Winter at the Riverside Rest and Other Stories

Started off the day at my place, with a spinach and cheese omelet and grapefruit for breakfast. After I finished eating, I worked on crocheting a scarf for Samantha while watching another Bowery Boys movie, Lucky Losers. Sach and Slip are working for a prestigious Wall Street broker when the man suddenly kills himself. When Slip finds dice in his desk, he might have the answer as to why. With the help of a street vendor who sells a book on gambling, TV reporter Gabe Moreno, and ever-nervous soda shop owner Louie Dumbrowski, they set out to infiltrate an illegitimate casino and ferret out the man responsible for allowing the casino to stay in business!

After The Bowery Boys ended, I decided to go for a walk and run some errands around Oaklyn. My first stop was the Oaklyn Library, since I hadn't been able to get in on Wednesday. The only person there was some college student who kept badgering the librarian about getting newer releases and more DVDs. I organized the DVDs; moved some adult DVDs that had somehow wound up in the kids' section to the other side. Organized the young adult series shelf (the Nancy Drew and Goosebumps series were especially disorganized today) and took a quick look at the kids' picture books.

After I headed out, I went to the bank really quick to use their ATM machine, then to CVS. I forgot batteries, nuts, and sugar at work, and they have better prices on dried fruits anyway. (And the sugar and dried fruit turned out to be on sale as well.) Went across the street for a walk in Newton River Park, but it turned out to be a short slog. Their paths aren't shoveled, and it was past 2:30 by that point and I wanted lunch.

Headed back to Oaklyn to try a pizza place around the corner from me, Philly's Phatties. It's next-door to the dance studio and a few doors down from Leo's Yum-Yums and Doria's Deli. It's always been there; I just never tried it before. I had a small panzerotti - a smaller pocket pizza pie. I had been craving strombolis, but I thought this would be smaller and less to eat. I was right. It was smaller, half the size of a full-sized stromboli, though still pretty large. I had it with a 12-ounce can of Diet Pepsi and some of the dried apricots I bought. I ate, listened to the teen boys behind the counter talk, and watched what I assume to be one of the 800 versions of Law & Order on USA.

When I got back to Manor, I quickly went to see if anyone was home at Uncle Ken's...but I saw a mostly-empty driveway. I decided I'd just have to make my own fun.

I went upstairs to the apartment, quickly put away the things I bought at CVS, and grabbed my modern American Girl doll Jessa. Jess is the only one of my dolls who has a winter coat, a white fur coat I believe came from the Springfield Collection. Her sneakers are also far more appropriate for the snow than Felicity's buckle shoes or the Mary Janes on Sam and Molly. I wrapped Jess in her coat and the scarf I made last spring, grabbed my (now re-charged) camera, climbed back into my boots and coat and scarf, and headed back out.

I walked around the park again, taking shots of Jessa doing snow things - standing against the piles of snow the plows left in front of the park to show how big they are compared to her, throwing tiny snowballs, "rolling" down a hill like I did yesterday, looking out onto the frozen whiteness of Newton River, posing by the snowman I found and the snow-bear I made on the porch the other day. I even posed her taking off her coat and with a cup of hot chocolate when we got in.

While Jessa and I warmed up, we watched the first two McBride movies together, the second while I made tilapia and roasted broccoli and cauliflower for dinner. McBride is actually a series of movies the Hallmark Channel made between 2005 and 2008. Linda sent me these DVDs a few weeks before Christmas, but I put them on the small green shelf with the Monkees and Bowery Boys/East Side Kids DVDs and completely forgot about them until last week. (Sorry, Linda!)

Murder After Midnight introduces "Mac" McBride (John Larroquette), a LA cop-turned-lawyer who specializes in taking on cases that others consider lost causes. Phil Newberry is the technology-savvy young lawyer who quits the public defender's office to work for McBride, who is his hero. Roberta Hansen is a police detective and Mac's on-again, off-again girlfriend. And then, there's Jesse, the large white dog who is Mac's closest companion. (The second show in a row with a dog character that's often smarter than the humans around them! ;) )

The most interesting "gimmick" with McBride is the use of flashbacks. Two or three times a movie, McBride will be seen in a flashback of one of the suspects or clients, either to find out what they saw or ferret out a possible lie. It definitely makes the endings that much more vivid to have seen things the way McBride sees them...literally!

Of the two, I preferred The Chamelon Murders for it's more imaginative plot involving a young intern who is accused of killing the wife of a rich real estate magnate...but the woman is not what she claims to be. Murder After Midnight's family squabbling wasn't quite as creative, but it did serve to nicely set up the series' premise.

Here's Linda Young's fan site on the McBride mysteries.

Oh, and look for a photo story about Jessa's adventures outside later tonight! (If the darn pictures will ever upload onto Photobucket...)