It's Sunday, and I had plans to accomplish a lot of things around the house. My craft table (AKA dining room table) is covered with unfinished St. Patrick's Day card elements. My desk has Memory Works paperwork to be reviewed, classical music notes to be filed, unpaid bills to sort, quotes to add to my quotes file...it's after 6 PM and "John Adams" starts on HBO in an hour, so this blog entry will be the last thing done before then.
Yesterday was a great movie day--I braved the Dallas St. Patrick's Day parade throngs to see "The Other Boleyn Girl" with my dear friend Ruth. Neither of us had been to the Angelika Theater before and we loved not only the surroundings but also the fact that we were two of less than a dozen people at the early showing. The movie is marvelous (note to self: research what happened to Henry's illegitimate son by Mary Boleyn--unless that was a plot device). Both Ruth and I are Tudor buffs and I have adored Natalie Portman for years (another note--research her new line of vegan shoes). After a great lunch at a rather over-priced but still wonderful seafood restaurant (Hook, Line and Sinker at McKinney and Lemmon), I ran a few errands and came home to empty some of the saved programs on my DVR.
I pulled one of the 3 Johnny Depp movies I had recorded--"The Libertine" and thought I would stay with historical, period piece movies. As it not only had my heartthrob Johnny but also John Malkovich (another perennial favorite), I thought it would be a very enjoyable movie. Well--why didn't I remember that Johnny loves off-the-wall characters. Great story (based on a real person) but I was a bit caught off-guard by some of the visuals. I guess I had forgotten some of what is allowed with an "R" rating. Still, I cried at the end and will be researching John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (can anybody see what a nerdy geek I really am?). Okay--so it is not a movie I choose to buy for my collection; perhaps one of the other two on my DVR will be ("Benny and Joon" and "Sleepy Hollow").
Over the past 48 hours, I also cleared a 2-hour History Channel program on Alexander the Great, several Carol Duvall episodes, another History Channel program on Judas Ischariot, and spent 45 minutes on hold with Time Warner Cable to ensure I would have HBO in time for "John Adams" tonight. Do they call that customer service? Yes, thanks to cordless phone technology, I managed to monitor my corned beef on the stove, read thru some e-mail, search the web for paper companies and place a Memory Works order, but still--holding for 45 minutes? My company (my day job is phone customer service) would never stand for those hold times! And, once I got the repair division, the agent could only make an appointment for a technician to come out; he could not/would not send a signal to the box to reset it, saying that I might lose service altogether if he were to do so??????????? So, next Saturday morning will be spent awaiting the TWC repairman.
Lest it look like all I have done is stayed glued to my TV, I must interject here that I read and do paperwork often while emptying the DVR. My craft table is arranged in such a way that I can watch TV and work simultaneously. My TV is on a turntable so it can be repositioned to be seen from the kitchen if I have my contacts in (I only have a 20" screen). I am Blessed with remarkable recall--I needn't watch a documentary to retain much of the information; listening closely is often enough and if I do miss a point or two, a DVR makes it easy to rerun a section of a show. The DVR is probably one of the greatest technological advances of my lifetime.
Oops--it's 6:58, so to HBO I go for now...more musings later.
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