I overslept this morning and just barely made it into work on time. Good thing I ended up spending most of my 8 and 1/2 hour shift cleaning. Thankfully, this time, I had plenty of help from the new baggers. A sweet college girl helped me clean up a nasty broken bottle of teryaki sauce, and a college boy did the sweeping and wiping down later in the day.
As I waited to clean the men's bathroom around 4:30, the entire Acme suddenly plunged into total darkness! I had no idea what happened. It wasn't stormy outside. The weather was mildly cloudy and windy, but not rainy. They got the generators up and running, but nothing else. Thankfully, it happened about a half-hour before my shift ended, and I was almost done with the bathrooms anyway. I spent the last 15 minutes talking to a couple of co-workers in the back. They were trying to cover and salvage the meat freezers as I hurried out.
Changed, took out the trash, and came back inside as clouds gathered on the horizon and the wind became fierce. Put on Match Game while eating leftovers for dinner. Goofy Dick Martin, sassy Debralee Scott, and sweetly silly Joyce Bulifant joined Gene and the regulars for a week in 1977; here, they got to admire the carnation a woman in the audience gave him.
After dinner, I headed into the back room. I wanted to use those plastic bins I bought yesterday for items I intend to eventually donate to Goodwill, freeing up boxes for the move. Ended up keeping two of my Effanbee dolls and a pair of metal and wood autumn garlands that I may be able to use after all. Squeezed the remaining dolls and their boxes, my previous backpack, a pair of kids' badminton rackets I never use, and a few odds and ends into one bin. The other held most of the photo albums I no longer need and the box with most of the Sailor Moon dolls. (I found the box for Wicked Lady.) That did indeed free up at least four boxes, including one big one. So did packing most of the American Girl dolls' clothing in the bag with the Cabbage Patch Kids outfits.
Switched to Sale of the Century as I finished up organizing. It was a close race between the two guys through most of the episode...but first the younger guy bought two Instant Bargains, then the other got a big 25 dollar card in the Fame Game. The latter ended up bursting through the speed round and winning by a large margin. He opted to come back tomorrow and try for a piano to give to his wife.
Finished the night after a shower checking out something I'd never heard of online. Kanopy had a series of German fairy-tale films made in the 1950's and dubbed over with narration in English by the BBC. I tried one of the stories I'd never heard of before, The Singing, Ringing Tree. It's sort of a cross between the Grimm Brothers' King Thrushbeard and Beauty and the Beast. A handsome prince (Eckart Dux) wishes to win the heart of a lovely princess (Christel Bodenstein), but she's haughty and spoiled. She sends him after the titular singing tree. He gets it from a nasty little dwarf (Richard Kruegar) after he says he can turn him into a bear if she doesn't love him. She's so obnoxious, she can't hear the tree sing. He runs off and turns into a bear at the dwarf's magic kingdom.
Desperate to make her love him, he breaks into the garden and carries her off. She rages angrily, refusing to help out or lay on the ground, claiming she's too pretty for all that. The dwarf curses her too, making her look as ugly on the outside as she does on the inside. Horrified, she finally has to learn to be kind, both to the bear and to the magical animals in the kingdom, in order to restore her beauty and his human form.
This was really interesting. I've never seen a fairy tale movie done in the country where many of them originated. The color was exquisite, brilliant and glowing in all colors of the rainbow. The rest of the production was a little stranger. The huge, obviously rubber goldfish apparently scared several generations of German and English kids, and the bear suit is pretty goofy, too. I do like that it's the princess who eventually saves the bear in the end after she discovers the dwarf's deception, and how she has to become beautiful on the inside for her outer beauty to shine through.
If you're interested, there's several more at Kanopy, including one based around the Grimm's fairy tale The Golden Eggs that I may try later this week.
Oh, and while the Love Boat Match Game marathon did run, it could only do so with no live chat. I'll watch it another time. Things should go much better tomorrow at 1, when they'll be doing the second of a three-part marathon revolving around the show's all-time biggest winners and most memorable contestants.
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