The third season of Mad Men came to a conclusion on Sunday night -- I know I was satisfied! -- and I'm already looking forward to what's coming next season.

My 6-year-old already has a callus from the Nintendo DS. My 4-year-old can flip on the Xbox without asking me for help. My husband disappears into his PC for hours while I hear the clang of swords. My brother and I take 'Rock Band' lunch breaks on any given Tuesday. From the hard core PC role playing games that take months, to the family Wii tournaments on a Sunday night...we are a gaming family.

This week several events transpired that had me musing upon the power of making and keeping a commitment. Not in a martyr sort of way, but in the way that speaks to your character and your potential. Your reputation and relationship with self and others is built on the foundation of you doing what you say you will do. How do you measure up to your own speech?

The first Remembrance Day that I remember clearly...I had to have been about 7. It was my first, and only, year in Brownies. I was chosen to walk with the Canadian flag in my town's Remembrance Day ceremony. This meant standing at attention in the cold, marching just ahead of the Veterans, standing with the flag while everyone sat during the church ceremony. Clearly it made an impression on me. In fact, I was stunned when I went to university to find out that Remembrance Day was not observed on campus (it is now).

I didn't want to write about the Holocaust again. It hurts too much. Surely with so many other things happening in the world, I could just let mention of the 71st anniversary of Kristallnacht pass by unspoken, couldn't I? Just once? Then I read this, reported in the Sacramento Bee about events this week:

Is it possible to find a cultural truth? Will a day come when we accept the good and bad things about our cultural influences? Can we accept our various ancestors without hurt and rancor? Judging from the past year or so probably not. Perhaps learning about our past is much like the Telephone game many of us experienced in a school classroom.

You know you've reached Bloglebrity status when your name is synonymous with an entire month.  I interviewed the fabulous Eden Kennedy, the blogging luminary behind National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo), about the madness she inspires in the blogosphere every year.  NaBloPoMo is an annual ritual that drives many bloggers to commit to posting every day during the month of November, facing all of their demons, distractions, dearth of ideas and defiant natures along the way. 

This is going to be sticky, so please, bear with me.  I just saw the film "Precious" and I can barely breathe. The only way I'm going to be able to write about this movie is in two parts: my hopefully professional and objective review of the movie, and then my gut level, emotional reaction to the movie.  So as I said, please bear with me.

Road crashes are among the leading cause of death globally and are recognized as the Number One cause of death in the industry. The devastation the loss of life and serious injury wreaks on the families, friends, communities and victims themselves is incalculable. Yet, many road traffic crashes are preventable.

As if I was a newbie blogger rather than a seven year veteran, I nearly concluded the title of this post with an exclamation point because I'm so excited about this Olympic figure skating season. This weekend, I resume covering figure skating here at BlogHer, starting with Skate America, culminating with the Olympic Games in February and the World Championships in March.  We have some amazing skaters to watch, so I wanted to give everyone a preview.

"A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter. I remember!" It was something I thought was a family idiom, chanted in the car on the way to the store, until the day I found myself saying it out loud in the Safeway. "A container of milk. And a stick of butter," rejoined my friend. "I remember!" I was astonished. "How did you get into my head?" "Sesame Street," he said.

UPDATE 9/25 PM: The Washington Post reports that John Allen Muhammad was executed by lethal injection tonight as family members of his victims watched. He maintained his innocence until the end.