Thursday, January 17, 2019

Love Among the Ponies

Took advantage of my lack of plans this morning to sleep in. Watched a few episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic while eating breakfast (and cleaning up after I dropped the container of bran flakes on the kitchen floor), starting with an older one from the fourth season. Rarity's thrilled when she's elected as the head of the Ponyville Days Festival. She's hoping the elegant events will catch the eye of Trenderhoof, a sophisticated big-city pony she's smitten with. To her annoyance, he's more interested in Applejack's "Simple Ways" when he arrives. She tries to become more countrified to catch his eye, including switching the festival to a country theme. Applejack finally imitates her in an attempt to show her friend just how silly she's acting over a guy.

The remaining episodes are from the recent seventh and eighth seasons. Big MacIntosh, Apple's brother, has a crush on Sugar Belle from Starlight Shimmer's village, but it's "Hard to Say Anything" when you're a quiet and shy guy who prefers hard work to romantic gestures. The Cutie Mark Crusaders, including Mac's younger sister Apple Bloom, try their best to help, even after the more handsome Feather Bangs also admits his interest in Sugar.

Went out to finally get my laundry done around 12:30. While it wasn't bad when I arrived - a co-worker was just on her way out - it did get busy later. Good thing I didn't have much in the way of laundry anyway. I worked on notes and ignored talk shows, soap opera, and news reports blaring warnings about the next round of snow we're supposed to get tomorrow.

Put everything away when I got in, then had a quick peanut butter-banana smoothie lunch while watching more Friendship Is Magic. "The Perfect Pear" may be one of my favorite episodes of the entire series. Apple Bloom receives a free jar of pear butter from a kindly older fruit seller. Applejack and Big MacIntosh are shocked at first. The fruit seller was Grandpear, the head of the Pear family who has been feuding with the Apples for years. They go to various family members and friends of the family to find out why...and learn that their mother Pear Butter and father Bright Mac were involved in a star-crossed Romeo and Juliet romance that ended up with Buttercup cutting ties with her family. It takes bringing Grandpear together with their Granny Smith to patch up hurt feelings and realize how much sorrow they caused between their families.

Pinkie Pie's elegant older sister Maud has met her match in "The Maud Couple." She's fallen for Mudbriar, an understated gentleman who's fondness for sticks is matched only by Maud's love of rocks. They are happy together, but Pinkie thinks he's boring and doesn't understand Maud's interest in him. She thinks that Maud no longer loves her. It takes a trip back to her family's rock quarry and a chat with her other siblings to understand how much her sister loves the guy and how much she wants her to be happy.

The Cutie Mark Crusaders help Big Mac out with his love life again in "The Break Up Breakdown." He thinks he overhears Sugar Belle talking about ending their relationship after never getting his romantic gift in the mail. Discord insists that he break up with her before she can break up with him, but that only makes things worse. It takes an intervention from the girls and Discord to get Big Mac and Sugar Belle talking again.

The first thing I did when I went online was check out a few apartments. The Colleen Manor Apartments in Sicklerville sound interesting...but I didn't realize how short their office hours were. By the time I got online and was looking them up, they'd already closed for the day. I e-mailed them instead, along with a duplex in Mt. Ephraim that sounded like they were available and a larger apartment complex in Barrington.

Worked on writing for a while after I sent out all the e-mails. Ben realizes that Vader is behind the destruction of King Bail's regent Lady Breha's home and her death, and that they've taken Maid Leia, Bail's ward. Han's reluctant to follow them to Nottingham Castle, until Ben and Luke insist there will be a reward for her rescue.

Broke for dinner at 6. Finished My Little Pony, then watched Thoroughly Modern Millie in honor of Carol Channing, who died on Tuesday. I go into further detail on this madcap Roaring 20's musical at my Musical Dreams Movie Reviews blog.

Thoroughly Modern Millie 

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