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Showing posts from September, 2010

Bullycides and the It Gets Better Project

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Last week, Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington bridge. He announced that he was about to do it on his Facebook page, then he drove there, left his wallet on the bridge, and jumped. The reason he did this was that his roommate, Dharun Ravi, secretly videotaped him "making out" with another male and announced it on Twitter... then encouraged everyone on Twitter to watch live streaming video two days later when he secretly turned on the webcam again to watch Tyler. Dharun did this from student Molly Wei's room. First, let me show you photos of these shmucks: What an adorable pair, no? Molly with her cross hanging from her neck... The maximum sentence for the top count of the current charges is a 5-year prison sentence for invasion of privacy for each of them. What I wish is that Tyler had the kind of social support he needed following this kind of cruelty. That's the intent of the It Gets Better project: http://www.youtu

Review: Elmo's Healthy Heroes

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The nice people at Sesame Street Live gave me tickets to see Elmo's Healthy Heroes with 3-year-old Sarina... ironically, I got sick just before the show. Sarina-- the little person who got me sick, mind you-- was feeling better, though, so my parents took her to see it at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, NY. Nassau Coliseum is always a great place to see a show. There is so much elevation between rows that you never have to worry about seeing over people's heads-- there's always a good view. And in the case of the children's shows here, they don't take up the whole Coliseum. Maybe a third of the place. The only complaint I heard about the venue is that it was absolutely freezing. Anyway, I sniffled and stuffled at home while those three were off having the times of their lives, apparently, because as my dear daughter came home bearing a giant Elmo balloon and two light-up whozamajigs that spin, she was bursting with energy and excitement about the show. And my parents

Happiness Is...

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when you emerge from the kitchen, where you've just made lunch-- Bubba Burgers, by the way, are quite delicious-- to tell your 3-year-old daughter to come on in, and the first thing you notice is that a drawer is open, and that this open drawer contains just the backing of your Cica-Care, a stupidly expensive sheet of self-adhesive silicone gel that's proven to improve the appearance of scars, and you almost didn't buy it because of the stupidly expensive cost, but in the end, your mother talked you into it because you did have major surgery, after all, and if it would cost $50 to not have a smiley face on your abdomen the rest of your life, you should do it, so you did, but now you see this backing in the open drawer and you know that it is in the hands of your darling daughter, Sarina, who may be doing any one of a number of dastardly things with it right now, and you have a monster cold, which is making you a little off your game right now and not as good at chasing he

Our Trip to Sesame Place

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I've never been to Sesame Place before, and now that Sarina is 3, I had been hoping to take her there... luckily, I won four passes from MyWorkButterfly and one from Sesame Place's Twitter account, so I got to bring the whole family! We arrived the day before our "big day" and stayed at the Radisson Hotel Philadelphia Northeast . There are a couple of hotels right in Langhorne where Sesame Place is, but they're pricier. From the reviews, it seemed like this Radisson would be a good pick-- a very reasonable price and an easy commute. The reviews were right: the drive was nothing, and the hotel was terrific. We stayed in a 2-room suite that was spectacular. One of the rooms was your basic size hotel room with two double beds, though a step up in terms of decor, cleanliness, and comfort (we got to try Sleep Number beds for the first time... they were interesting, though not as amazing as I'd hoped), but the other room made us feel like we were VIPs. It was huge,