And some are not.  Tonight is one of those nights.  Instead of watching some cool SciFi show like Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1 or some other battle driven, light sabres flashing and aliens galore movie we are watching "How To Deal".  This flick was picked by Jen, the fifteen year old.  I guess I would refer it as a teenage drama.

According to Rotten Tomatoes: 

"Sometimes life gets turned upside down. And maybe that’s why it’s so hard to believe that anyone, especially 17 year-old Halley Martin (Mandy Moore), could actually experience that thing called love.

The people closest to Halley are in the midst of major upheavals in their love lives. Her mother, Lydia (Allison Janney), is embittered by her recently finalized divorce. Her sister, Ashley (Mary Catherine Garrison), is marrying a guy with whom she is constantly fighting. Her best friend, Scarlett (Alexandra Holden), can’t keep her hands off of her first serious boyfriend. Most distressingly for Halley, her father, Len (Peter Gallagher), who is a DJ at a local radio station, combats his midlife crisis with a stereotypically boyish elopement to the station’s much-younger traffic reporter.

So how’s Halley supposed to deal? She isn’t about to let herself succumb to the pipe dream of storybook romance, and Macon Forrester (Trent Ford) is the one guy who challenges her idea that love just complicates a perfectly good friendship. As Halley’s life grows more and more complicated, she finds a friend in Macon, but when she feels herself falling for him, will Halley move beyond her fears and disappointments to experience real love?"

Sometimes living in a family, with one TV/DVD player, one doesn't get to watch what they might and tonight would be one of those nights for me.  And that is OK.  Giving and taking is what family unity is about.  The thing is, Jen is enjoying this movie (why is way beyond me) and I am happy to be here for that.

I will say the scene where the Grandma smokes some pot and then goes to an important dinner high is pretty good.

This is an article I wrote for Marathon and Beyond which was published last spring.  Click on the attached file.

From Lee Childs web site defining this first book in the Jack Reacher series.

"The electrifying debut novel which introduces Jack Reacher, a drifter and ex-military policeman; a man of action unafraid to take justice into his own hands; a man of intelligence and cunning. Shortly after Reacher arrives in the sleepy town of Margrave, Georgia he's arrested for murder. The next three days' events leave everyone stunned. Unable to walk away from the situation, Reacher must unravel the mystery before a team of killers make him the next victim."

I really enjoyed this book.  Very exciting and hard to put down.  Many twists and turns in the plot that allows for guessing what was going to happen next.