Friday, December 23, 2016

Christmas Is Waiting

I began the day with the last of the Oatmeal Squares for breakfast, along with canned apricots. Watched Sailor Moon S: Hearts In Ice while I ate. The Sailor Guardians are on their winter break when Luna goes missing. She turns up with a new yellow ribbon and a great big crush on the scientist who took her in. The scientist discovered what he thinks is a comet, but is really a crystal belonging to an evil snow witch. She's determined to freeze the Earth and steal it's energy! While Sailor Moon and the other Guardians battle this icy menace, Luna tries to encourage the scientist to fight the witch's power.

Did the second Perfect Strangers holiday episode and a quick Christmas short while getting ready for work. "Gift of the Mypiot" skips us ahead to the fourth season. Balki and Larry are planning the perfect Christmas Eve party. Larry and most of the guests are livid when Balki invites his obnoxious boss Mr. Gorpley along. As it turns out, Gorpley never had a nice Christmas...until Balki gives him one.

Sylvester the Cat thinks Tweety is "Gift Wrapped" just for him. Actually, he's for Granny. The feisty older woman spends her Christmas Day keeping Tweety out of Sylvester's mouth and Sylvester away from Spike the Bulldog.

Work, as you can imagine two days before Christmas, was busy for most of the day, with very long lines. Thankfully, we also had plenty of baggers, for once. I spent the first half of my shift rounding up carts, and the second bagging and returning cold items and helping elderly customers to their vehicles.

I'm not happy with my schedule next week. On one hand, I did get Christmas Day off. I also got the next three days off after that, and I work very early New Year's Day. Extra Christmas money should help a little, but that still isn't enough hours. I asked a manager about it, and once again, he said "we'll see."

It had cleared out a little by the time I was grocery shopping. I was going to try to do fish for Christmas Day dinner (if I don't end up eating out), but I couldn't find any fish fillets in those new freezers, and there were no small packs of chicken on sale. I ended up buying Italian chicken sausage - how about an Italian Christmas dinner? Why not? The bags of green beans were on sale again, too. I'll make sausage with sauteed onions, pasta, Cranberry Flummery, and the Red Lobster cheese biscuit mix Amanda gave me weeks ago. Restocked eggs, cereal (the generic bran flakes were really cheap), peanut butter, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, canned chicken, oranges, cranberries, and cake mix.

When I finally got home, I put everything away, then got to making the very last thing I'm doing for Christmas. I've thrown together home-made Buttercream Icing for the cupcakes for the last few years, since the cupcakes themselves are from a mix. After the disaster with the first batch of cupcakes, I kept the icing very simple. Other than I think I put a little too much milk in, it came out very nice and sweet and tasty.

Put on Remember WENN's Christmas episode as I spun everything in the food processor. Remember WENN's only holiday episode and their only hour-long episode, "Christmas In the Airwaves," debuted in the second season. The cast and staff of WENN are looking forward to a festive holiday, both in the station and on their shows. Writer Betty Roberts is especially excited, since she's getting to go home to Indiana for the first time since she started working there. Their seasonal shows and Betty's hopes to get home for the holidays both end up in jeopardy when their owner, a singer who's still grieving for her husband (Betty Buckley), and her nasty financier (Johnathan Freeman), ban any references to Christmas, on the air and at the station. Now the cast has to figure out how to let the show go on, without the financier figuring it out, and teach their owner a little bit about moving on.

I ran downstairs to give Charlie his cupcakes towards the end of "Christmas In the Airwaves." He and Richard spent the afternoon, as far as I can tell, fiddling with the lights on both sides of the house. They did manage to fix the ones on my porch (which haven't worked right for a week at least), and even added more in the back yard. (Once again, I have no idea why, since no one can see them on the river.)

Did another TV holiday episode as I cleaned up the icing mess. The second episode of Night Court, "Santa Goes Downtown," was kind of Christmas related. An old derelict in a red suit shows up at the court and proceeds to charm everyone there by knowing their names and life stories. Harry's not as amused. He's even less delighted by a pair of runaway teenagers who refuse to give their names or tell anyone where they are, especially the boy (Michael J. Fox). It takes claims from the old man and Harry that they care about the boy to really get through to him.

I intended to work on my story after that. I'd started on Leia following Han, only to be blocked by Palpatine, when I saw online that Carrie Fisher, who plays Leia in most Star Wars media, had a massive heart attack. I couldn't concentrate after that. As of this second, the only information I can glean is that she's on a ventilator and still in emergency, but is possibly stabilizing. 

Cheered myself up with leftovers for dinner while watching Red Skelton's Christmas. I originally dubbed this series of skits from his show for Lauren, then decided I liked them, too. My favorite was the final "silent spot" that had him miming a poor guy coming in with a massive hangover on New Year's Day. Lauren likes his version of The Cop and the Anthem with Freddie the Freeloader as the hobo trying to get a warm bed in jail.

After Red Skelton ended, I played Super Smash Brothers Brawl to keep my mind off everything going on. Did it on Hard this time. I needed a few more continues (including two on the final Hand boss) and couldn't figure out the Target Smash at all this time, but other than that, I did pretty well. I guess I'm a little better at video games than I thought.

Oh, and the icing totally finishes everything I need to do to prepare for Christmas. Now I just need to deliver the rest of my gifts, starting tomorrow night at Dad and Jodie's party.

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