liz,
cable tv actually is available in many areas now.

i am also liking the global warming. at least until it's 130 degrees in june.

I hope you weren't at the nude beach at Sandy Hook!
Great weekend though for beaching.

You know you are going to turn into a Jersey Girl......

Speaking of movies, did anyone see A Summer in the Cage on the Sundance channel Monday night? Having read so many books, articles, personal stories, blogs, websites and watched several films/documentaries re: bipolar disorder, I was transfixed by this documentary-----> one of the most powerful, revealing and poignant portrayals of how manic depression can destroy almost everything that a very intelligent, handsome and successful man once had. 'Read about it in the Huffington Post and per the review/recommendation:

TiVo This: A Summer in the Cage
Posted October 22, 2007 | 06:47 PM (EST)

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Short Film Review: Documentary lovers. Do yourself a favor tonight at 9PM and check out A Summer in the Cage on the Sundance Channel.

Long Film Review:

Buddy flicks come in all shades and flavors, but Ben Selkow's film is probably the world's first guy movie about manic depression. It is also an exceptional and deeply humanizing look at bipolar disorder, which afflicts roughly five percent of Americans... and probably someone you know.

Selkow didn't set out to make a major film about mental illness. In 2000, the fresh-faced filmmaker begins a documentary about streetball at "The Cage" -- the famed Greenwich Village b-ball court -- where he quickly befriends Sam Murchison, a 30-year-old former Division-I player for Long Beach State, and one of the lone white guys on the court.

The charismatic "Clark Kent" -- as Sam is known to his fellow ballers -- has just quit his i-banking job and offers to help Selkow build trust with the denizen of the Cage. But what starts off as an over-eagerness to help quickly crosses a line into mania. Murchison's private obsession with getting an already-defeated Bill Bradley elected president with Colin Powell as his VP starts to seem less oddball, and more delusional. Within weeks, Murchison mania crosses another line into psychosis. Sam ends up in a mental hospital, but not before maliciously torpedoing Selkow's street cred at the Cage.

A lesser filmmaker, and a lesser friend would have packed up his camera and gone home. But Selkow's gut-level connection with Sam abides. The suddenness of his friend's breakdown haunts the filmmaker. And so, with a recovering Murchison's permission, Selkow decides to make Sam and his ongoing struggles with bi-polarity the focus of this film.

What follows is a six year odyssey into the mind of a manic depressive. Where most explorations of the subject veer into over-wrought, Oprah-esque discussions of clinical symptoms and medication, A Summer in the Cage captures the illness, not as it is treated, but as it is lived.

There is simply no depression in New Jersey given last week's release of the NJ Division of Mental Health's Recovery and Wellness Transformation Action Plan 2008 - 2010. Of course, it will be difficult to ascertain if anyone has recovered or achieved wellness for accountability has never been the strong suit of any mental health system. Rarely, if ever, has a mental health system turned on plans or promises.

http://www.state.nj.us/humanservices/dmhs/Welln_Recov_action_plan_jan2008_Dec2010.pdf