The Christmas Blues

Started a sunny day with breakfast before moving on to baking Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies for Lauren for Christmas. Watched the 1951 Christmas Carol while baking. British character actor Alistair Sims makes for one of the most memorable Scrooges of all time in this English version of the famous story. Other than the emphasis on the past sequence, this is actually a pretty straighforward retelling, and is quite well-done.

My public domain DVD copy also comes with the charming 1949 Max Fleischer animated short version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Here, Rudy is a baby reindeer mercilessly taunted by the older deer for his red nose. Unlike the Rankin-Bass version, Santa actually comes to Rudy's home to ask him drive his sleigh, and we see the reindeer honor him at the end. I'm especially fond of the gorgeous Technicolor animation here.

Spent a couple of hours working on my story after the cookies came out of the oven. Chewbacca and Threepio joins the group as they drive the mouse-pulled cart out of the treasure room. Leia and Han are being kept in a bird cage in the kitchen...and now they have to figure out how to get them out, before Vader arrives.

Broke for leftovers for lunch while running one of my favorite Rankin-Bass specials, the touching Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey. Like Rudolph, the title character is taunted by his peers, here in the Scandinavian countries. After his mother dies in a snowstorm protecting him, a cherub named Tilly leads him to Bethlehem. He's purchased by Joseph and Mary and uses those long ears to keep them on track to that famous stable.

My first day back at work was a bit of a pain. First of all, the new head manager is very strict and very insistent on cutting hours to the absolute minimum, despite this being the holidays. Second, the closet the baggers used to keep their neon vests in is now locked. (Why, I have no idea. The only things in that closet are boxes of old papers, boxes of bags, and the baggers' coats and vests.) I had to get a key to open it and get a vest that I now have to keep in my locker.

And they won't give me more than those 12 hours. The manager actually said "well, why don't you look for an opportunity somewhere else?" Yeah, a yuppie can say that. I can't make job opportunities magically appear out of thin air. A customer did mention that a friend of her daughter's had gotten a job as a receptionist at the big hotel near the Cooper River Bridge in Cherry Hill. Not my first choice, but worth looking into.