Saturday, March 18, 2017

Royal Writers and Pony Girls

Began a gray morning with breakfast and The Princess Diarist. Carrie Fisher's last book before her untimely death involves how she got involved with Star Wars...and more to the point, Harrison Ford. As I mentioned, I've had a crush on the man literally for most of my life and can certainly understand her interest. I like the story of how she finally got Harrison's attention - he rescued her from a couple of film crew members who, contrary to what she thought, probably got her drunk for far worse reasons than a "fun" kidnapping. Trouble is, she and Harrison sound good on a movie screen, but they really had nothing in common. He was (and from what I've gathered, remains) a troubled introvert; she was a mouthy extrovert. He was married and more interested in his career; she was craving love from a real "man." She knew the relationship had nowhere to go, but she needed it...and even 40 years later, I don't think she quite let it go.

Had relatively early work this morning. It wasn't that bad. I rounded up carts for an hour when I arrived and 20 minutes before I left. Otherwise, I was mostly inside bagging. We had more help than usual. Three of the teen baggers were now training to be cashiers. They were beginning their training today. (I hope the girls are better cashiers than they were baggers.) Helped the head bagger clean up a big, sticky juice spill.

My schedule is a slight improvement over the past couple of weeks. I'm back to Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday off. One long day, Thursday,  otherwise all morning shifts and relatively short ones. My hours went up slightly as well.

When I got home, I changed, then figured I might as well get my few St. Patrick's Day decorations down. Ran a Good Eats episode while I did. I did one of the "Pantry Raids" episodes on honey yesterday. Alton returns to the pantry again, this time to turn dried beans into Boston Baked Beans, black bean salad, and hummus. I'm not really fond of dried beans, which take too long to soak, but I have made the hummus recipe a few times. Delicious and nutritious.

Worked on my story for a few hours. Did a tiny bit of re-writing. Han wants to leave Naboo as soon as his company makes its last khyber crystal shipment. He knows Jenkins Huttman (Jabba) is on his trail, and he needs to pay him back. But first, he wants the Crimson Hawk to pull off one last score. Meanwhile, Luke and Ben's fencing exhibition goes off without a hitch. Luke invites audience members onstage to see if they can best him. Leia's surprised that Vader doesn't try his luck. He's said to be a champion fencer. Bail says he probably thinks he's too good for it.

After I ate leftover chick pea stew with canned chicken for dinner, I wanted to try something different. I attempted a very simple butter refridgerator cookie recipe, but I couldn't get it to come together. Added a little water to help it stick...then a little more...and then, way too much. They ended up being butter drop cookies. Oh well, at least they still taste pretty decent, if a little sweet.

Ran Equestria Girls: The Legend of Everfree as I worked. The humanized ponies are attending Camp Everfree, which is run by twins Gloriosa Daisy and Timber Spruce. They couldn't be more different. Gloriosa is determined that everyone have fun and that she appears to be in control. She wants to please everyone all the time, no matter what. Timber prefers to spend his time flirting with Twilight Sparkle. Twlight is terrified that her powers will manifest again and she'll turn back into the monster she transformed into in the previous film. Her worst fears seem justified when Timber tells the terrifying tale of Gaia Everfree, a spirit who had attacked their great-great-grandparents. Soon after, strange things begin happening, and all of Twilight's friends begin developing powers of their own. Twilight blames herself, but Sunset Shimmer is convinced that there's something else going on...

Not bad. Other than a crop of completely unmemorable songs, this one was really fun, with interesting messages about accepting your gifts and not letting bad things control you. If you loved the other movies in this franchise, this was good...but if you're a newcomer, you'll want to start with the previous Equestria Girls movies and a couple of Friendship Is Magic episodes before you come here.

Finished the night with a much-needed bath. Ahh. It's been so busy lately, I haven't really had the chance to take many baths. Listened to one of the Rod Stewart American Songbook CDs (the third one, I think) while paging through my older cake decorating magazines.

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