I just got around to watching both Chuck and The Journeyman tonight and I can tell you right now that both are making the cut. I will continue to watch both shows this season.

Chuck is sharp and funny and hits all the marks the first time around. I’m not entirely sold on Yvonne Strzechowski’s Sarah Walker character. She is pretty and you can see why Chuck is drawn to her, but the pace of the show seems to drag when she is in scenes. Zachary Levi’s Chuck is endearing and appealing Good call, casting people. Adam Baldwin? Always a pleasure. I’ve been following his career ever since 1980’s My Bodyguard. I’ll watch anything he is in, even if it’s not good. Fortunately for me, Chuck rocks.

The Journeyman plays to my most favorite of genres: time travel. There is mystery and intrigue, fun little soundtrack flashbacks, and very solid acting. Kevin McKidd has an impressive roster of work behind him: Rome, Trainspotting, and Hannibal Rising just to name a few. Time travel sucked me in, the storyline will have me coming back.

The shows both give us actors doing more than passable American accents. Kevin McKidd is Scottish and Yvonne Strzechowski is an Aussie.

I sometimes think about going back into graphic design, as a career, I know I got my teaching certification, but I look back and miss the sheer creativity of working in design as a career. I had a good job with lots of freedom before I stopped working to focus on being a wife and mother. I headed up the art department for a large manufacturing company.

I designed a lot of product packaging as well as the identity pieces and promotional items for various sister companies. I worked with our customers to develop product campaigns. I also had absolute free reign over the design of our trade show setup.

If you’ve ever attended a trade show, you know just how much competition there is for your attention. In order to stand out in a huge convention center full of exhibits for thousands of companies, you need to stand out and catch people as they walk by. The first year I worked for the company, their trade show display had been designed by someone else at the business. It was lackluster and dimple. I reworked the entire concept and ordered new display items. We rocked it at our next trade show. It was worth fighting for the additional budgeting.

Maybe I should just find a company that designs trade show displays. I might enjoy doing that on a regular basis.

So, you want to be in pictures?

HBO is having an open casting call in Jacksonville, FL for extras to appear in their film “Recount,” about the 2000 presidential election in Florida. The casting call will happen Sunday, September 30 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Jacksonville Jewish Center, 3662 Crown Point Road. As long as you are 18 to 80, you can attend.

Filming for the movie is planned in Jacksonville and Tallahassee, from Oct. 8 to Dec. 4.

Interested extras are asked to bring a photo of themselves as well as of their car, if it was made in 2000 or earlier. Applicant forms can be downloaded and filled out ahead of time from: www.MartiniShotCasting.com.

Most of my muscle pulls and bendy issues can be corrected with exercise and stretching. Back around 1995 though, I was having increasingly frequent migraine headaches. I decided to get an x-ray of my neck to see if something odd was happening. It turns out I had what some refer to as “military neck”. In other words, my neck did not have the curve most people have. My neck bones were straight up and down.

The chiropractor started a series of manipulations. I also had a few sessions with their physical therapist to go over exercises and stretches that would help the results of the manipulations stay in place longer. I remember the guy telling me that by the end of a few weeks, I would be able to lay my ear on my shoulder. This seemed impossible to me at the time. Looking back, it is hard to believe my neck was ever so bad that I couldn’t do that.

Needless to say, I am in much better shape these days.

The only issue I had with my particular chiropractor is that his practice was urging him to continue therapy for longer than I actually needed. Treatment should be discontinued when symptoms disappear. He knew this. I knew this. Since he was young and ethical and I think we kind of had crushes on one another, he quietly coached me to go ahead and cancel my next appointment and just come back if the pain reappeared. It was a good lesson and to this day I only go as long as I need to go.

Listen to your own body and it will tell you exactly what you need to do.

It’s funny what makes me think of topics like this. I net surfed my way to an Airdrie Chiropractor webpage and it started a flow of memories.

My headaches, by the way, are much less frequent. I still get sinus headaches and headaches caused by other issues, but I rarely (if ever) get headaches that are caused by posture of my neck anymore.

The news in the Tampa Bay is all abuzz with the details surrounding the death of a University of South Tampa sophomore who died yesterday from a bacterial meningitis infection. Understandably, students on campus are lining up for meningitis immunizations shops and those who had direct contact with the student were put on rounds of Cipro immediately.

Her funeral is today. She was just 19.

Although this is just more crisis for USF, the administrators must be relieved to have a break from further deflecting the bizarre story of the two USF students (Youssef Megahed and Ahmed Mohamed) who are in all kinds of hot water for driving from Tampa to the area just around that military base in South Carolina with their car chock full of laptops and all the makings of pipe bombs. USF has a disturbing history of attracting both terrorists and terrorists sympathizers. Just do a web search on Sami Al Aryan if you want more information on the University’s unwilling position as a terrorist hotbed.

The latest on Megahed and Mohamed is that their defenders and families are insisting they are just nice boys who were out for a summer joyride. Riiight.

But, back to the meningitis scare at USF. The infection is often mistaken for the flu: high fever, severe headache, stiff neck, rash, nausea and vomiting. It is a contagious disease and can be spread by sharing a drinking cup or eating utensils and by kissing, coughing and sneezing.

Apparently, about 4% of the population actually carries the bacteria in their noses. We probably come in contact with it more than we even know. People with weakened immune systems are the ones who actually become ill after coming in contact. That’s not just people like cancer patients and children, but also those who have not had enough sleep, are stressed out, or have been drinking a lot of alcohol.

Rachel Futterman was a happy, active 19-year-old waiting tables Thursday afternoon. By Friday she was feeling ill, and by 7 a.m. Saturday morning her body had gone into seizures. She was taken to the hospital, placed on life support and died shortly thereafter.

As USF stops today to remember Rachel Futterman and honor her at funeral services, the rest of us can take a minute to appreciate the absolute frailty of life.