Began a sunny, bright morning with breakfast and two episodes of Garfield and Friends from the second season in honor of April Fool's Day. Jon gets a lobster from a relative, but he's a live critter, not the "Maine Course." They first keep him as a pet, then take him to the ocean to set him free. It's "No Laughing Matter" when aliens come to US Acres to steal the world's humor. Orson and the other animals try to tell jokes to get rid of them, but it's Roy who discovers that slapstick is the most potent weapon of all. "Attack of the Mutant Guppies" has Garfield and Nermal outrunning giant radioactive fish in the sewers, until Garfield decides he wants a seafood dinner!
We go into spoof territory with "The Legend of the Lake." Garfield has fun with prehistoric tales when he relates the story of a cave-cat who was bound and determined to get to an island filled with lasagna trees. "Double Oh Orson" brings the residents of US Acres in on the satire when Orson imagines himself to be a James Bond-type super spy. Garfield gets into a "Health Feud" with the beefy-but-dumb host of a fitness show Jon loves. The fat cat has to mix up the host's cue cards to get rid of him.
Headed out after breakfast to get the laundry done, delivering my rent (and the new insurance deposit) at the McHugh's on the way. It may not have been the best time. The place was packed when I arrived around quarter of 12. I got one of the last washers, and then one of the few dryers. Left the dryer on for a little longer, despite having a relatively small load. I wanted to get everything dry. While it was on, I worked on story notes and ignored talk shows and the local news.
Instead of putting everything away right when I got home, I pulled out the bin with the summer clothes. It was cold and windy today, barely in the upper 40's, but it's going to be in the 50's by tomorrow, and back into the 70's by next week. We're done with winter weather for a while. I don't really need much in the way of summer clothes. In fact, pretty much the only thing I need is a new bathing suit, and if Dad and Jodie aren't going to open the pool this year, I won't be in any hurry to pick up that. We'll see how well my shorts fit me. Most of them were falling off me by the end of last summer.
As soon as I finished organizing my seasonal clothes, I went right into doing the dolls' clothes. The boxes with the handles that hold the Kimberly Clark items that Lauren sends me every Christmas were perfect "suitcases" for the dolls' accessories and seasonal clothes. Their winter clothes go in Samantha's box; hats and accessories were moved to larger boxes.
Dressed the dolls in formal spring outfits for Easter after I got their clothes together. Josefina wears her turquoise and orange Feast Day Outfit with the ruffled camisa (shift). Whitney looks adorable in Kit's Springtime Dress from a few years ago, and Molly gets her Polka-Dot Outfit. Samantha sports her pink and magenta Flower Picking Outfit, white stockings, and black and white boots. Felicity is in her pink Birthday Gown with the flowered pinner apron. Ariel is lovely in the silky Flower Girl Dress from about a decade ago and the Swiss lace Springfield Collection espadrilles. It's sleeveless, so I wrapped her in the ruffle-trimmed Springfield Collection sweater. Jessa's in the 1997 Birthday Outfit with the purple jelly sandals.
Charlie and another gentleman came upstairs while I was dressing the dolls. Evidently, a "challenged" friend of his needed help remodeling his bathroom. Charlie won't be able to finish the windows for over a week. He did finally finish installing the new porch light on the overhanging roof, so I'll actually have light outside at night.
It was so late when I finally finished the dolls. I made baked chicken fingers in a cornmeal crust with roasted broccoli and leftover cabbage and pasta for dinner. Watched more Flash while I ate. It's "Rogue Time" when Captain Cold returns, this time with his fire-creating partner Heatwave and his equally nasty sister, Golden Glider. They force Cisco to make more heat and cold guns by holding his brother hostage, then say they'll broadcast Barry's true identity over live television. Meanwhile, Barry's attempts to make his feelings known to Iris only annoys her and her fiancee Eddie, while the Reverse-Flash takes care of a reporter who was getting a little too close to the truth.
"Tricksters" also involves illicit broadcasts. A crazy young man named Axel Walker has been sending bombs among children and filming it under the alias The Trickster. He's not the first person to use that name. The original Trickster, James Jesse, is now in prison. It turns out the bombs were a cover to break out Jesse and let him continue his reign of terror. They poison the patrons of a wealthy banquet and ransom the antidote, then plant a bomb on The Flash that will go off if he stops moving.
(This one holds more than a few memories for me. Mark Hamill played The Trickster, both here and in the 1990 Flash. He was the reason I watched the 1990 Flash in the first place. I was going through my first Star Wars obsession phase at the time, and I had to see anything that featured anyone from the original films. A line that Jesse says to Walker after he breaks him out cracked me up. Let's just say Mark Hamill has probably wanted to use that line since about 1980...)
Felicity returns from Arrow for an "All Star Team Up," this time with Ray Parker, aka The Atom, in tow. Ray's looking to improve his own suit, and bonds with Cisco as they work on it. They have to work fast. Someone has been using killer bees to target scientists in Central City, and they almost take down Barry. It'll take a group effort to find the person controlling the bees and stop them, before Harrison Welles' former colleague Dr. Tina McGee is next.
Worked on writing for a while after dinner. Went back and added a scene between Luke and his Aunt Bertha (Beru) as he's coming downstairs from changing. He tells her he's considering moving into his own place. Bertha's fine with whatever he wants to do, but Owen wants him to stay and continue to run his furniture shop.
Finished out "All Star Team Up," then moved on to First Man. The "first man" is Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling), and the movie details the events leading up to the flight of Apollo 11 and how he became the first man on the moon in 1969. He was originally grounded after a series of mishaps, due to his worry about his little daughter's operation. After her death, he accepts a job with NASA and moves his wife Janet (Claire Foy) and son Rick (Gavin Warren) to Houston, where they welcome their second son, Mark. Things go wrong again a few years later when a few friends of his die in a terrible fire in the Apollo 1 mission, then his space craft rolls and he barely makes it through another. He's shaken, and his wife wants him at home...but NASA finds him to not be at fault and selects him to be one of the men who will join the first trip to the moon anyway.
Touching, if slightly melodramatic, account of the US' space program in the 1960's and how Armstrong overcame his own problems to be part of a major moment in history. The visual effects recreating the vastness of space won an Oscar. I also loved the gorgeous electronic score by Justin Hurwitz.
If you prefer more fact than fiction in your science fiction, are interested in the history of space travel or NASA, or fondly remember the moon landing yourself, you may find much to enjoy in this one.
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