For my birthday two years ago, she put together a small album called "Teena ... a step back in time" with black and white pix of our parents (before I was even thought of!) and me up to the age of five. It meant a lot to me.
She's the best sister in the whole wide world!
From Amazon.com ~ As Garr describes growing up on the fringes of 1950s and '60s Hollywood in a "gypsy showbiz family," studying ballet, ignoring school and sneaking into auditions pretending to be older than she was, readers will realize hers is a pretty familiar Hollywood story. She didn't sleep with Elvis or one of the Beatles but she was next door when her girlfriend went to bed with Elvis, and she sat in the recording studio during the making of Yellow Submarine. Garr worked her way from smaller parts (dancer in Viva Las Vegas and other Elvis movies) to bigger ones (Tootsie and Mr. Mom) until her career was finally on track. Alas, this is when she discovered she had no life—no husband, no baby—and started scrambling. She'd also developed a limp and some intermittent neurological tics. In 1983, a specialist diagnosed multiple sclerosis and prescribed the medication Garr has become a spokesperson for.
From Goodreads ~ It’s the most wonderful - and most dreadful - season of the year, when boxes of truffles attack your thighs, drunken holiday revelers stay long past their welcome, and your grandmother has conniptions at the department store over the price of hand lotion. Welcome to Laurie Notaro’s Christmastime. 
From Amazon.com ~ We're talking relationships, Bad Girl style. Get real, get close, get Bad with anyone, anytime -- friends, family, lovers, of course, but don't forget your hairdresser, bartender, landlord, dry cleaner, taxi driver, boss, dog, and telemarketer. Discover when to prune your family tree, when to flirt, and when it's time to start or end a relationship. Special sections such as Can This Relationship Be Saved?, Notes to Self, and Personal Power Steering offer hundreds of smart tips and clever tricks with a healthy dose of Bad Girl wisdom. Witty, warm, and packed with sassy charm, this is why being Bad is so darn good.
From Amazon. com ~ This novel attempts to unravel the familial and social pressures that drive two sisters into a life of serious food abuse. One survives, the other doesn't. Frannie, though she does not succumb completely to anorexia, is near the breaking point and Hunger Point takes us along on her painful and often funny emotional odyssey of rebirth, detailed with her family's embattled love and her own self-loathing. Food is not the only matter of the body that is treated brilliantly; the author's soul-baring depiction of both the miseries and pleasures of sex from a woman's point of view is unforgettable and occasionally terrifying.Though it’s not a happy story, I enjoyed this book. I liked the writing style and felt for the main character, Frannie, and all that she went through.
Whenever I go to a restaurant, I always put my business card in their bowl or box to win a free meal (or whatever they will be drawing for). I've won a few things over the years. I won 20 Yuk Yuk tickets three times. I also won a wing party for up to ten people at Hooters.
From Amazon. com ~ It's clear reading Allen Noren's travel memoir, Storm, that some trips just weren't meant to be. Yet take a really good writer, expose him to adverse conditions, toss in tragically bad weather, and what do you get? In this case, a beautifully written, stirring story that gets better and better as the journey worsens. A diehard traveler, Noren had been exploring the far corners of the world for years when he and his girlfriend, Suzanne, plotted out an adventurous, three-month route around the Baltic Sea. They considered traveling by kayak, by car, and eventually settled on the idea of riding a motorcycle (or rather, Noren settled on the idea and managed to convince his girlfriend that the bike would be the way to go). While Noren is completely exhilarated by the challenges presented by their used BMW, and indeed, feels totally one with the machine, Suzanne hates it from the get-go. Screaming down the Autobahn in the driving rain at 85 mph, stumbling upon a motorcycle rally full of crazed, alcohol-induced biker revelers, and camping out nightly after long days on the road doesn't hold the same appeal for her that it does for him. The tale works on many levels, but at its best Storm is a poignant account of two people whose dreams have begun to diverge. It is also an exploration of the reasons we travel, how those reasons can change, subtly at first, and then more dramatically, as we do. And finally, it is a descriptive travelogue, full of wonderful passages that bring the landscape of Sweden and Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland to life.
Interesting journey about the places they went and the people they met. It’s a trip I’ll probably never make.
As with other compilation books, some stories are funny and some are rather boring.
From Amazon.com ~ After two decades of travels around the world, Brad Newsham decides to pack his bags again to return the gift of magic that travel has brought into his life. His plan is to give a little of that back to someone he meets along the way - to invite a new untraveled friend to visit him, all-expenses paid, in America. Over 100 days, he travels through the Philippines, India, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa. This is an excellent book! Brad travelled to many places that I have no plans to go - plus he did it very frugally - so it was interesting to read about his adventures. It sounds like he met a lot of interesting people along the way with the goal of inviting someone to his home for a month.
From Toronto.com ~ Mt. Everest Restaurant, newly opened in the Annex with a menu of South Asian mainstays, is staking a claim on Toronto's taste buds in the shadow of one of the most popular Indian spots -- the mighty Nataraj. Success in such a competitive market may require Sherpa-like tenacity and a mountain of luck. But Mt. Everest gets a boost from a supplemental bill of Nepali fare, touted as the city's first.
From Amazon.com ~ Doug Lansky ventured from the peak of Kilimanjaro to Berlin's erotic Kit Kat Club to Sweden's 100 guest-capacity Ice Hotel (rebuilt each winter just north of the Arctic Circle) to a Texas cattle auction where the auctioneers "talk more and say less than a room full of presidential candidates" and lived to write Last Trout in Venice: The Far-Flung Escapades of an Accidental Adventurer. Some of his destinations are truly strange and, evidently for good reason, truly obscure though readers will definitely get a laugh from Lansky's tenure (one day) as a bellboy in Jules' Undersea Lodge (scuba access only capacity: four guests), 20 feet underwater.
From Amazon.com ~ Kiss My Tiara challenges The Rules and backlash books like In Defense of Modesty. Designed to help women 18-35 catch a life, not a husband, it's funny and politically irreverent, with chapters such as "Nevermind a Penis, We'll Take a Paycheck" and "How to Deal with Lunatics, Perverts and Right-wing Republicans." Like The Rules, it's based on wisdom the author received from her grandmother--except her grandmother was a feisty, gin-drinking feminist. Gilman is indignant at the mindlessness of aerobics classes, refuses to subscribe to the belief that thin thighs are more important than brains and chutzpah, and believes that if you have trouble asking for dessert you'll never be able to ask for a raise. Sprinkled with her grandmother's affirmative aphorisms ("If God didn't want us to play with ourselves, she would have made our arms shorter"), the book covers the gamut of a woman's world--relationships, money, self-esteem, sexual harassment in the workplace, and the guilt of ordering french fries. Gilman's is a sage, insightful, and witty voice in a confusing time that will make women laugh while teaching them to feel entitled, confident, and empowered.
From Amazon.com ~ This is the second in a series of women's travel humor capitalizes on that phenomenon with more stories of female misadventure around the world. Readers laugh, cry, and commiserate with these women through their memorable mishaps such as gorging on Lebanese chicken to increase their breast size, battling tick paranoia in an Ozark campground, evading the demands of the Turkish mafia, getting even with a prank-fueled convention co-worker, and trolling for straight men in gay London.
From Amazon.com ~ Lerner reveals her lifelong struggle with compulsive eating and mental illness. She joined Overeaters Anonymous at age 15 and rigorously adopted the 12-step program. A year later, she was prescribed lithium, though side effects soon forced her to quit the drug. Unmedicated and with an insensitive therapist, Lerner began her inevitable descent. While enrolled in the M.F.A. program at Columbia University, she came close to committing suicide, and this desperate act led to her voluntary admittance to the psych ward at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. Her experience there and at the New York State Psychiatric Institute is the heart of this book. 
From Amazon.com ~ When McClure, a 33-year-old children's book editor from Chicago, creates a website to chronicle losing weight, she contemplates possible names for it. She rejects My Weight Loss Journey, Soon To Be Slender, My Body Journal and Funky Flesh, which she decides "has bad B.O. connotations," before choosing Pound (its Web address is www.poundy.com because www.pound.com wasn't available). In this funny, likable memoir, McClure offers sardonic commentary on both projects—her struggle to shed pounds and the creation and growth of Pound—from confessing how much she wants a special Weight Watchers magnet (the token the program gives to members when they lose their first 25 pounds) to describing a shopping trip to Lane Bryant. McClure's narrative also includes selections of emails from appreciative, devoted Pound readers, accounts of online dating woes and some recollections of her childhood.
From Amazon.com ~ The authors draw on their experiences to create "a girlfriend's guide to eating out, eating in, entertaining, and traveling." Though they claim it's "the very first diet book for glamour girls of all ages and sizes," it's actually more of a lifestyle book, likely to appeal to the demographic of women who read fitness magazines and have 15 or fewer pounds to lose, or want to maintain a healthy weight while living a busy, changing life. The authors give "the dish" on nutrition, eating in, dining out, drinking, exercising, dressing to maximize your assets and even cheating (in moderation), with each author occasionally sharing a personal experience or preference.
OK, so…what’s the deal with dogs? They sniff places they shouldn’t.
Admit it.
Tonight Gord and I went on the Ghosts of the Garrison Walking Tour at Fort York.
From Amazon.com ~ Brash comedy and bitterness fuel this account of Diller's drive to make it big. Born to elderly parents in Lima, Ohio, in 1917, Phyllis Ada Driver was blessed with neither beauty nor wealth. At 20 and already pregnant, she married Sherwood Diller, a handsome, selfish ne'er-do-well who became the "Fang" in her comic monologues of domestic life; the couple had five children. Nearly 40 when she began her performing career, Diller turned a knack for relentless self-deprecation into a nightclub act.
We went to Daniel's Ark today with Single Horizons. Daniel's Ark is a wildlife preserve. When we got there, we were expecting it to be lame but it turned out to be quite interesting.
From Amazon.com ~ Nine years ago, Kendall Stark ended a relationship with the love of her life. As her college friends never tired of telling her, Jack was going nowhere fast. Now Kendall is 31, working as an operator at a prestigious New York hotel and listening in on the personal calls of the celebrity guests, while she carries on a doomed affair with a married colleague. And while deep down she knows she should be leading a more fulfilling life, Kendall believes she is content with the choices she has made. Until the morning Jack reappears. Only now, Jack is the wealthy owner of a New England brewery, and he's staying in the hotel where Kendall works. His unexpected return leads her to rethink all the assumptions she ever made about success, love, and happiness and forces Jack to decide if he can ever forgive the woman who broke his heart so many years ago.
It was a rainy day so we decided to drive to Orillia (about an hour away) to check out Casino Rama. I've never been there before. Though I'm not a big gambler, I was interested in seeing what it was like. They have a great facility ~ big casino, hotel and entertainment centre (Engelbert Humberdinck was playing tonight).
From Amazon.com ~ Ava O'Neil grew up within the embrace of New York City's most infamous Irish gang, The Westies. Her father was the Roofer, named for his penchant for throwing enemies from the rooftops of Hell's Kitchen tenements. Raised by her father and two members of his crew, Ava and her brother witnessed events of violence and torment, as well as moments of loyalty and dignity.
From Amazon.com ~ Rachel Weinstein, 14, wants many things - she'd love to remain best buds with her newly popular friend Jewel, get a date to the Spring Fling, and stop her dad from marrying her "Soon To Be Step-Monster." When her younger sister, Miri, discovers that she is a witch, Rachel just knows that her dreams are within her grasp. Though the girls' mother warns them that magic can lead to unexpectedly harsh consequences, the sisters secretly come up with plan after plan to stop their father's wedding and help Rachel find popularity.
