I have an amazing hodge-podge of stuff for you today - ready?
Go see Across the University if you have any interest in the Beatles, '60s, evolution, Vietnam, love, peace.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ6d3m-GFyw As you watch and listen to the clip, please note that these actors all sang their OWN songs! The woman who is the Janis Joplin-like figure is AWESOME!
I pride myself in being a Beatles fan, but there were 3 songs I have no recollection of.
Funny story here - how I became familiar with the Beatles and why (as some of you know), I know the words to Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole (etc.) music. When we came to America from Britain, our belongings came via ship and were packed into crates that were about 4'x4'. When mom had finished unpacking all the crates (which had been in storage for a while since my parents still had to buy a house, so we rented a furnished home), she discovered that one crate had been mixed up with someone else's (whose, we never learned, since they weren't marked with names).
She discovered that all of the baby stuff (I had just turned 5, but I believe they were planning on more family!) and all of her British baking pans (jam tarts, triffle, custard tins, etc.) were gone and in their place were....record albums! Nearly 100!
So throughout my childhood, almost every day through age ten, then on bad weather days as I got older, I would play in the basement and listen to the albums! There were also some wonderful classical albums, including Opera, but they weren't vinyl - they were the old 78's that smashed to hundreds of tiny bits the day the shelf fell off the wall! My mom was crushed (as those were here favorites).
Not to worry...she found a replacement or two: Blondie and the Bee Gee's!
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My visit with Janae (8 1/2) and Aiden (5) was lots of fun. I talked the family out of going to church Sunday and instead going pumpkin picking! Now, you have to picture this...my brother, his wife, and both the kids are (bright orange) redheads. I'm the least red of them. So there we are - 5 redheads in the pumpkin patch....I told Aiden he had to be careful or someone would pick him!
We fed chickens and horses, and did a huge corn maze! 
After 6 hours of picking, mazing, and playing, we headed home for Connie's Pizza. It's a local 'Chicago-style' pizza place in the burbs, but I love to order from them because it's my nod to mom. When she was dying (of stomach cancer - pause for irony), aside from her IV drip and methadone, what she loved to have when I would come for a visit was Connie's pizza and a glass of Baileys! Before she became too sick, she and I would drive to pick the pizza up and get in some great mom 'n me time. She'd lost so much weight, that she said the pizza felt good on her lap: warming her up. So we raised a couple of slices to mom and planned faces for our pumpkins!
And yes...I did bring a pumpkin home - in my checked bag! I decided that if TSA thinks cheese is a liquid, they'd never let me on with a pumpkin! Winona, pumpkins, niece and nephew...and dad got an all-clear on his cancer yesterday!
That's life across my universe....
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