Flannel Shirt

What men want, what women want

In case you want to know, women want soft-serve ice cream and men want Ford trucks. And bacon.

Wegman's V. Alec Baldwin

Alec Baldwin's antics on an airplane apparently scuttled his ad campaign for Wegman's.

I still like Baldwin. I just don't want to be on the same plane with him.

Heartwarming story

This is a great story of a person overcoming slavery to become a citizen.

Hall's Egyptian parents sold her into slavery when she was 8 for $30 a month, according to authorities. The Cairo couple who bought her moved to Irvine two years later, smuggling Hall into the U.S. where she toiled for them and their five children until she was 13.

Hall said she worked 16 hour days, scrubbing floors, cooking meals and cleaning house, and was rarely allowed outside the spacious home. She was forced to wash her own clothes in a bucket and was forbidden from going to school. She never visited a doctor or dentist and didn't speak a word of English.

Her captors, Abdel Nasser Eid Youssef Ibrahim and his former wife, Amal Ahmed Ewis-abd Motelib, berated her and occasionally slapped her around, authorities said.

"I didn't know anything about what America was about. My only hope was to go back home and live a normal life with my family, my brothers and sisters,'' she said. "That's all I wanted."

In 2002, acting on a tip from a concerned neighbor, child welfare authorities rescued her from the house. Her case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, leading to the prosecution, federal imprisonment and, later, deportation of Ibrahim and Motelib.

Hall formed a tight bond with one of the lead federal agents, Mark Abend of ICE's Homeland Security Investigations, who has served as a friend and mentor. He was at Hall's citizenship ceremony Thursday.

"I'm really proud of her. Think of everything she's been through. Being sold into slavery at an early age. Coming over here. Not having a family," Abend said. "The resiliency she has is just amazing. The fortitude. Not falling apart. Not being a destroyed soul."