Wow, sm, that was a awesome post.
I'll fess up to being an idiot and admit not knowing anything about Thelonious Monk. Please recommend a CD and I'll buy it and see what I've been missing.
And Stevonez, that was a nice tribute to your mother. Now that I think about it, my mother is one of my heros also. She raised three kids while married to a paranoid, sociopathic, career Army Command Sargent Major (like a Drill Sargent but worse) while moving around the globe every 18 months. She spent 33 years married to him for our benefit only to have to endure the humiliation of a divorce so he could take all the money they saved (a considerable sum) and marry a black widow (her prior 3 husbands met untimely demises) leaving her penniless. He joined the dead husband club two years later leaving everything to the black widow.
Since then, she has beaten not one, not two but three different cancers (breast, melanoma and some other one) and a hip replacement. And at 75, she can still whoop my butt.
