had either a hot plat du jour or a salad plate...mine was a 'salad of the forest' with mixed greens, mushrooms, roast duck and duck confit, with a broiled goat cheese toast garnish.....the price for 3, including a carafe of house white was 46.55 euros....quite a bargain for the ambience and the luscious food.....Another day we lunched in yet another outstanding dining room, this time in the Musee Jaquemart-Andre, on Blvd Haussmann..the ceiling was brought back from Italy by the art-collector couple that built the house, and the room had those 20 foot walls that make an Italian-painted ceiling seem perfect.....my salad plate was again mixed greens, this time covered in thinly sliced Italian ham, along with grape tomatoes, 3 broiled goat cheese toasts, and a little sauce dish of black olive tapenade.......just divine with a bottle of a mighty dry reisling....for 3...50.05 euros including several cafe cremes.....another deal for ladies who wanted to really 'do' lunch....if you go, get there before 11:30 am, as the room filled up quickly and they take no reservations......now for the most memorable part of the trip.....the DaVinci Code part.....which took place at St. Sulpice....we opted to take Rick Steve's advice, and go to Sunday 10:30 am mass, then stay for the organ concert and wait at the door at the left of the entrance in case the organist will allow visitors to the organ loft.......we were the very last to go up the steps, and stopped to take a few pictures of the sanctuary from the balcony before making our way down the dimly lit hall toward the organ loft.....we were ushered into a brilliant red silk-lined reception room....and as the door closed on the small gathering of tourists, we heard someone gasp....aren't you Rick Steves?.......there he was, confirming details of the organ recital section of the 2004 Paris book with organist Daniel Roth.......Rick Steves himself......We had our pictures taken with him, as well as with the organist. I got his autograph in my little moleskine travel diary.......talk about being in the right place at the right time.....Our next stop was the Louvre, to see the Mona Lisa and Madonna of the Rocks, as well as the inverted pyramid.....also key elements in the book....but not before we lunched at Cafe Marly, in the Richelieu Wing, overlooking the pyramid entrance. We had read that reservations were not required.....The staff had a bit of an attitude because of our lack of reservations but condecended to seat us within 8-10 minutes anyway.......we dined in a glowing room overlooking the Marly horses...the walls had a treatment that resembled baby blue suede, and we sat on burgundy couches or blue velvet chairs...just lovely....the prices were more than we had anticipated...but the food was purely divine.....I had a Thai shrimp soup with lemongrass and mushrooms in a broth thickened with coconut milk and a glass or two of a nice sancerre for about 20 euros.....worth the price just for the people-watching alone......this place must be where the interesting come to see and be seen.....we did toast to Rick Steves, by the way......for making our short winter Paris getaway so memorable......I should add, for the record....that we thoroughly enjoyed our stay at the Hotel Leveque on the Rue Cler, and the meals (2) that we had with Phillippe at La Varangue, and at L'Auberge de Champs de Mars, and the Chinese take-out place across from the hotel. By the way, there is a cyber-cafe just down from L'Auberge de Champs de Mars that is open 12 noon to 8 or 10 depending on the day of the week. Despite the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, we felt completely secure, and had absolutely no trouble getting along with any one as long as we smiled broadly, and spoke broken French with Kentucky accents.....A wonderful trip.

kudos

ok, so mm has to give kudos to her past traveling companions............nobody travels as proficiently as the l.o. and the guy who wears his hat downtown...........some things are just not the same.......

fly away home

ok, so mm has been up since 11:00 pm ky time trying to get home again.......one of my traveling companions decided that getting up at 6:00 am french time for a 7:15 shuttle may not be enough time, so she got up at 5:00 am instead.......which meant that the rest of us woke up at 5:00 am and tried to keep our eyes shut until 6:00 am, by which time our friend was dressed, and packed and standing by the door......she finally decided to go and sit in the lobby by herself..........and wait for us to finally come down......our shuttle meandered through the darkened streets of paris picking up 5 more passengers.....4 from philedelphia who we are convinced got off at the domestic air france terminal rather than the international one........hopefully they made it back home.........we had no line when we checked in with our delta/air france code share flight........................we were grateful for the level of scrutiny at the security checkpoint...travelers to washington dc and l.a. went through a separate line altogther..............there were bomb-sniffing dogs,too.......we met a man in the line getting onto the air france shuttle (we had to travel a great distance to our plane, which was parked in the back-forty.......) he is a philosphy professor from eku, originally from nigeria.....who also missed his first classes because he goes home for a few weeks every christmas..................the air france flight was delightful.......individual movie screens and control wands.......we could choose from 6 movies.........i watched je reste, with sophie morceau, the quiet american with brendan frazier and michael caine, and white oleander............i could have watched a 4th movie, but i fell into the on-screen solitaire...........and all of a sudden we were landing in cincinnati and i hadn't even taken a nap.............i am so ready to sleep in my own bed, with my own spouse.....when he gets up at 5:00 am to go run, i have learned to ignore him and go bacl to sleep.........there is no place like home...........

new places

ok, so mm has gone out of her way to see new places on this trip to paris.......today we went to musee jaquemart-andre......a house on blvd haussmann that was the treaaure torve of a rich couple who collected art, furniture and entertained the paris elite at the turn of the century.....we had lunch in a lovely room with a frescoed ceiling brought back from italy.....i had a salad plate with warm goat cheese, thin ham, mixed greens, tapanade, and lovely cherry tomatoes.......life is good, especially with a bottle of dry reisling.........we have settled our hotel bill, and it was less than we had been quoted on line..........we did not bring up the discrepancy...........that almost makes up for the poor exchange rate we have gotten on this trip......we did go to some of the same old places also....dehillerin for housewares and the fabric stores near sacre coeuer....i found no fabric, but that is ok..............looking forward to flying home tomorrow........speaking of goat cheese, i bought a jar of goat cheeses in oil...hopefully it will travel well......

the right place at the right time

ok, so mm spent sunday on cloud nine.........we had a leisurely breakfast of ham and cheese omelets at the corner cafe, then metroed to st. sulpice, the church featured in the davinci code.......we arrived at the end of mass, intending to hear the 30 minute organ concert that was highlighted in rick steves paris book as something not to miss. we walked around the church during the concert, looking for the rose line, to no avail.....then gathered with the group at the small door to the left of the entrance that opens after the concert is over...to allow the interested to go up and see the actual organ in the loft.......we were at the end of the line, climbing cramped circular steps.........and were quickly ushered into a lovely red-walled room with glass doors, where we were to meet the organist, a daniel roth..........and there he was....rick steves in the flesh.......asking mr. roth if the information in the 2004 book was correct so that he could include it in the 2005 book..................we got his autograph, and had our pictures made with him........we were like travel writer groupies.....mr steves insisted that the organist be included in autographs and photos..........we spent some time talking to the french guide, who said that she was hired by mr. steves to take him around.....and we talked more later with mr steves about danville, and the vice-presidential debate...of all things........he noticed that my travel book for this trip was by moleskine.......and was amused that i had copied his maps and taped them inside.........what an incredible coincidence......................later we dragged oursleves to cafe marly at the louvre pyramid for an expensive little brunch, then toured the louvre highlights until we were due in montmarte to have supper with nicole rufflet.........today we shopped at bon marche and bought cool groceries....then did scoured the bookstores for dossiers......so far we have 11 of the books requested......no laye or dubellay so far...it is like nobody has heard of them......will blog again tomorrow before coming home........

en paris

ok, so mm has arrived in paris, after a turbulent night of crying babies and bumpy patches....and grateful to be here......we had a glitch at lex/bluegrass airport, whereupon one of my travel companians did not have her paper ticket, through a travel agent error....she thought she had an e-ticket...anyway, after 45 minutes of negotiating she was resissued a ticket and we got on the plane...many thanks to eric hall, delta employee........shuttle to hotel leveque on rue cler......rue cler is charming, the hotel is charming....a market street....our window boxes (2) have blooming cyclamen in them...so festive and quaint..........we walked to musee de l'armee to see napoelan's tomb and to buy museum pass, then on to rodin museum and then to musee d'orsay...we had lunch in main dining room of museum...the old train station/hotel dining room...lovely meal of a salade forestiere with mixed greens, chevre, mushrooms, tomatoes, and duck slices.......along with a glass of dry white...lovely.......we enjoyed the paintings, then walked back to the hotel for a little nap before dinner........the weather is quite fine...a few sprinkles with temps around 55 degrees......tomorrow...st. sulpice for mass and to hear the organ concert, then cafe marly and the louvre....we will haver supper with nicole rufflet in montmartre later on........for those who i forgot to tell, sorry...my hotel is grand hotel leveque, 01 47 05 49 15.....a bientot

bon voyage

ok, so mm is just about ready to roll on this extended weekend trip to paris..........just need to throw the rest in my carryon...........the suitcase is eerily empty by comparison to other trips.....so i have either learned a few things over the years, the suitcase is too big, or i will be seriously underdressed......i have entertained myself by copying useful french lines in my little travel book just in case........just in case i do not want to get out my little phrase book........i am hoping that 25 years of trying to learn french will bloom into a 4-day bout of basic yet adequate transactions with people in museums, stores and restaurants.......one disappointment to report....i have worked feverishly to finish a baby sweater for niece nicole's new baby coner (conner?) crowley.....on the last sleeve i ran out of yarn about 5 yards too soon........this means that i will have to take apart both sleeves and make them slightly smaller....when i come back....unless some kind family member does this for me......(meaning my mother.....) ah well...........wish me luck and a safe journey.....i will blog from paris if a cybercafe presents itself.......and believe me.......i will toast my gentle readers at the first available moment if my plane lands safely

mm comes clean

ok, so mm has made a big mistake, and needs some mea culpa time from her gentle readers.................here goes......when i booked my little 4 day jaunt to paris, i neglected to compare the dates to my eku class at danville manor.........i will return about 24 hours after my first class should have met......so..............i changed the syllabus to reflect no class on the first day, mailed 45 copies to students i have not even met, and sent the syllabus into the eku main office along with my contract........i thought everything was taken care of until i had a call from the department chair this morning.....she was concerned that my class may not have enough contact hours, and requested that i find subs for the first class as well as for danville spring break........she also questioned my habit of having a class for each chapter in the nutrition book (14), which allowed for there to be a few fewer classes than the sememster would have required (15) in the first place........i called out to the eku danville director, who assured me that i was talking to a department chair who is preparing for an accreditation inspection in 2007........and who also assured me that she was not concerned that the danville students were being shortchanged.with regards to clcok hours............the danville campus people basically told me to resubmit a revised syllabus to eku main campus, and then do what i wanted at the manor.............i feel much better..............

curb my enthusiasm

ok, so mm has not shown her usual pre-trip euphoria..............which i atrribute to my general malaise these past 2 weeks.......i have drifted into an unknown territory during my illness and now my vacation.....a vacuous-state in which i do not get dressed until noon, and venture out only to pick up my children..........i do not ever recall having the time or the inclination for such laziness..........even in my worst days of sloth in college...therefore i believe that the behavior persists because i have nothing else to do until i leave on friday......putting photos in albums not withstanding.........whereupon i will leap into action on all of the travel itinerary plans made thus far..............

pete rose

ok, so mm has an opinion on pete rose.....gentle readers are requested to kindly allow mm to rant.......for starts, i am no fan of organized baseball, football, basketball, hockey, etc.....the only sporting events that i can be counted on to watch include wimbledon tennis, the osu-michigan game, march madness if ky is playing, and the world series if i have any inkling that i have a connection to the teams (like sympathy for the boston red sox....or chicago cubs) anyway, i lived in cincinnati from 1978 through 1981 or so.......during the time when pete rose either played or managed/played or was disgraced or all three.........those were sad times for baseball fans, especially reds fans.........the question remains as to whether a player's personal life should weigh heavier than a player's contribution to the game of baseball when it comes to hall of fame status...........this is one of the few times that i can recall my grandpa broughton's opinion on any subject.........he laughed and recalled seeing ty cobb playing in indians stadium in cleveland......he recalled that ty cobb was notorius for keeping a bottle of bourbon with him the dugout, and that he was therefore apt to be involved in benchclearing brawls..............grandpa commented......'now ty cobb...he was no angel, and he is in the hall of fame............'that is the bottom line........there are those who are already in the hall of fame who are no angels...with regards to drink, drugs, wife abuse/adultery, tax evation, gluttony, you name the deadly sin..........if we draw the line and say........you can be elected to the hall of fame having commited any sin except gambling on baseball, it makes the whole hall of fame outfit look stupid........election to the hall of fame should be based only on contribution to the game of baseball, without moral judgements attached.......pete rose meets that pure concept of hall of fame.............lets get on with the business of electing him with next year's ballot............

reservations

ok, so mm has procrastinated for weeks about making a reservation for monday at the seine-side bistro called les bookiniste (sp)......with the fall in the dollar, i hesitated to spend 35 euro for lunch........well, we now seem to have 2 reservations for this restaurant......one for 3 persons, and one for 4 persons, made by cynthia's friend nicole.....i have started to pack my stuff...at least started to get my stuff together and started to contemplate which suitcase i will use, how many layers of clothing will keep me warm, etc........my cough has returned.......alas.........i also need to shop for cold/sinus remedies just in case as i do not know the french words that describe those miseries......i have so few days off before i go to france and before i go back to work.....i may just delay this packing business a bit longer and go back to bed..............

too much

ok, so mm is still not herself...............but enough so to report that the rest of her relations are just crazy............let's start with the ones who wanted to make a deal....................a sister-in-law, who shall remain nameless, called twice over the weekend, to enquire about an oil painting made by ecw's mother during a class.....of a cactus in bloom........that currently hangs in our dining room with other works, mostly by our family.....pen and ink by kcw.....a nice photograph of a still-life by ecw........some needlework by kcw......and some etchings/prints purchased abroad....................anyway, this painting is nicely situated with it's genre............and this sister-in-law......who had originally asked me to take it, now wanted it back........at least 18 months after the funeral/division of property................wanted to trade it for a vacumn cleaner..............fortunately, my spouse was not in the mood to make a deal, and told her no............

shameful

ok, so mm is still a bit under the weather, and thus can claim sickness as the reason she fell asleep on her sister-in-law's couch yesterday in cincinnati............others, who are less charitable, claim that i was being anti-social........if that were the case, i would have not gone at all.........

more britney

ok, so britney's weekend gets worse..........not only did she get married to her childhood friend, she promptly arranged to get the marriage annuled...............the poor guy was reportedly flying back home to louisiana all shook up..............so sad..........

britney, britney, britney

ok, so cnn reported this morning that britney spears went and got married over the weekend..to a friend from back home......at a las vegas wedding chapel that had the audacity to make her go the courthouse and get a wedding liscense and then come back for the ceremony............she wore jeans and a baseball cap............gentle readers, there are few reason that would compel a first-time bride to skip the big ceremony, the gifts and the white dress..............the first is that she was drunk (like rachel and ross on friends.......) or that she is pregnant and needed a husband pronto.........nice of her childhood friend to come to her rescue.......................and so much for britney the role model for young girls.....................

movie mind-meld

ok, so mm was totally unprepared for how much she would enjoy the film with robin williams and edward norton.........though every time i try to explain this film it gets a new name......sometimes it's get smootchie, and sometimes it kill smootchie, and sometimes i remember that it is death to smootchie.................i suppose that black comedys can blend together at some point into one big splash of irony.................edward norton was perfect for this part....the rhino in plush pastel part...........just like robin williams, unleashed, was perfect as a darker version of himself.........somehow, jim carey would have cheapened the entire project should he have been cast............regardless, this film was a breathe of fresh air into an otherwise miserably congested day................

misery

ok, so it is friday, and mm has felt poorly for going on 9 days......the facial pressure and congestion just will not go away..........at least without otc medications which cause annoying side affects (effects?).........i have less than 7 days before a miraculous recovery is required........the good news is that i have only to work a few hours today, and most of saturday, and i will be off for 2 weeks......i have started to sort out some baskets of stuff that call themselves my personal records...so far i have filled a trashbag with stuff that i appear to live well without..........then i may clear out some books that i don't like (and give them to he who wants to sell things on ebay)........and then i may just break down and put pictures in albums...............maybe............

goodbye

ok, so mm's nephew has already departed for d.c........about 7:00 this evening, which should put him in his condo about 5:00 am...........one supposes that he likes to drive at night.............let me just say this about this branch of my family...this is where the real brains lie...the duo who should be graduates of mit or the like............but who resist college like the plague as if a diploma is not relevant in their world................i do not understand this at all, and neither does my mother, but this is the size of things....................happy new years to them both................

happy new year

ok, so mm wishes you and yours a happy new year....................a little late, perhaps, as all of mm's family was asleep by 10 or so................i went to bed about 8:30, and was not the first to make that move...............the last illness-free c-w was feeling so badly that he skipped supper alltogether and stayed in the bed.........and so today, new year's day.....i can say that i feel better.........i feel less annoyed by symptoms at least.................my nephew showed up yesterday afternoon....we have had a good visit with him so far......he is a major lotr fan....both the books and the movies.....he and i commiserated that the first movie left out tom bombadil and the barrow wights(sp), which would explain how merry was able to kill the witch king in the third movie................i read online that 2 people will share the powerball prize......and since ky was not listied as the location of ticket purchase, i am assured that i did not win, yet again................rats...................maybe next time