On a Clear Day

"What song brings you the best memories?" was David's question for today's Weekend Wandering. I couldn't have told you until I read the responses already posted. Retired and Crazy sent us to listen to "I Can See Clearly Now" and that reminded me of how much a Barbra Streisand movie had caught my imagination. Way back in 1970 I fell in love with "On a Clear Day". That movie was so exciting! It took me through a lot of different mindsets. I was young, just into college, and kind of identified with Daisy Gamble (lead female role). It appealed to my love of history, of the dramatic (Melinda Tentrees was certainly that!), and a curiosity about psychic phenomena. It was also funny, romantic, wonderfully musical, and inspiring. Best of all, it opened me up to dreams of being more than I thought I was.

When looking for a video, I couldn't find a decent clip from the movie. That's okay, I like this one, from Barbara's 1994 concert, better. She took the time to talk about the meaning behind the song. That appeals to me. What she thinks about it also fits with what I've been learning about life and happiness these past few years. So you won't see Barbara in that cute orange dress and white hat running through the gardens. Instead you'll see the mature, happier, and wiser woman she has grown to be. Which is wonderful, even if (as she said) it took her many hours on a sofa and a ton of money to get there. :) Guess which movie just moved to the top of my shopping list?

Enjoy!

For Sandi

Sandi McBride and I found sisterhood in our love of the same music and movies. Yesterday she posted about her love of Mel Brooks movies and Madelynn Kahn singing "I'm Tired" in "Blazing Saddles". I've enjoyed that movie several times so I went looking for a video of the song on trusty old YouTube. Success! Enjoy!!!

All Things Harry Potter

It was surprising how few people were at the 6:30 showing of Harry Potter on Thursday. My friend Marion and I had the entire row we were sitting on to ourselves. The sum of the rest of the folk there didn't exceed 20 I don't think. Perhaps it was the time of day. I liked the movie but not as much as I did the 4th and definitely not as much as the 1st and 2nd. This one has too much thrown into too quick a time frame for all that it runs over two hours. Not enough story development. I hope the next one is better.

Barnes & Nobel, on the other hand, was totally packed. It was standing room only. You couldn't walk without running into someone or stepping over them. The areas where you wanted to stand next to a shelf and look at its contents were filled with groups of young folk sitting on the floor and chatting with friends. Everyone seemed in pretty good spirits. So I got my ticket and stood in line till after 1:00 AM to buy the last Harry Potter book in this series. This has been such a huge success for Ms. Rowling that I suspect her fans will demand another smash hit soon. What she will do for an encore I have no idea but I hope it is as good as the past 7 books have been. I'm sure I'm not alone in wondering if she will do a sequel. The cover picture you see up there is the British cover. I think it looks better than the American one. Wish I knew why publishers put out different covers for different countries.

And now, I'm taking my new book, my cookie (chocolate chip) and heading off to bed where I hope the cat and the sun don't wake me. G'night all.

Just couldn't stay away

Yesterday I said I would wait for the lines to clear before seeing Spider-man 3. Well, that didn't happen (sheepish grin). Instead I found an excuse to drive past the theater and saw that there were no lines. So I went to see if the show was sold out and the cashier told me there were plenty of seats available. I guess advance ticket sales are not as popular as theaters would like. So I bought a ticket and ended up with a seat at the end of the best row in the house. Yay!

Spider-man 3 was great! I loved the interactions between him and his lady love. He grows so much emotionally during this story that it is heart warming. There is plenty of interaction around forgiveness too. Also the good vs. evil theme is mixed in with all of that. It is a wonderful movie and the best of the three.

The were two downsides to seeing it. The movie is a bit long, 2 hours 19 minutes. Theaters don't do intermissions anymore, so by the time it was ending I was frantic for a trip down the hall. So were quite a few other fans. Also, I don't like that it cost more to get a medium soda and one package of candy than it did to see the movie. This wasn't always the case. When I was a little girl you could see a movie for a quarter, soda was a dime, and a candy bar cost a nickel. Since my allowance was fifty cents this worked out well for me. I had money left over for the rest of the week. Even with inflation counted in today's prices are bad. So, I'm thinking that in the future I won't buy theater food. Their prices are plain old highway robbery and worse than the gas stations that have prime spots.

Bye-Bye Spring Break

The week has passed. Tomorrow I arise bright and early to go back to work. I can't decide if the past week has been a break or not. Sure, I was off work. But I had plenty of school work to catch up on and several errands that had been waiting. Not all of it got done.

The school work is partially done. I got two short papers written. Now I need to start researching the 2 big papers. Said research is partly done but I still need to organize it and get my thoughts in order. I looked at the course schedule and found that I have another week before the test (open book). Whew!

The errands got divided up over the week. There was a dental checkup, a visit to the pastoral counselor, and my car went to the shop for its safety inspection plus oil change. When I got home I took the time to renew the vehicle registration so I am set for the next year.

This coming week is early release for 3 of the 5 work days. Last year the aids stayed till the end of the regular work day even though there wasn't a whole bunch to do. I have visit #2 with the counselor on Tuesday, so I need to leave a little early. I'll try to skip lunch and thus avoid any shortage of hours.

One of the fun things I did this past week was go to see Pan's Labyrinth. While I liked the movie, I was a little confused by some of it. It shows in rather realistic fashion what it was like to live in Spain during the end of the Franco period. That's pretty horrific. You get to see people get hurt, tortured and generally mistreated all because they were born peasants. The movie also has pretty neat fantasy scenes as the young girl the movie centers around goes through her trials to prove she is the fairy princess the faun claimed she was. What confused me was that I was never sure if the girl's entries into the Labyrinth had a parallel in the real world of brutality. The movie didn't turn out the way I expected it to, so there is a surprise ending if you go watch it. (g) I recommend this one. It is a nicely done movie and won several academy awards.

News bits

The freeze in south Texas is over and things are getting back to normal. School/work for me started an hour late and the classes for the kids had a bit of a confusing focus. Instead of shortening every class the principal decided to just pick up where we would have been so school started in the middle of 2nd period. The next day was advisory schedule but one team wanted to make up for lost time so they tried to send the kids to their regular classes instead. Wow...mutiny? or a practical approach to the schedule problems caused by the ice? You decide.

On the feel good side, I got to start Thursday by doing Morning Prayer. It turned out that I was the first officiant since Monday morning. Yeah! And the church felt good. I even had time to do a much more thorough service because I had an extra hour to get to work. So I am very happy with that.

My friend, the one with the new home, and I went by his old apartment complex and looked for his cat. We didn't find her but the complex manager said she had been seen around a certain building and he went over there and looked. He left fliers which had his number on them and described the cat as a Torbie. That was an interesting term. Seems she has tortoise coloring but is also more of a Tabbie in that she has very little white thrown in. Her coat actually looks like someone took all the tortoise colorings and just mixed all the colors together and got an almost spiky appearance in the hair. No spots...just totally mixed colors so that the hair color is not even mottled but more of a blend. Back to the locating of the cat, the manager promised that if she saw her again she would grab her and hold her till she could contact my friend. So I have some hope for the cat's survival.

Yesterday one of the teachers had me show the class a movie while she went to an ARD meeting. We watched 8 Below. I'd never seen this movie but was so fascinated with it that I couldn't leave it even though class was over and it was almost time to go home. It is based on a true story and the concern that the owner of the team of sled dogs has for his "left behind" team is truly heart warming. The things the dogs survive is chilling. I definitely need to add this to my DVD collection. I have to admit that I didn't see the tail end of the video but once I knew that the dogs and their owner got reunited I was ok to go clock out. One of the outstanding features, at least for me, is that the movie shows true pack behavior of the animals when they are surviving on their own. This makes it a good teaching tool. My friend who was anxiously waiting for me to give him a lift home teased me about almost crying over the movie. It's true. I did almost cry. And I was thrilled and excited at the end when they got back together. So if you love animal/human interaction stories this is a good one to watch.