Great DVD movie watching opportunity

Do yourself a favor and rent the little-seen film The Namesake, which comes out Tuesday on DVD. The Namesake, adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, follows two generations of an Indian family living in America. It's a great human drama -- both epic and intimate. Check out my full review here.

The Beatles and Willie

Another quote from my 7-year-old nephew Willie, from this afternoon:

Uncle Tom, have you ever heard of a group called The Beatles?

I think he's just discovered their music. Maybe he'll want to go as one of them for Halloween next year...

Vocabulary and rice

Check out FreeRice.com for an addictive vocabulary game with a twist: the more you play, the more rice is donated through the United Nations to help end world hunger.

FreeRice is a not-for-profit organization, but they do place advertisements at the bottom of the web site as you play the vocabulary game. Funding from the advertisers is what pays for the rice that gets donated.

An added benefit, according to FreeRice:

After you have done FreeRice for a couple of days, you may notice an odd phenomenon. Words that you have never consciously used before will begin to pop into your head while you are speaking or writing. You will feel yourself using and knowing more words.

Silver jubilee

Warm congratulations to my brother, Father John Myler, on his 25th anniversary of being ordained to the priesthood.

Thanksgiving morning dog walk

It was a cloudy and cold Thanksgiving morning -- especially compared to last year's sunny and mild Thanksgiving morning.

Fun with focus

From Thanksgiving morning: Two shots looking into a closed Blueberry Hill. The first show focuses on a holiday light in the window; the second shot focuses on the reflection. I did a similar photography experiment last year on Thanksgiving morning.

Happy Black Friday Eve

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving, too! Here's a photo of Scooter taken one year ago on a sunny Thanksgiving morning dog walk. That's Dawson's tail at the extreme left side of the photo, and at the upper left is a flyer for Mattie the missing dog -- this was before I joined the other volunteers on the search.