Comedian Amy Poehler is one busy lady these days.  She just gave birth to a baby boy, is developing a sitcom for NBC to debut this spring, is still raking in kudos for her impressions of Hillary Clinton on her former show, "Saturday Night Live," and now she's working on becoming an internet star.  Amy and two of her friends, Meredith Walker and Amy Miles, have teamed up to produce eight webisodes called "Smart Girls at the Party."

I love Mary Steenburgen. She's one of those actresses who slips in and out of roles, seemingly with little effort and she brings a quiet, steely, strength to whatever character she plays. Her latest movie, "Four Christmases" is about a couple, Kate and Brad (Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn) whose yearly plan to avoid family Christmases is thwarted by a blizzard. Since their parents are divorced, that means four visits with four sets of dysfunctional parents, siblings, step-siblings and significant others. Mary Steenburgen plays Kate's Mom, Marilyn.

This is a terrific, (mostly) sensible, hallelujah can I get a witness post with advice for women traveling solo. Road Junky, as usual, tells it like it is. For example, on bringing a journal: So tell your journal all about the delicious club sandwich you had for lunch and spare your friends the boring stories.

By the time dusk fell on the evening of November 4th, the GOP party looked at their Reaganite ideal of a "shining city on a hill" now dust under their feet. History was made, in more ways than one.

Do television shows like "Sex and the City" and "Gossip Girl" encourage teen girls to get pregnant?  Well that's the finding of a Rand Health study published last week in the November issue of Pediatrics.  According to a New York Daily news article by Jane H. Furse about the study: Rand Corp. behavioral scientist Anita Chandra found teens who watched the sexiest shows were twice as likely to become pregnant over the next three years as those who watched few such programs.

I'd been blogging for nearly a year and a half when the November 2006 elections turned Ohio blue (Democrats took four of the five state offices and former Congressman/now U.S.

When I first started hefting a carry on into the overhead compartment, it seemed like everyone looked like me. Traveling was for Jewish kids sent off to work on the kibbutz or pale colored language students favored by their teachers enough to get the foreign exchange program recommendation. The browner travelers I saw were primarily visitors to family members divided by circumstances. I did meet travelers from all over the planet, but if they had any color to them, it's because they'd spent the last month on a Greek island or hanging out in the Sinai. Wandering was, it seemed, for the white.

For those of us who will peddle push our way to the polls it is an exciting time. Many people want to take their daughters, sons and grandchildren to witness the most dramatic and unpredictable election in recent American history. Before I begin, I need to give an ancestral shout out to Mrs. Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Ida's career included being an homemaker, teacher, writer, pamphleteer (pre-Internet print based blogger) and journalist.

What do you think of when I say "Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder?"  Do you think of summer afternoons reading about little Laura, her family and their adventures on the prairie?  Do you think of the TV show starring Michael Landon, Melissa Gilbert and Melissa Sue Anderson?  Do you think Twitter?  Yeah, you heard me, Twitter.  Hold onto your bonnets, people 'cause you remember sweet little Laura?  Well she's a 21st century lady now and that means she's on Twitter.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and I wanted to do a little more than the average breast cancer awareness post. Here is my humble attempt. I've put this post together with; videos of survivors, an interview with Christina Applegate, early signs & symptoms, blogs of note, news, and links to informative support sites. If I've missed something (and I'm sure I have), please share the information with our readers in comments. If you take nothing else away from this post, please take this...

Before I was asked to be part of a conference call interview with bestselling author Nicholas Sparks, I had never read one of his books. I knew of his books like, "The Notebook," "Message In A Bottle," "A Walk To Remember." I also knew that to speak with a bestselling author would be a treat so I eagerly agreed. With the Warner Bros movie, "Nights In Rodanthe" set to open tomorrow, I figured that was as good a place as any to get to know Mr. Sparks and his work. The book was a quick read and the kind of lovely story that makes you do a little soul searching and maybe a little life altering.

Confused about new media? Wondering what all that streaming of TV shows online will mean to your regular viewing patterns? Curious about how the new media business models will affect how you consume news and entertainment? Never fear, if you're reading this post, odds are you probably know a little something about blogs, the internet and new media, but if you want to learn more, listen to my podcast interview with Julia Boorstin, the media and entertainment reporter for CNBC.