FRIDAY FROTH...

So your college student is home for the holidays. How's that going for you? I'll bet that you couldn't wait to see him/her. Me too. Funny, I'd forgotten how they stay out all night and sleep all day, which of course means that I'm up most of the night too. I'm somehow "back on the hook"; constantly asking: where are you going? what time will you be home? did you eat your vegetables? I'm exhausted!

And have you gotten the grades yet? What the #$%$??? Clearly my college freshman's favorite class was "the study of the backs of your eyelids" class. In fact, if he can get even half the hours in that class this semester as he did last, he will be graduating early--like this spring. Then he will be off to that famous graduate school--McDonalds, AND, he'll have his own apartment/room/park bench, AND, his own fleet of transportation--the city bus system!

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Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund is a great book to read by the fire on a cold day this winter. As the title hints, Ahab's Wife is the story of Moby Dick's famed captain's wife. Ms. Naslund was inspired to start writing her book by a passage in Moby Dick, but clearly her impetus to keep writing was her interest in creating strong female characters. Una, Ahab's wife, is every bit the adventurer her husband is, even dressing as a boy and going off to sea on a whaling boat. However, unlike Ahab and more like Ishmael, she's not interested in revenge but instead very keen on exploring her place in the universe. Ahab's Wife is full of historical characters and references, giving it a added dimension. I was hooked on this novel when I read its simple but beautiful opening line: "Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last." Warning: at 666 pages you may want to have a few extra logs handy to keep the fire going.

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There are a lot of serious, Oscar-contender type movies out this time of year. An antidote to such films, one that is pure unadulterated (bad pun intended) fun, is It's Complicated. The irony of this film may be that it stars the most Oscar nominated actress of all time, Meryl Streep. In the movie Ms. Streep's character, Jane, has an affair with her ex-husband who ten years earlier left her for a much younger woman. Jane is radiant, laughs easily and is happy and busy in her life; enjoying her grown children, her thriving catering business, and the amorous attention of her new architect. Her ex-husband, played by Alec Baldwin, has gotten chubby, plays reluctant father to his young wife's spoiled-rotten young son, and is reduced to supplying sperm to his hormone-crazed wife in the most "un-sexy" of ways in order to impregnate her. Personally, I think this movie should have been called "It's Karma". Be sure and take your husband!

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Have you been reading about the senate race in Massachusetts? Democrat, Martha Coakley and Rebublican, Scott Brown are in a close race to capture the senate seat that Ted Kennedy held for many years. If Mr. Brown wins, his vote would be the 41st for the Republicans, returning to them the filibuster option and potentially changing the course of the health-care bill. I'm sure you knew all of that, right? What you might not know is that Mr. Brown was featured as the Cosmopolitan June 1982 edition's centerfold--not that this matters to any of us that care about the future of our great nation.

If you would like to know more about the Massachusetts senate race (wink, wink) please scroll down.

C-Span's ratings may be going up!