How the Other Half Lives

It was showering when I headed to work this morning. As long as the rain continued, we continued to be quiet. Well, relatively speaking. There were still tons of workers here, there, and everywhere, putting up massive displays that reached the high ceiling and seeing to last-minute details. I did a lot of cleaning, scrubbing grease off the freezer and the magazine racks and wiping down the registers yet again. I ended up taking customers when it got busy around 12:30 and we were short on help. I helped one of the baggers round up carts for a half-hour before break.

If nothing else, I did get something out of all this. One of the managers in charge of the remodeling gave me a five-dollar gift card for all the cleaning I did. (That'll be useful for groceries tomorrow.) There was food in the back later in the day for everyone, too. I saw platters of fried chicken and hoagies, containers of egg salad, two kinds of potato salad, and something strange made with sauerkraut, cupcakes, containers of mini-cookies, iced tea, tons of soda and water, and bowls of candy. I had a turkey hoagie, Diet Coke, the sauerkraut salad (not bad, surprisingly), two cupcakes, cookies, and lots of dark chocolate mini Milky Way Midnights. 

After I finally had my fill, I grabbed more of those sweet dollar oranges while they were still on sale and headed home. The rain was long gone by 2:30, leaving behind mostly sunny skies and upper 40's-lower 50's temperatures. It remained really windy, though. I had a tough ride.

When I got in, I went right into bed for a nap. I was up kind of late last night. I only slept for about an hour. I didn't go down until nearly 3, and I did want to get some writing in.

Went on the computer when I awoke. Jabba greets Obi-Wan and Luke as warmly as a troll knows how. Luke stalls with the men, trying the jacket on each one of them. Meanwhile, Leia and Ashoka follows Chewie and Falcon into the back yard. Chewie knows his master is nearby. He leads them to the basement entrance...

Ran two episodes of Good Eats while improvising a stir-fry with bagged vegetables, celery, and the last of the hot dogs. "There Will Be Oil" provides uses for all those fancy nut oils that have been popping up on store shelves in the last decade, from frying potato chips to making ice cream. "Dark Side of the Cane" shows how rich, tangy, and versatile molasses can be used from everything from marinade to shoo-fly pie.

Ended the night with Thoroughly Modern Millie. I forgot Mary Tyler Moore was in this. She's the sweet, slightly ditzy Miss Dorothy, who becomes best friends with ambitious flapper Millie (Julie Andrews). She becomes a stenographer in order to marry her handsome boss...but finds more lasting love in the arms of a cheeky paper clip salesman (James Fox). Meanwhile, the girls' evil housemother (Beatrice Lille) is running a kidnapping ring in their boarding house and is after Miss Dorothy. When she does finally get her hands on the lass, it'll take all the thoroughly modern know-how of Millie, the two men in her life, and eccentric Muzzy (Carol Channing) to save her from a melodramatic fate.

Overlong but enjoyable salute to the fads, fashions, and melodramatic plots of the Roaring 20's. The ladies are the thing here. Andrews and Moore have fun with their numbers. Channing, in a rare film appearance, is so over-the-top, she's on the other side and still going. If you really love this, it inspired a hit Broadway musical as well. (But beware of many Asian stereotypes, especially towards the end. It's part of the era, but what would have been merely uncomfortable to many in 1967 may come off as downright offensive today.)