Snow monster! Plus, GRAND Social No. 200 link party for grandparents

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Snow monster!

Like much of the country, I encountered snowy weather on Saturday. Unlike much of the country, though, I also encountered a snow monster on Saturday.

Seriously.

When I woke Saturday morning and sauntered on into the living room, I found this peeking in my window:

snow monster 

A snow monster!

Crazy, right!?

The funky fella hung around much of the...

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Saturday movie review: Man Up

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We're taught that one shouldn't judge a book by its cover. I learned last week that the same should be said for movie titles — don't judge the film by its title.

If I had given in to my initial reaction to this week's film, MAN UP, based on its title, I would have missed out on a sweet, silly-yet-smart romantic comedy. The only thing that saved me from scrolling on by MAN UP while searching through Netflix was Lake Bell, whose understated, self-deprecating sense of humor always makes me chuckle.

man up movie poster

In the screwball comedy with an ill-fitting title, Bell stars as 34-year-old Nancy, who's single and

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Can I grill you? Plus, GRAND Social No. 199 link party for grandparents

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Can I grill you?

Some of you may recall a feature I started here on Grandma's Briefs soon after I started up the site. It was (and still is) Grilled Grandmas, a Q&A with various grandmas of various ages and stages, many of whom are still active in the Grandma's Briefs community, linking here, commenting there. You can check out the numerous grillings I published of fabulous grandmas willing to share their wisdom and wit — and photos of their grandkiddos, too — by clicking right here or on the Grilled Grandmas tab at the top of this page.

I put Grilled Grandmas on hiatus a while back, mostly because I ran out of grandmas to grill. But... there are so many relatively new grandmas in the online grandma community, I'd like to get back to publishing grillings of any grandmas who would like to be featured. Which is where YOU come in.

If you're interested in being featured as a Grilled Grandma and having...

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Saturday movie review: Mississippi Grind

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Road movies wherein a couple of characters hop in a car (or plane or train or other automobile) and go through life-changing experiences together can be a fun journey for movie lovers who join them for the ride. Road films of late, though, often have a distasteful potty humor bent to them, which — call me prude, if you must — I don't consider much fun.

Yet road movies need not resort to toilet talk and trickery if the characters on the road to self-discovery are well-written, multidimensional folks doing their best to keep their dirty laundry sealed up in the heavy baggage they lug about. And if those characters have a reasonable — not raunchy — sense of humor regarding the secrets they're keeping from themselves as well as their travel buddies, all the better.

mississippi grind movie

The characters in MISSISSIPPI GRIND are all that and more. The independent film stars Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn as...

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That time my grandsons became pirates

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pirate boys

When my two oldest grandsons, their mom, and I all visited Walt Disney World in January for our grand-as-can-be Disney Grand Adventure, one of the delights for Mac and Bubby was when they became pirates. Real pirates, with real pirate names.

See, Walt Disney World has a special add-on experience called The Pirates League, in which boys and girls with a buccanneer spirit can be transformed into a pirate with their own pirate look and their own pirate name. All with the goal of becoming a new recruit to team up with Captain Jack and his...

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