Margret Sloan

There is such a flurry of excitement among the women here about the hottest new movie of the summer, Sex in the City. There are at least three parties based on the SITC theme this weekend and I can’t possibly attend them all but they do sound like fun.

One of the parties is being held at the new luxury condo high rise downtown as a fund raiser, and that one has peaked my interest. They are having a menu based on the movie, with chinese take out, bottomless cosmopolitans, and cheesecake. There will be a fashion show and a surprise guest appearance – so now I REALLY have an interest in going. It would be fun to have a girls night out and celebrate a fun new movie – I think I’m talking myself into it!

I barely remember a cartoon from when I was a kid called, Speed Racer. I believe it was one of those barely animated cartoons, where the face was big on the screen but only the lips moved for the dialogue. I wonder if it ever got fully animated for the kids of future generations? I don’t remember my kids ever watching a cartoon called Speed Racer. They might have, but we weren’t very big on watching cartoons. Mornings during the week were too hectic for TV, and Saturdays were either our own race to get to the baseball fields or we were camping at the beach, the river or the mountains.

There’s been a lot of publicity for the new movie coming out this weekend based on the Speed Racer cartoons, so I think if it is a rainy weekend we might take the grandkids to the movies to see this movie. If it’s not raining, I’d rather find something for them outside and active, but it’s nice to have a rainy day backup plan.

Was in the mood for a chick flick so I picked up Georgia Rule with Jane Fonda, Lindsay Lohan and Felicity Huffman. It’s better than I expected – a combination of good writing and excellent acting. The Director, Garry Marshall, also directed “Pretty Woman” and “The Princess Diaries.”

Something I do for fun when I am watching a DVD on the set with a remote control is to use the Spanish subtitles and then watch it again in Spanish if the DVD has that option. I took Spanish in school and I can understand a lot of it when I hear it, but I never have the opportunity to speak it to anyone. I feel terribly handicapped when I am around a lot of Spanish speaking people and cannot participate in the conversation.

I would love to go to the Spanish immersion camp they host every month out west. You go for 2 weeks and everything around you is in Spanish. Being able to speak it and have feedback from someone interested in helping you improve your speaking ability would be the best part for me.

A new independently produced DVD came in the mail today called, Factor 8.

It is a documentary of the way prison officials in Arkansas and other states allowed the collection of blood from inmates that were infected with contagious diseases, such as HIV and Hepatitis. This contaminated blood was then introduced into the nation’s blood supply and thousands of people were infested with HIV and Hepatitis.

The film is by Kelly Duda and well worth watching, because people are still dying as a result of their actions.

Had the chance to watch the movie “Pushing Tin” again last night. I watched it a couple years ago and thought it was good but not great. I do like Billy Bob Thornton and I really like John Cusack. I guess I just have a hard time feeling any sympathy for their characters – they are just a little too weird.

When I was growing up, the father of our next door neighbors worked as an air traffic controller. He was a nice guy to us, but he was pretty mean to his kids. I think he wanted to come home to a quiet house and his 4 kids were typical active and loud kids. There was always a lot of yelling at his house, but no hitting that we knew of. They moved away before we graduated from high school. I often wonder how those kids turned out.