Mr. Rogers is one of my all time favorite TV personalities so it is fitting that I honor him on my blog today, the “Won’t You Wear a Sweater? Day.”

Rollins College is honoring Fred Rogers (aka Mr. Rogers) with a celebration of his life, on what would have been his 80th birthday. Mr. Rogers went to college at Rollins in the ’50s.

I remember watching Mr. Rogers when I was a kid. Loving the land of make believe. His gentle nature and soothing voice always captivated me. When my family made a big move, from Canada to Florida, the one constant was that Mr. Rogers was on TV in Florida too!

I’m sure my son would love Mr. Rogers — especially the train. I think I’ll honor Mr. Rogers with a tribute video tonight with the family.

Related:

• “Rollins College Celebrates Life of Fred Rogers” at Rollins.com.
• Orlando Sentinel’s “Rollins strives to preserve neighborly spirit of Mr. Rogers.”
• Mr. Roger’s company, Family Communications.

I’m sitting on my sofa, watching The 80th Academy Awards, waiting for the “moment.” You know what I’m talking about, they’ve been showing them all night long: Sally Fields’ “You like me” speech, Cuba Gooding Junior’s “I love you” speech. The Halle Berry’s tearful acceptance speech for the first win from an African-American woman.

Tonight’s show is a bit boring, until the winners of best song came along, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova These two lovely singers gave the best speeches of the night, encouraging us all to believe in our dreams. And, proof of that they are.

They made a little movie using hand-held cameras, three weeks, $100,000 and a dream. Here they are on Oscar night, each holding a golden statue, but more importantly, showing us that dreams do come true to those who believe. Two of my favorite pieces from each of their speeches are:”

• “Make art “
• “Dare to dream”
• “Don’t give up.”
• “Hope connects us all”

Here’s their live performance of the song they did for the movie, along with their inspiring acceptance speeches.

I don’t have a post prepared for today so I’ll just write about a few things I’ve found lately:

• “Friends” star Courtney Cox is said to be under stress for trying to balance life, work, motherhood and marriage. She’s reportedly shrank two dress sizes — down to a size 2. Now, she was skinny enough before loosing weight, but wouldn’t it be great if some weight loss came naturally for the rest of the world’s moms since we deal with this same stress. Just goes to show you that money doesn’t buy everything. Read the story here.
• There is a lunar eclipse tonight. It’s the last one until 2010, people. The news makes is sound like this is ages away, a millennium away. It’s only two more years.
• I stumbled upon a Web site for Work at Home Moms, www.buzymoms.com. It’s a professional looking site that seems to have lots of detailed information, tips and resources to help you find that business where you can work from home.
• New family rule: the fist person home has to give a warm greeting to the second person home. Read how Steve tells of this family ritual at TheSneeze.com. Fair warning: if you read any of his other posts, I’m won’t be held responsible for the amount of tears that will be streaming down your face because you’ll be laughing so hard it will hurt.
• Lately I haven’t had time to make family meals so I’m on the hunt for quick and easy dinners for a family. I did a quick search and found some interesting recipes here. Send me your links if you know of some great places to get inspired.

Oprah announced yesterday that she is offering a free 10-week online class starting in March, based on her new book club selection, “A New Earth.” When I went to the site last night, I got this message:

Due to high traffic demands, this Oprah.com feature is temporarily unavailable.”

Yep, offer something for free and everyone comes in droves. Oprah offers something for free and everyone and her mother comes in droves.

It’s exciting that so many people are interested in discussing a book and learning more, so much so that it crashed the server.

I love learning and jump at the chance for any type of training so I am sure I will join in on this weekly class. She’s said to be teaching it along with the author, Eckhart Tolle. Each week will be based on a chapter in the book. And, there are discussion boars and interactive features for users to upload his/her thoughts — I’m assuming good or bad.

Online education is a new realm for some and I’m glad that Oprah is embracing a new technology in a way that will surely include more people than she ever imagined. I have reservations about if I will like the book, but I’m good about taking new age topics and altering them to my own belief system so I’ll give it a shot. It’s the book’s subtitle that has my interest: “Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose.”

And, since it’s Oprah, the time is right: 9:00 p.m. once a week. Many women are home at that hour and most of the kids are tucked in bed by 9:00 (let’s hope so anyway) so there’s no excuse to join in if you are interested.

Related:

• Buy “A New Earth”
• Sign up to take Oprah’s free class
• Another book by Tolle, “The Power of Now”
• Rick Warren’s “Purpose Driven Life”

Recycling has been a topic of conversation lately in my office, and we did a story on the topic as did our local newspaper.

Evey time I toss a plastic container, water bottle or other “triangle 2″ item into our recycle center I think of Al Gore. We started home recycling after watching “An Inconvenient Truth.” But what do we do with the items that that you can’t recycle at your curb?

For months, my husband has had a computer that he needs to recycle. We can’t toss it in the trash because it’s got toxic chemicals in it. We have yet to find a suitable/appropriate home for the computer so it sits in the playroom, along with a hundred other items that need to be put in their place.

We have too much stuff, as I’ve written about before. Too many items. But, what do you do with things like computers when you don’t want to disappoint Al Gore? We keep them until we 1.) find the time to figure it out and then find more time to get it to the appropriate recycling location 2.) finally say, “screw it, Al” and toss it in the Sunday trash.

Recycling must get easier. We barely have time to get recycling to the curb in time for the Monday truck to get to the house, let alone have to make a call to find out where it should go, then have to drive to to the appropriate location. I can barely get out the door with clothes on in the morning.

Well, my recent “Martha Stewart Living” magazine has a listing for a Web site that will help: www.earth911.org. You can search by item you want to recycle and by zip, giving you a listing of local establishments that will accept your item. Now, if only I can find someone to get me dressed in the morning, I’ll have enough time to drive out to Timbuktu to drop off my recyclables!