The Pre-Labor Day, Pre-Labor Pain Labor Day and Almost Pain-Free Extravaganza
Thursday, September 17th, 2009
Unlike the Labor Days of 2007 and 2008, this one brought very little pain, aside from a slightly aching shoulder. Also unlike most prior family gatherings, this one didn’t actually take place on the holiday itself, but rather two days earlier, on Saturday, September 5, 2009. It was all part of a conspiracy…er, rather an extravaganza that also included a boy/girl baby shower for Chris and Sarah and the baby Olivia, who is due at the end of October. So at 3pm, a group of family members descended on Karen and Joe’s Coke Avenue home to commence with the merrymaking. Read the rest of this entry »
Ahem. Once you’ve unpeeled your eyes from the alluring photo of Kristy Swanson at right, we can move on here. Okay. So yeah, Kristy is hot and has posed in Playboy, yada yada yada – but her biggest claim to fame was that she portrayed teenage monster killer Buffy Summers in the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie that started it all – and although I own the DVD, I have been in no rush to actually watch it as I know it will not compare to the TV series that later followed. But in my warped world of TV bliss, that’s not all she has done… 
On August 29, 2009, my Great-Uncle Duane Murphy passed away at the age of 90. Duane, whose official given name was Harry after his father, was 90 years old and living at the Englewood Manor nursing home, in the early stages of Alzheimier’s Disease. Duane (standing on the right in the photo at left with my Grandpa and their Mom Edith) was my Grandpa Murphy’s brother and he is fondly remembered by his family for his dry wit and his sarcastic sense of humor, which apparently trickled down to some of his extended family over the years. 
…And believe it or not, there was life before Schneider. Pat Harrington Jr. began his career rather auspiciously with his work in Steve Allen’s comedy troupe, on The Jack Paar Show, and with numerous guest appearances in such shows as Get Smart, F Troop, McHale’s Navy, and The Bing Crosby Show. But today he is best known, by me and the general public, for the role he played as the handyman Schneider on the sitcom One Day at a Time from 1975-1984. In fact, he even won both an Emmy and a Golden Globe award for his work on the show. 
Wednesday, July 15, 2009, was a mostly leisurely day in southern California – at least relative to the weekend we had spent in Vegas and the upcoming final three days of my California trip. I even slept in a little bit and let Bob go down and grab his continental breakfast in the Culver Hotel before I followed. We posed for our pictures hanging out the windows of the famous hotel seen in several silent Laurel and Hardy films (detailed more