Had the quietest day I could manage today, as I was pretty tired from the week. Spent the morning finishing up the first season of Highlander and then finishing up the fifth and last book in Charlaine Harris's Lily Bard Mystery Series, Shakespeare's Counselor. That was a very enjoyable series of five little mystery novels, about how a woman who survived a horrifying crime eventually builds a new life for herself and manages to work her way back to normalcy. I have heard that Charlaine Harris has also written an enjoyable series of vampire novels , and I hope to track those down and read them as well.

When the kids got home, I took them to get their hair cut, then we went grocery shopping. I took advantage of their strong young backs to get heavy items like dog food.  I was glad to see that the warehouse club had bottled water back in stock. If I am deployed and have to pack a two week supply of drinking water, at least I can get my hands on some.

Tonight Bill went down to town for the football game.  Our team is so far undefeated, and is supposedly state ranked right now. Dan also wanted to go, but I wasn't feeling up to it, so we stayed home and watched movies.

Sahara was a fairly decent action movie set in Africa and featured Penelope Cruz playing a WHO doctor on the trail of what initially looks like a deadly plague and Matthew  McConaughey and Steve Zahn as treasure hunters who are looking for Confederate gold in the middle of the desert. I liked it better than the last movie of this sort I saw, the rather dumb National Treasure.

Warm Springs told part of the life story of Franklin Roosevelt. Though made for television by HBO, it had a great cast with Kenneth Branagh as FDR, Cynthia Nixon as Eleanor Roosevelt, and Kathy Bates as a physical therapist whose career centers around helping polio victims. The movie begins with a 40ish FDR beginning his political career. At this point in his life, he is a spoiled and self-centered man, born to wealth and power. It does not shy away (though does not graphically show) from his womanizing. Then he comes down with polio and everything changes. For the first time in his life he knows suffering, knows what it is to face discrimination. His wife, in an effort to bring meaning back to his life, takes up his career of public speaking in an attempt to bring him back to politics. She fights her lifelong shyness to do so. And in trying to bring meaning back into his life, she brings meaning into her own as she takes up the causes of the poor. The movie showed how FDR found a home in Warm Springs, where he could swim and even walk in the warm, mineral laden waters. It showed how he brought hope to the sick and the suffering, though he had trouble finding hope for himself. The discrimination shown towards the polio victims reminded me of the fear and outright hatred that was shown towards some of the early AIDS victims. And in the background of the movie is the vicious system of racial segregation in the South at that time. Sadly, while FDR came to hate the dicrimination shown towards the sick, it would be up to his successor, Harry S Truman, so begin the fight against racism, when he integrated the American armed forces. This was a very well done, quiet and thoughtful film. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in American history.