Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Romancing the Cupcake

Awoke to a lovely, sunny Valentine's Day. Celebrated with a tasty breakfast of corn meal mush with peanut butter and honey and Winnie the Pooh: A Valentine for You. Pooh and the others see Christopher Robin writing a valentine for a girl and think he likes her better than them. Owl tells them that he's been bitten by the Smitten bug, and that they have to catch another bug to fix him. The crew chases after what they think is the bug. Pooh rethinks this plan when he sees how happy his friend is with his new crush, but Christopher Robin knows that true friends never really leave your heart.

Did Un-Valentine's Day while getting ready for work. In this episode of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Rabbit cancels Valentine's Day to try to stem the tide of unwanted valentines they all got from Pooh the year before. As so often happens when Rabbit attempts to put the damper on a holiday, that doesn't go well. Pooh receives an anonymous pot of honey and feels he needs to give something back. One thing leads to another, and there's suddenly cakes flying and Pooh walking around, dressed as a mail box. Rabbit finally coalesces their ideas into a romantic show for Christopher Robin. But who did give Pooh the original pot of honey?

Today was my early work day. Thankfully, it was neither as long or as boring as my previous long Wednesday shifts. We were steady the whole day, not overwhelming busy, but not dead, either. While I did a cart of returns and the outside trash and gathered baskets and bagged later, I spent a lot of the day doing carts. I was glad to. The weather was still gorgeous, sunny and relatively warm, probably in the upper 40's-lower 50's, though windier than yesterday. 

Treated myself to a Dove peanut butter heart after work. A friend of Dad and Jodie's was in line in front of me and was nice enough to buy it for me for Valentine's Day. Awww. That was really sweet.

It was so nice, I took the long way home down Nicholson Road. While traffic has been closed one way, the other way was still fairly busy. I dodged cars until I went over the hill to Atlantic Avenue. I was also glad to note at that point that the city had finished the work on the pipes they'd already started when I left. (The water had just shut off when I left. It was on when I came in.

Did some writing next. Maz points Rey towards a spell in one of Luke's books that will give her invisibility for a short time. It's enough to get her on the grounds of Snoke's castle, but not into the door of the kitchen. She arrives there to find Kylo Ren waiting for her instead of Luke. Luke is tied up in a sack in Snoke's room. He wants to exchange his uncle for her helping him get rid of his master. He'd rather rule the kingdom than continue to feed the giant's appetite...and he really does admire her spirit. She's not interested in either his lust for power or his admiration. She just wants to help his parents.

It was quarter of 7 before I broke for dinner a couple more specials, starting with Bugs Bunny's Cupid Capers. A cupid that looks suspiciously like Elmer spreads love among the Toons, despite Bugs insisting that he's meddling. Even Bugs gets hit with the love bug a few times, including the finale where he's chased by a huge European female rabbit.

Cleaned up the dishes while A Charlie Brown Valentine was on, then made a quick, low-fat, egg-less chocolate cupcake recipe I have in a Hershey's cookbook. (Egg-less because I have one egg left.) This is another later Peanuts special that's basically a series of skits. Unlike the Christmas cartoons, this one does have a through-line. Charlie Brown wants to ask the Little Red-Haired Girl to the school dance, but as usual, he's too nervous. He ends up taking Peppermint Patty and Marcie. Meanwhile, Sally and Lucy would be happy if their crushes would acknowledge them at all.

Moved onto Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown as I got the cupcakes in the oven. Linus is the one with a crush in this earlier Peanuts romance tale. He's in love with his teacher and buys her a huge box of candy. Sally thinks it's for her. Chuck's hoping against hope that he'll finally get a valentine, any valentine, this year. Snoopy's just putting on messy and very interactive puppet shows.

Did Romancing the Stone while the cupcakes were baking. Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) is a romance novelist whose life is mostly lived in the pages of her wildly popular books. Her life takes a far more harrowing turn when her sister calls from Columbia and says she was kidnapped. The smugglers who did it want the map her late husband sent Joan in exchange for her sister. Joan heads to Columbia, only to be waylaid by a general with plans of his own for the map. She's helped by a poacher (Michael Douglas) who offers to help her to her sister...if she pays him. She agrees to it only because she's desperate...but as they move across the Columbian jungles together, they begin to realize that falling in love can be an even greater adventure. 

This is one of my favorite movies since I was a kid. Douglas and Turner played so well off each other, they'd do another movie with these characters and a third, unrelated black comedy. If you love old-fashioned adventure like I do or are looking for an action movie with a strong heroine, this is highly recommended.

Finished the night with the last Hannah Swenson movie, Plum Pudding Murder. (Actually, according to Wikipedia, it was the second movie after the currently-unreleased Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder.) Hannah is all ready to celebrate the holidays with her family and her two boy friends, steady dentist Norman and tough cop Mike. Their rivalry has really been heating up of late, from both of them buying her a Christmas tree to the two getting into a bidding war over her cookie baking services at a local fund-raiser. And if Hannah didn't have enough on her plate, she and Norman go to the local tree lot to get the money the owner owed her for the plum puddings she made him...only to find the owner dead, clutching her check. Turns out that the owner was a real sleaze who stole money from unsuspecting business owners until they had nothing left. A lot of people wouldn't cry if he was gone, including his ex-wife, a popular local talk radio hostess. She's accused of the crime, but Hannah doesn't think she's guilty. She has to find who is, or her holidays are going to be put on ice for good.

First of all, I will admit that I haven't read any of the Christmas-themed Hannah books, including this one. I keep meaning to take them out around the holidays...then run out of time to do it. That said, this is pretty much the same as the other movies in the series. If you love cozy mysteries or the book series this is based after, then you'll love this. 

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