I love the song, "Just My Imagination", by The Temptations. I grew up listening to MOTOWN music so the song brings back lot of memories.. Check out the movie version of the song below:







Temptations Lyrics


I support this amazing young man, Declan Galbraith, from the UK. Check out his music video below as he sings,"Tell Me Why" at the age of 11. It is a song about the plight of children in Africa.



His Official Website is:.

Declan Galbraith's Official Site










Check out this next video of Carrie Underwood also singing about the plight of children in Africa. The song is called,"Stand by You".









These children are becoming orphans due to the spread of Aids in their country. To find out how you can help these children, click on the red icon below.









I also love R and B, Soul, Rap, Pop and Latin music.

My favorite movie of all time is, "It's a Wonderful Life". I am looking forward to seeing the movie , "The Kite Runner", when it comes to movie theaters on the 2nd of November in 2007. I also love inspirational true life movies.




Here is a very inspirational video based on a true story. It is called the, "Free Hugs Campaign" and the music is by sick puppies. It has earned 13 honor awards so far.






Here is a list of my three favorite inspirational movies:



1. The Emerald Forest (1985)
Directed and produced by John Boorman
Stars: Powers Boothe, Meg Foster, Charley Boorman, Dira Pas.



This is real life story of an American Engineer who is working on building a Dam in a Amazon jungle in Brazil. He takes his 5 year old boy to his worksite one day, and in a flash, his son is abducted by one of the Jungle Indian Tribes.



The father keeps going back to the jungle to search for his son for a ten year period. Since the son was blond haired, blue eyed, he figures it would be easy to spot him. He finally runs into his son ten years later who is now a respected warrior in the tribe.



The son remembers him and what happens in the rest of the story can only be described as a miracle. I got the feeling from seeing this DVD that God has a plan for everything that happens on this earth and that it is difficult to see what those plans are when terrible things happen to people.







2. This one is a Lifetime Movie made in 2004 based on a true story that appeared in the Reader Digest about 5 year ago. It is also available on DVD. It is called: Gracie's Choice (2004) Starring: Anne Heche, Kristen Bell and Diane Ladd



This is an amazing true story of a daughter of an alcoholic and drug addicted mom. The mom neglects her 5 children all the time, leaving them for up to 5 days at home alone without any food or electricity. She moves them from school to school and is even homeless for a while. All children are from different deadbeat drug addicted fathers.



The oldest child, Gracie, has always been the mother for her four siblings. One day when she was 15, social services finally picks up the kids and they get put in different foster homes.



At that point, Gracie became the first minor in the US that actually went to custody court and won custody of her brothers from her mother.(Her sister gets married at 14 and moves aways before this happens).



Gracie wins custody while she is in HS and working two jobs to support her brothers. She does this day after day and manages to graduate from HS with honors through it all. She still has custody of her brothers to this day. I would love to meet Gracie one day.



Here is a link to the original reader's digest story:



Gracie's Story






3. Remember the Titans Produced by Disney Picture (2000) DVD



This story is based on actual events that occurred in 1971 in the state of Virginia. At that time segregation had taken place for the first time in the US.


A black HS football coach is transferred to an all white school and the current coach there is demoted to assistant coach. Of course, the white coach was very upset with his demotion.



A lot of the players in his formally all black school are also transferred along with the black coach. There was a big uproar in the community about this and the school board decided that they would deal with this by firing the black coach the first time he lost a game.



At first the black and white players did not get along and sat at opposite sides of the cafeteria during lunch. The black coach saw this and thought of a great plan to get past this problem.



The black and white players were assigned to be-friend a player of the opposite color and report to the team what they found out about the other. The players who reported on each other were then assigned to be buddies and sit together in the cafeteria. Pretty soon players of both colors were becoming friends. Meanwhile members of the general public and parents of the white players were ordering their sons not to socialize with their assigned buddies.



Well the coach had a great season and the team won every single game. The community finally accepted the black players as they would anyone else and the two coaches became the best of friends.



They are still friends today and it was a pleasure to see a live interview of them in real life after the movie. They also showed some of the actual players on the team and told us about how successful a lot of them became after their high school years.

I love the book, "The Kite Runner". I also love True Crime books, especially those written by Ann Rule and Gregg Olsen. I enjoy reading inspirational true stories and also books about Ghosts, Haunted Houses and other Paranormal topics.




Here is a list of my favorite inspirational books. All of these books are about surviving terrible true lifetime periods, seeing better days in the end, becoming stronger human beings because of these terrible events and are very educational to read.




I think about these true life stories when I am going through hard times in my life and find hope that my life events are temporary and I will see better days.




1. Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown. This is a book I read as a child. Since I was also growing up in a similar ghetto environment as Claude and he became a succesful lawyer, it inspired me to dream big like he did. I did pretty well as I am now a successful college professor these days.







2. Mayada, Daughter of Iraq by Jean Sasson. I recently read this one and I now appreciate this country so much more. Whenever I get stressed out these days, I think of what she went through and the many people in Iraq and all of a sudden my life looks and feels so much better.







3. A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive by Dave Pelzer. This one also gives me lots of hope when things are going wrong in my life. It also re-affirms that people can overcome terrible past life events, even abuse and still become productive members of society.



He wrote this book to make people more aware of what the signs of child abuse are and where to get help.







4. Until Death Do Us Part: My Struggle to Reclaim Colombia by Ingrid Betancourt This was the most inspiring book I have ever read. Wow, Ingrid is a real life hero. This women did so much to make things better for her country and put this priority ahead of her marriage and children. She was close to winning a presidential election when she finished writing this book.



Epilogue:



After this book was published, Ingrid got abducted in real life on Feb. 23, 2002 by a political terrorist group in Columbia and still remains in captivity to this day. I think of her and the family she left behind every day.



Update:



Ingrid and 14 other hostages were rescued on July, 2nd, 2008. The Colombian military tricked the terrorist group into giving up the hostages and at the same time, took two terrorist camp leaders with them and turned them over to the Colombian police. I am just ecstatic about this!!






5. Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail by Malika Oufkir . Malika was almost royalty but one day something went very wrong and her and her entire family were thrown into an old castle which was converted as a prison never to be seen or heard from again.



Fortunately, a member of her family escapes and thus this book was written. Because of this book, a lot has changed as far as how Morroco now treats its criminals.







6. Escape from Slavery: The True Story of My Ten Years in Captivity and My Journey to Freedom in America by Francis Bok This is a very inspiring book about the atrocities that are happening to people in Sudan and the story of a person who escaped.



Because of Francis Bok, the United States is now aware that slavery has never ended in that part of the world and is doing something to help.







7. Sickened : The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood by Julie Gregory, This story was so educational. It explains everything about this terrible mental disease and why it is so hard for doctors to notice when these cases are happening.



Again, this is a story about a survivor that is now trying to change things for the better, trying to bring more awareness about this condition so that people can intervene and hopefully save more children from being victims of this syndrome.

Here are some videos concerning some of my hobbies:



Here is a video about the future of computer interfaces:







Here is really funny video spoof of one of my old fashioned style workouts videos from the FIRM. The main star is Drew Barrymore.







Below is a slide show with pictures that I took of the Haunted Jail in Charleston, SC.




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I am 51 years old, lost 40 pounds in the last 4 years and am in the best shape of my life.I know this line sounds corny and I know you have heard this on many infomercials on TV but I swear I am not a spammer nor am I selling anything. I only wish to inspire other people to improve their health by losing weight. With my job, husband, two boys and all the forums and social networking sites that I am a member of, I do not have any time to do anything else. :-)




I lost the 40 pounds by doing weight training and aerobic exercises. I used my collection of 150 exercise video tapes and DVD's, step boxes, free weights, stability balls and cleaned up my eating to lose the weight.



My exercise video collection includes Firm workouts, TLT, Turbo Jam, Taebo, Fit Prime Kick Butt Series, Christi Taylor, Jari Love and Cathe Gym style workouts. To stay motivated, I am a member of several free on-line exercise groups.



From time to time, I like to travel to some of the gyms where the fitness instructors from my exercise DVD's work and take live class with them. I have taken live classes with many of the instructors from the Firm and TLT exercise DVD's. It is so much fun to meet them and have my picture taken with them.



My last fitness related trip was the first week of August and I visited gyms in Columbia, SC and in Charleston, SC. I worked out for a total of 7 hours during this 4 day trip. I was also very happy to find out the my BMI was 17%.



I have 2 boys and my first one graduated from HS on May 12th 2006. He is 20 years old, just started his junior year of college , attends a state university in Florida and lives in the dorms. My second child is 14 and just started the ninth grade.



I am first generation American born to a family from Puerto Rico. Therefore,I am bilingual and speak, read and write Spanish. I was born and raised in the Bronx section of NYC.



I have been married for 22 years to the same guy. I work as an Associate Professor of Computer Science and just love my job. I have two cats and just love my pets.



I love reading true crime, books on Paranormal topics especially those involving Ghosts and inspirational true story books. My favorite true crime authors are Ann Rule and Gregg Olson.



I am a Paranormal enthusiast and love attending Ghost Hunter's conferences, Ghost Hunts and tours. My last two Paranormal related trips took place at Penn State in Oct and in Savannah, GA in late Oct. I can hardly wait to attend my next Paranormal conference. I am very excited because I just became a new Investigator with the Kissimmee Paranormal Investigation group of Florida. Click on the icon below to visit my group website.



I owned my first computer in 1979 and consider myself one of the original computer geeks. I am also a CompTia certified A+, Network+ and Linux+ professional. I currently have a five computer Ethernet MAC, Linux and Windows network at home. I am routing a cable modem Internet connection to the four other computers without the use of a hardware router. This is possible because of the Rip Protocol capability available in the Linux Operating System.



Click on the icon below to visit my group page.

I love Aerobics, Taebo, Pilates, Weight Training, keeping up with the latest computer technology, dancing and singing with my Karaoke machine. I especially love working out with exercise videos made by the FIRM.



I also love reading about Paranormal events and topics, especially those dealing with Ghosts and Spirits. I also really enjoy reading inspirational true stories and true crime books.



I also love going on Ghost Tours every time I go on vacation. I also recently attended my first Paranormal conference and participated in my first Ghost Hunt Investigation. I can hardly wait to do it again.

People who only have only woman or only men on their friends list.



People who don't have pictures of themselves on their profiles. I do not want to be friends with an animated or still avatar.



People who have been members here for a while and have very little comments on their pages. This tells me that you do not keep up with your friends.



People who have been members here for a while and have very few points. This tells me that you are not very active in this community and therefore you are less likely to interact with your friends.

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