Snow Way to Treat a Writer

If you've seen the news, you may have already guessed that I never left the apartment today. I awoke to a completely white world...and a phone call. It was Rose. The main roads were clear, but many back roads weren't, and visibility was next to nothing. I would have to call out. It didn't bother my managers when I called. The one I talked to said everyone else called out. It bothered the heck out of me. It was only four hours, but I needed them. My paycheck is going to be worthless next week. Rose said she was going to walk over to Dad's later with Khai. She invited me along, but if I couldn't get to work, there was no way I was going anywhere else.

I settled on a snow day instead. Started things off with breakfast and the rest of the live-action Disney Cinderella, which I began last night. If you know the original Disney animated film (or the Charles Perrault story that inspired both), you know the story. Cinderella (Lily James) is the put-upon servant of her selfish stepmother (Cate Blanchett) and two silly and stupid stepsisters. She meets Prince Kit (Richard Madden) on a ride in the country and falls for him. She'd love to go to the ball in his honor, but her mother destroys the only good outfit she has. Enter her slightly daffy fairy godmother (Helena Bonham Carter), whose magic will allow her to attend the ball and step into the limelight. Her stepmother's not happy about that, though, and neither is the Duke, who wants the Prince to marry a princess from another kingdom in a political alliance. But true love will find a way...and teach everyone a lesson in the importance of being yourself.

First of all, this was a vast improvement over the badly botched Maleficent. The characters felt a lot truer to both the original Disney film and the Perrault tale they're based after. Kit, while a tad shallow, is still more interesting than the cardboard prince from the animated movie. Blanchett and Carter are even better as the two very different mother figures in Cinderella's life. The cinematography is incredible. I especially love the use of color. Cinderella's famous blue ballgown pops in a rich Technicolor tapestry at the ball. It felt like an exquisite fantasy of the 1940's and 50's. I also like the allusion to the Grimm's version as well with the emphasis on Cinderella's relationship with her mother. (And no, the animals don't talk here or rescue anybody.)

Ironically, my main problem once again was with the lead protagonist...but it's sort of the opposite problem from Maleficent. Where Maleficent seemed totally out of line with her original characterization, a little too updated, Cinderella could have stood for more updating. She actually seems more passive than in the original, often standing around and being mistreated, where in the cartoon, she would have had at least a saucy remark. And the ending is just a little weird, even for a fantasy.

The quibble about Cindy aside, I still highly recommend this, especially for princess-crazy girls. (It also gives me high hopes for the live-action version of Beauty and the Beast Disney's talking about for next year.)

I thought the day was perfect for trying something I hadn't made in years. It's been ages since I've made bread, real yeast bread. I don't really eat it that often, but the day seemed to call for it. Why run to the store for it when you can make it yourself? I kept forgetting it was rising. Otherwise, my Buttermilk Rye-Whole Wheat loaf came out pretty well, nice and moist and a bit chewy.

Stuck to fairy tales while I did lunch. "The Snow Queen" episode of Fairy Tale Theatre seemed rather appropriate. Gerda and Kai are best friends, but one day, Kai gets a shard of glass in his eye, sent to Earth by a mischievous goblin. The shard makes Kai discontented and nasty. He falls off the roof and is rescued by the mysterious Snow Queen, who takes him to his kingdom to teach him about love. Meanwhile, Gerda goes to literally the ends of the Earth to find her friend. Neither snow nor a lonely summer sorceress or a spunky thief will keep Gerda from finding Kai.

Moved onto sitcoms as I decided to try something a little different. One of the chocolate chip cookie recipes in the Country Cookies cookbook Lauren gave me last year includes pudding mix in the list of ingredients. I'd never seen that before. I only had chocolate pudding mix, so I added the coffee extract and mint chocolate chips I got on clearance at work and turned Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies into Mocha Mint Chip Cookies. Yum. Could have used a tad more chocolate and coffee flavor (if I make these again, I'll up the amount used for both). Otherwise, not bad at all.

A two-parter towards the end of the second season of Perfect Strangers was Balki and Larry's first of three encounters with bad vacations. "Snow Way to Treat a Lady" has the duo joining their girlfriends Mary Anne and Jennifer on a skiing trip. Trouble is, Larry can't ski, and Balki never has before. Larry lies to Jennifer that he's a great skier. He tries to show off, but he lands them in a cabin during an avalanche. The boys try to tunnel their way out.

When the cookies were out of the oven, I set the bread to rise a second time, then worked on writing and did stuff online. I finally finished out Babes In WENNLand. Lisa and Alan get a ride home with a mysteriously familiar Santa. They try to ask him questions, but fall asleep on the way. When Lisa wakes up, they're back at WENN, and their mother has arrived for them. Scott and Betty (who are going on a date) brings them to her. Lisa tells her mother she's learned a lot...and that she doesn't mind being a kid so much anymore.

Whew! I know that took a while, but life, illness, holidays, and my renewed interest in Star Wars got in the way more often than not. The next story I have planned is something totally different - an original fairy tale about a young woman who discovers a mysterious man half-dead in the forest. When the shy young storyteller takes him home to tend to his wounds, she finds herself on the adventure of a lifetime when he turns out to be far more than just an ordinary woodsman.

This one is really intended to be short and (cross your fingers!) shouldn't take more than a week or two, tops. After that, I'll move onto the Star Wars 80's story, then either do the Star Wars fairy tale or return to Once Upon a Time In the Land of WENN, depending on how I feel.

At any rate, Babes In WENNLand is now available at my writing blog. I'm not up to posting it at my WENN site tonight - I may see if I can get it up there tomorrow.

Ran the first half of That's Entertainment Part III while having leftovers for dinner. The That's Entertainment movies make great background music when I'm either not in the mood for something with a plot, or need background music, or just can't decide on which musical I want to watch. This was the third and final That's Entertainment documentary, focusing on cut or unused numbers. Among my favorites - Lena Horne's "Ain't It the Truth" in the bubble bath from Cabin In the Sky and Judy Garland's adorable "Doin' What Comes Naturally" from Annie Get Your Gun.

And...yeah, it's been snowing for most of the day, sometimes heavily. While the winds don't sound as bad as they did earlier, they were really going this morning and afternoon. If it's snowing at all now, it's nothing like it was when Rose called this morning. My porch is a sea of white crystal dunes. Miss Willa shoveled a path on my porch around 3:30; it's half-covered again now.

Sitcom Spooks and Frights

Started off a late morning with a couple of spooky sitcom episodes. "Haunted House," from the second season of Laverne & Shirley, takes the girls and their guy friends Lenny and Squiggy to the old Ramsdale Manor. The girls need a couch, and the the house is being demolished and the furniture sold. Shirley's heard stories about a monster in the manor that attacks anyone on the grounds. Laverne thinks she's being silly...until they and the guys see strange things going on at the manor...

I rushed off the the farm market around 11. I did take a peek at a few yard sales. One was just knick-knacks. A big one by the Art Deco-style apartment building that overlooks the lake had some interesting Christmas stuff, but I finally decided I didn't really need it.

Even at nearly quarter after 11, the Collingwood Farm Market was bustling. It's on its last month. Several food booths are gone, replaced by more craft booths. Tomatoes, grapes, and cucumbers are also gone, but I saw the first cranberries of the season. Stopped and watched the two alpacas at the first booth. One just ate; the other scratched himself (and probably wondered why those crazy humans were watching him scratch himself). I ended up buying broccoli, small apples, carrots, and the cranberries.

I passed by a little fair by Oaklyn's fire house on my way home. This is Fire Prevention Month. I remember it was a huge deal in Cape May when I was a kid - those fancy Victorian homes are beautiful but also quite flammable. I saw a 'fire safety truck' from Bellmawr enter as I was on my way to Collingswood. There was a fire house-themed bounce house and a wooden house front to squirt with a fire hose.

When I got in, I had leftovers for lunch, then started Oatmeal-Chocolate-Chip Cookies. Ran Moonlighting while I worked. "I See London, I See France, I See Maddie's Netherworld" from the fifth season gets more than a little spooky when a man dies in Maddie and David's office while waiting for an appointment. It turns out neither he, nor the man who came looking for him the next day, or the two men with guns chasing him, are what they claim. The duo have to figure out what they were all after while arguing over the possibility of death being final or there really being something "on the other side."

Switched to Remember WENN as I cleaned up from baking and got the cookies in the oven. Diva actress Hilary Booth is being haunted by "The Ghost of WENN" during this late third season episode. The horror show they're performing and the rainy, noisy weather isn't helping. While Hilary and Betty try to figure out what's going on, Mackie worries about the urban legend surrounding what happened to the last actor who read the dialogue on page 13...

"Caller I.D" deals with the imagination and the magic of radio and of fiction. A "passionate listener" has climbed onto the edge of a building and is threatening to jump if the cast doesn't perform for her. They first throw together a bunch of shows and create cliffhangers to maintain her interest. She's finally reminded that fantasy is really only in the mind...and stories aren't much use without people to hear them.

The cookies took longer than I anticipated. I just barely got to work on time. Not a good thing. We were busy for most of the evening. There's tons of things going on this weekend as we head towards Halloween and the holiday season - hay rides, craft shows, fairs, birthday parties, various fall sports. There were a lot of people who were rude and demanding, or just wouldn't help bag. I was so happy when my relief showed up on time and I was able to hurry out.

Summertime's Here!

And it was a perfect day to kick off summer with, sunny, bright, breezy, and in the mid-upper 70s. I slept in again and spent most of the morning doing laundry, which I put off yesterday because I wasn't feeling well. I'm still not. I'm still sniffling, but I'm coughing now, too, which may be a good indication that whatever is clogging my head is loosening. The sore throat is gone, too. Whatever I had Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday seems to have downgraded to a nasty summer cold. I still have a headache, stuffy head, and sore neck, but everything else is gone.

I spent the morning watching Hannah Montana episodes with Jessa. Most of the reports I've gotten on this show from adults have said that it's almost annoyingly bland. I don't know about that. I think it's adorable. It reminds me of a lot of goofy fantasy-oriented sitcoms from the mid-late 80s that involved teenagers or young adults in outlandish situations. Is the idea of a 14-year-old girl with a double life as a rock star and a high schooler any different than a teenager who is half-human, half alien and has strange powers (Out of this World), a male nanny and his charges (Charles In Charge), a wisecracking, cat-eating alien living with a normal Earth family (Alf), a literal storybook family ending up in the real world (The Charmings), a rich, child-like dad bonding with his very adult son (Silver Spoons), or man building a girl-like robot for his family (Small Wonder)?

Actually, I was surprisingly impressed with Hannah Montana. Yes, it's contrived and silly and very standard sitcom fare, with everyone overacting through the roof, but it's also colorful, slickly produced, and a great deal of fun. In fact, the music was my biggest complaint. It sounds a little too much like every other kiddie act on the market for my taste. The show, however, is sweet. In one episode, Miley sleepwalks after spending several sleepless nights trying to figure out how to tell her dad that she thinks his new song is horrible and get around her brother's desperate attempt to have a party. In another, Miley (in her Hannah guise) manages to get into a celebrity tennis tournament with a hot doubles player and is given one ticket, which sets off an argument between her male and female best friend as to who should go. (Personally, I think she should have left both of her friends behind and just brought her dad, no matter how embarrassing that would be for a 14-year-old.) You get the picture. The humor is broad and obvious, and the writing is typical sitcom shenanigans, but Miley Cyrus and Emily Osmet have nice comic timing and handle the gag-filled script well.

I was less fond of the male characters. Hannah's brother Jackson, her best guy friend Ryan, and Rico, the little brat who owns the ice cream stand where Jackson works, were all annoying dorks. Billy Ray Cyrus just seemed to be out of place (no matter that he is Miley's dad in real life). Other than that, like High School Musical, I can understand why Hannah's become such a sensation. The show and the music are harmless, fluffy fun.

I went to work shortly after getting in. Work was steady to busy, and will likely remain so on the weekends until after the Fourth of July. Most people will be occupied with barbecues, birthday parties, and graduation parties for the rest of the month.

Good Times, Bad Teeth

I had my third dentist appointment this morning. She had to drill in the big molar on the other side. I didn't think it was as bad because it didn't hurt, but apparently it was also broken and fairly close to the nerve. Not only that, but the other tooth was infected. Swell. At first she said I would need a root canal, but she and her assistant took another look at my X-rays from the last time and decided to do a good cleaning on my other teeth to help out the woman who would be scaling and polishing them. For now, they just ended up giving me an antibiotic in the gums around the bad tooth on the right side and cleaning the others very well. I can't eat hard, crunchy, or sticky foods for a week and I can't floss for ten days, but hopefully this will help the gums enough to avoid that (expensive) surgery.

The rest of the day was far more pleasant. It started out in the 60s, but by the time I got home, it was in the 70s and climbing. (The weather is much appreciated after the clouds, storms, and chilly wind we've had all week!) I put my red sweater away and switched my old jeans for my new jean capris. After lunch (two soft Strawberry Muffins and a Strawberry-Banana Smoothie), I went to the Haddon Township Library to return the DVDs that were due and finally due this week's volunteering. (I was going to do it on Tuesday but got called into work and didn't have the time.) It was so nice, I went for a ride afterwards, stopping to say hi to Bob at Abbie Road and buy a really cool 20-CD set of old-time radio sitcoms and a Bing Crosby collection.

I listened to two of the discs while I made dinner. Blondie and A Date With Judy are early examples of typical family sitcoms. (Blondie comes from the still-running radio strip, which pre-dates both the radio show and the popular movie series.) I had more fun with Blondie, where Dagwood Bumstead comes off as a more nasal Fibber Magee with a kid (his tall tales to Alexander about how he would swim in the river in January were hilarious). Date With Judy was a bit more dated. While sitcom plots haven't changed (substitute "garage rock band" for "orchestra" and "local access TV" for "local radio" in the second episode and it could almost be set now), teenagers sure have. Breathless Judy and super-nerdy Oogie Pringle don't sound like any kids their age I know. (Hard to believe Oogie was played by Richard Crenna. I wonder what Rambo would say if he knew his drill sergeant was an uber-nerd as a teenager?)