Movie Endings

Just saw the ending of one of my favortie movies: Practical Magic where Sandra Bullock (my girl crush) and Nicole Kidman are sisters who are witches. It's just a fun, girl's movie with a very strong feminist slant. Anyway, at the end, Sandra and this cop have fallen in love and she is narrating the ending. Then she says, "These things I know for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder; keep Rosemary by your garden gate; plant lavendar for luck; and fall in love whenever you can." I love that part, and just watched it again on YouTube.

I also love Aiden Quinn in this movie who plays a cop who is investigating Sandra for murder but they fall in love.

My other two favorite endings are Glory -- about the African-American regiment in the Civil War, led by Matthew Broderick and their struggle for respect. At the end, they volunteer for this suicide mission and there is a journalist from Harper's who has been traveling with them. Matthew Broderick says to the journalist, "If I should fall, remember what you saw here." Meaning record how brave these men are. Of course, he is killed and tossed into a mass grave with his men (some of whom do succeed in breaking into this Confederate fort). Starring Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman too.

 

 

When Glory came out in 1989, I saw a segment on 20/20 or 60 minutes about how the film makers recruited homeless black men to be the extras. At first, these guys were all smokin' and jokin' and then they taught them how to precision march and it totally changed them and you saw this pride in themselves. I always wondered if any of those men were changed permanently by the experience.

And speaking of Morgan, how can you not love the ending of Shawshank Redemption? I've seen that movie 20 times and I don't watch it when I come upon it flipping around the channels, but I will make note of the time and go back and watch that beautiful ending. Hope is a good thing.

What I'm Reading

A friend sent me this, and it really is a fascinating book.... a social history of the Hamptons... so there's a lot of history, a lot of gossipy/celeb stuff and I'm enjoying it.

Last Night's Dinner

So my sister and her family came in -- had a hard time finding a parking space because all the garages were full and so they had to drive around finding a spot. I had Christmas presents for the kids, and we ordered Chinese food. It's fun to have a lot of people to get the variety of things. We had Crispy Shredded Beef, Sesame Chicken, Chicken and Broccoli (Clark's favorite), chicken lo mein and some barbecued spare ribs.

Charlotte, who is in 10th grade, has taken the PSATs and they were telling me how colleges aggressively pursue students who do well. Charlotte said she did check off yes for permission to share her scores with colleges, and some of them go so far as to create unique URLs so it would say something like www.charlottebrennanxyzscollege.edu.

Mary Elizabeth brought her wedding album which I had never seen so that was interesting to look at.

Anyway, here are some pictures:

This is Louisa who is this great helper and seems to enjoy organizing things.



Charlotte and Clark.

Charlotte is teaching herself how to play the ukelele so she performed for us.

Louisa took this, and it reminds me of an album cover.

Thursday Bits

I'll have some photos to post later today as my sister's family is coming in for dinner. In the meantime, it is cold, cold, cold. When Mary M was here right after I got out of rehab and I had her look for my space heater. Well, she looked and I know she looked hard, but she couldn't find it. I know it had never left my bedroom, didn't break, so it was a mystery.

So yesterday when Marilyn was here, I had her look and she looked in my whole apartment. The whereabouts of my space heater remain a mystery so I finally just ordered a new one from Amazon which will arrive tomorrow. I'm sick of being cold.

In the meantime, Marilyn got me quite a bargain. I wanted chopsticks for tonight, and I didn't know where she would find them and then we decided she'd just go to a Chinese restaraurant and ask if she could buy some. She and I discussed how much they might charge -- and I thought 50 cents or so. Well, she got six pair of chopsticks for a dollar!. She and I were talking about what you could buy six of for a dollar these days.

Anyway, stand by for Chinese feast photos!

Monday, again

Not much to report. After a day in the 40s, temps have plummeted and now we're going to have the coldest days yet -- tonight and tomorrow.

My insurance company is apparently balking at paying for my PT so I'm working on that.

On happier notes, here's Baby Adelyn wearing a hat which her great-grandmother knitted for her mother. That's Mary's mother who knitted it. She went for her first outing yesterday out into the fresh air.

Lost in Translation

I bought a blood pressure wrist cuff instrument -- just like the kind they used daily in the rehab hospital. It's difficult to go from having every everything monitored daily to having nothing. So this instrument works well... once I figured out that 220 was the date, and not my top number of blood pressure!

That sort of led me to reading the instruction manual, and this company is in dire need of a translator. Here are the warnings about this instrument (word for word!)

• Disturbance of blood circulation patient uses under the doctor's instructions.
• Treatment on the basis of the measure result yourself is dangerous.
• This product only use for human body blood pressure to measure.
• Please make sure to use the special-purpose wristband. (this is the only one that makes sense, sort of)
• Don't disassemble, repair or transform by yourself.
• It can not be used for baby or people who can not be right to express their willing.

Of course, it's important to be right to express your willing, right?

More Snow

New York snow has stopped; DC snow continues.

 

Mary says the snow conbtinues to fall.