I also got my schedule at this point. In good news, slightly more hours, and the weekends are later. In bad news, still not enough hours. You'd think I'd be getting more, since a lot of people are off for Veteran's Day, but it has been pretty quiet lately. It probably won't start picking up until next weekend, when people start thinking Thanksgiving.
Hurried out next to go grocery shopping. Stopped at the A&A Pretzel Shop for a quick lunch. Since it was so late, I ate my two pretzels and stuffed cheese steak pretzel at Newton Lake Park, on a black iron picnic table near Beachwood Avenue. It was still crazy-windy, but it was also a little warmer, in the lower 60's, and partly sunny. Not too bad for what will likely be my last picnic in the park of the year.
Started off at the Westmont Acme this time. I mainly needed to restock soda (Bloom Pop and Popwell were on sale) and yogurt. Found a bag of Hershey's Pumpkin Spice Latte Nuggets on clearance for $1.32. Made Good bars were on sale as well, and I had an online coupon for the Choboni yogurt. Grabbed two bags of granola and the generic mixed-fruit jelly.
Sprouts wasn't much busier than the Acme had been. Instead of digging into the dried fruit bins, I grabbed plastic containers of fall-themed lemon curd mango slices and apple fritter-flavored dried cranberries. Also picked up coconut milk, soda, sparkling water, and the buy one, get one half-off cookie deal (just went with ginger molasses this time).
After I got home, put everything away, and talked to a friend, I watched two more Storybook International episodes on Tubi. The Japanese tale "The Mysterious Woodcutter" has a shy woodsman saving a young girl from being kidnapped by ruffians. The girl is besotted with him, but he has his own reasons for avoiding her attentions.
"Simpleton Peter" is a sweet, gentle boy who just can't seem to do anything right. When his mother becomes sick, and then dies, he goes to an old woman to ask her for intelligence. She asks him three riddles. When he can't answer, he thinks he'll never be clever...but then he meets a beautiful girl who is intelligent herself, and realizes that being smart isn't everything. There's also being accepted for what you are.
Switched to Match Game '76 during dinner. Buzzr is now on the week with Fannie Flagg, Bill Daily, and squeaky-voiced soap star Bennye Gatteys, This was also the week that Richard announced he was hosting a brand new game show, a little thing called Family Feud...
Finished the night with The Pit and the Pendulum. I enjoyed The Raven so much last month, I thought I'd try another Vincent Price/AIP horror extravaganza. This one gets more into genuine horror turf and somewhat closer to the original Edgar Allen Poe short story. In 1547 Spain, Englishman Francis Barnard (John Kerr) visits the ancestral castle of his brother-in-law Nicholas Medina (Vincent Price), trying to figure out what happened to his sister Elizabeth (Barbara Steele). Apparently, she died in the castle's torture chamber of a massive heart attack, or sheer fright. Someone, however, is stalking Nicholas. Someone is making him think Elizabeth is still alive...or is she? What really happened to her in that torture chamber? And how will Nicholas react when maybe she's not quite as dead as he thinks?
While this uses some elements of The Raven (including the dead wife not being so dead), it's otherwise spookier and more eerie. Roger Corman may have been a cheapskate, but he knew his scares. This is genuinely spooky, with Price pitch-perfect as the man driven to madness by childhood trauma and his wife seemingly having come back to life. While this isn't as bloody as some other horror movies of the 60's and 70's, it does have an eerie elegance all its own (and explores an era in history that doesn't come up often in historical fiction).
Oh, and it started raining somewhere around midnight and has rained off and on ever since.
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