Hey peeps, happy Thanksgiving from Casa de (e:jbeatty)! I think this may be the first estrip post I've actually made from Buffalo.

As some of you have already heard, my mom had a stroke recently, so I was home in VA until yesterday. Mom is expected to make a full recovery, though, since she got to a hospital right away, and the stroke doesn't seem to have affected her mentally much, if at all. She still has limited movement on her left side, but she's improving a lot every day. There's not much I can do for her while she is still in her inpatient rehab program, so we've continued on our planned T-giving trip to visit jbeatty in this fine city (I'll be heading back to FL on Sunday, then back to VA in a week or so).

We are eating and drinking ourselves into a food coma. I think (e:john) is in charge of blogging all the food porn pics we're taking today. He's planning on starting that in a minute, I think, so keep an eye on his blog.

Well. It was snowing a minute ago, and I was so excited. John was telling everyone in FL that we were going to visit the snow for Thanksgiving, and there is entirely not enough snow here yet. I know it's supposed to snow a lot tomorrow, tho', but we are driving to Syracuse then, so I hope the Thruway doesn't get too bad.

Ok, jbeatty wants his laptop back, so I have to go. Have a great Thanksgiving, everyone!

Hey, did anyone here hear about a Laura Linney/Philip Seymour Hoffman film that was shooting in Buffalo like, last winter or so?

I just saw the film tonight at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (at which I have been volunteering for the past week or so). It's called The Savages, and here it is on the IMDB:

It's set mostly in Buffalo in the winter, and the city looks suitably grey and depressing. Is there really a place called the Valley View Rehabilitation Center? Is it really a nursing home?

Anyway, parts of the movie are brutally depressing and hard to watch (it's about these kids who have to put their estranged father in a nursing home, so yeah), but it's got a hopeful and satisfying (but still realistic) ending. It's also got a fantastic portrayal of a particular family dynamic that's not often explored on screen. LL and PSH are great, as usual.