#MicroblogMondays: Odds & ends

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  (Once again, odds & ends for #MM -- but hey, it's what I've got right now...!  In no particular order:) 
• It's our Thanksgiving long weekend here, and we enjoyed a nice dinner at BIL & SIL's on Saturday with the nephews & their families. 
• The Halloween goodie bags I assembled for the great-niblings were a hit!  LGNephew #1 exclaimed over the Robert Munsch book I'd chosen for him ("Boo!")  and gave me a big hug (awww...), and he and LGNiece donned their Halloween deelybobbers -- LGNephew #2 was less enchanted, lol. LGNephew #1 changed into his new glow-in-the-dark Halloween PJs to wear in the car before they left, and LGNephew #2 was sporting one of the new onesies I'd bought for him in photos posted by Older Nephew's wife the next day.  Success!!  (On to shopping for birthdays and Christmas...!  lol)  
• Still not a lot of autumn colours to be seen hereabouts! -- especially when I look at photos taken at this time of year in years past. I think it's because we had such a warm September -- no frosts to date (although we came close a couple of mornings last week!).   
• I was sad to hear the actress Diane Keaton had died at age 79 (what??!).  
• I know Woody Allen is considered completely politically incorrect/taboo these days -- but I came of age watching his movies, many of them co-starring Diane Keaton, and I still love many of them:  "Annie Hall," "Love and Death," "Play it Again Sam," :Manhattan" (yeah, it's creepy seeing him with a very young Mariel Hemingway -- but that Gershwin score! that gorgeous black-and-white cinematography!!). 
• "Annie Hall" came out just as I was heading into my last year of high school -- and the "Annie Hall" look was HUGE that year. With the money I'd earned that summer working part-time at the local drive-in movie theatre and an antique shop, I bought a new Annie-esque outfit (mostly at Fairweathers at the long-gone Unicity Mall) that I wore to my first day of school that fall:  a plaid knife-pleated skirt that fell below the knees; black thigh-high, high-heeled boots;  a white shirt, black men's tie, salmon-pink sweater vest, and grey flannel blazer. (I think I still have the tie!)
• I loved so many more of her movies too: "The Godfather" movies with Al Pacino (one of her (other) famous lovers);  "Reds," with Warren Beatty (ditto)(which I saw on my 21st birthday at a grand old movie palace in downtown Winnipeg -- en route out, I begged the theatre manager for one of the posters, which hung in my dorm room for the rest of my university career);  "Baby Boom" with the incredibly sexy Sam Shepard (although I imagine I would find the plot pretty wince-inducing these days...!);  "Something's Gotta Give" with Jack Nicholson and Keanu Reeves;  "The First Wives Club" with Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler....   
• Keaton never married, but she adopted two children, a daughter and a son, when she was in her early 50s. (!) They would be in their 20s now, I think. 
• About 20-25 years ago, she was making a movie that was partly filmed in the small Manitoba town where my parents live. My mother told me that Keaton went in to the local Co-op grocery store with curlers in her hair (!), and the young checkout girl, not knowing who she was, asked her for her Co-op number (lolol).  I hope Keaton was as tickled by that story as we were. Hollywood pretentious she was not.  :)  
• Jennifer Aniston, poster girl/heroine for those of us who tried and didn't succeed at having the children we wanted, talks about that time in her life (among other things) in Harpers Bazaar UK's November issue. 
• Aniston previously spoke out on these matters in Allure's December 2022 issue.  I wrote about it (and the reaction to it in the CNBC community), here and here. So grateful for her honesty! 
• Nicole Chung -- who was adopted -- writes in The Atlantic about "When Adoption Promises are Broken." What happens when open adoption arrangements are not honoured? 
• As someone who knows a major cleanout of her parents' home of 40+ years (after 65+ years of marriage) is coming sooner vs later, I appreciated this Substack post from Catriona Innes of "Crocuses in the snow":  "When possessions hold memories, how do we choose what to throw away?"
• Simon Haisell at Footnotes & Tangents has announced 5 new slow readalongs for 2026, plus the return of both "War and Peace" and "Wolf Crawl "(Hilary Mantel's Cromwell Trilogy). (I took part in both W&P and Wolf Crawl in 2024, and highly recommend the experience!) I'll likely be reading along with at least some if not all of these! 
• Back in late August, drowning in back-to-school/off to college/empty nest social media posts from my mom friends, I read an article from The Atlantic about "How Parents Hijacked the College Dorm" -- and, in response, wrote a lengthy post reminiscing about my own college dorm rooms (vintage 1979 photo included!).   
• This past week, Anne Helen Petersen at "Culture Study" did a deep dive into the subject with Meagan Francis (who wrote The Atlantic article):  "What's Really Going on With Those Elaborate (Parent-Decorated) College Dorm Rooms?" The conversation was fascinating (photos included!), and so are the comments!  I believe it's not (currently?) paywalled. 
• As an avid genealogist, I absolutely loved this story when I first stumbled onto it in the New York Times three years ago (already?!):  "‘Downton Shabby': A Commoner Takes on an English Castle."  (Gift linked article.  And there's a book by the same name!)   Here's the lede: 

People who search genealogy websites often find birth and marriage records, newspaper clippings, faded photographs or maybe a long-lost relative.

Hopwood DePree found a 60-room English manor.

• It's not QUITE a "castle" -- but it's a 50,000 square-foot mansion (!), with some sections dating back to the 1400s (!). Hopwood Hall had been abandoned and derelict for decades -- but when he flew from his home in California to England to see it, Hopwood DePree recognized its value and its potential -- and he's rallied the community to save and restore the property.  
• This past week, I found a series of related video shorts from Ancestry.com on YouTube, featuring Hopwood DePree and Hopwood Hall.  Here's a link to the first episode.  They're also reposted on his Facebook & Instagram accounts, which I'm now following! 
• (I haven't looked at everything yet, but apparently, the estate is currently embroiled in some sort of dispute over the land surrounding the house that's delayed further progress on the restoration. Hopefully it will be resolved soon!) 

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.