Monday Mashup

After nearly a week out home in Aspen Cove, I am back and ready to blog. Lots of things swirling around in my head so I'll make a Monday Mashup of them all.

• Attended a wedding out home this weekend. Everyone looked very beautiful and handsome and the day turned out to be great, weather wise as well, after foreboding forecasts of rain and wind. I was so happy the sun came out for them. It was lots of fun seeing people I haven't seen in a long time and it turned out to be a fun, late night.
  
• While it was a happy occasion in the church in Aspen Cove, the church in (practically adjoining) Ladle Cove was a very different scene with an old friend of mine who had lost her battle with cancer being waked. I guess that's what I should call it. We never call it that out home. There is no funeral home there so the deceased are always laid out in church where people can visit and pay their respects. There are no visiting hours. The doors are open all the time and I know of at least a couple of people who visited my friend at 2 in the morning this weekend. I didn't. I hadn't seen her since she got sick and I decided I would prefer to remember her as the life of the party, dancing, or the two of us playing Joan Jett and the Blackhearts' I Love Rock n Roll on our pool stick guitars at the hangout. She is being laid to rest today and, even though I can't be there, I will be thinking about her, as I have been a lot these past few days. She was 41 years old. Much too young, with children left behind without their mom. It is so very sad.
• And speaking of sad, on the day we're remembering those who fought and died at Vimy Ridge, we are also thinking about the six soldiers who died in Afghanistan yesterday, including two Newfoundlanders. My thoughts and prayers are with their families.
• And speaking of war, last night I watched the first part of CBC's The Great War, a mashup itself: part documentary, part reality TV show, part docudrama. I enjoyed it (if by enjoying you mean crying for great portions of it--war does that to me). The show includes descendants of participants in the war experiencing, in a very limited way, what their ancestors did through reenactments of the war. One of the highlights for me (if by highlight, you mean crying extra hard) was when Newfoundlander Sandy Gow told the story of Beaumont Hamel while standing on the field there next to the Danger Tree. The story of that day was reenacted in between her descriptions of the events at Beaumont Hamel. The segment ended with Gow's emotional singing of the Ode to Newfoundland. Part Two of the show airs tonight and, I think, will focus mostly on Vimy Ridge.
• And speaking of what I watched last night, I also viewed Huff. I haven't yet mentioned how much I am loving this show. It is brilliant. It is so realistic, deals with things the way people really would a lot of the time (often uncomfortably so) and the performances are fantastic. Blythe Danner steals the show and Paget Brewster does some of the best acting I have ever seen anywhere (she's on Criminal Minds now since Huff was unfortunately cancelled after two seasons--why do they always cancel the good stuff and keep the crap on TV).
• And speaking of crap on TV, I haven't been into it as much this season as in the past, but I have been occasionally watching American Idol. (After Chris Daughtry lost and Taylor Hicks won, I lost any shred of faith I had in the process --but with Daughtry selling three times the CDs that Hicks did, can you say "the best revenge"?) Of course, the news this year is all about Sanjaya Malakar, the seventeen year old who is somehow holding up against constant discussions of how terrible he is. I think he is in denial. I mean, last week when Simon sarcastically called him "incredible", Sanjaya seemed really happy and moved by it. Or maybe Sanjaya was being sarcastic too. I wonder if Sanjaya can win. With Howard Stern and the website votefortheworst.com egging on voters to vote for the kid, it could happen.
  
• And speaking of kids, mine has been ignored long enough while I wrote this post. Back to him and thanks Mom and Dad for getting up early with Sam most of the week so I could sleep in (and for everything else).

Oh, and after posting this, I remembered to tell you that the March Hare in Ireland is going to be on CBC Radio this afternoon at 1:30 NL time. If you are out of province or even out of country, you can catch it live here by clicking on Listen live to CBC Radio on the right sidebar. Participants in the March Hare include Ron Hynes, Joel Hynes, Michael Crummey, Lisa Moore, Pamela Morgan, Des Walsh, Daniel Payne and Kyran Pittman (I love her regular blog and she also has another blog where you can check out her writing and a diary of her March Hare in Ireland experience).