Frannie's eSpace

My New Year's Resolution

I'm going to learn how to knit this year.

What Women Want

What Women Want was on TV tonight. What a funny movie! I wonder if men think it's as funny as women do. Actually, women don't come off very impressively during the movie, always thinking silly or worried thoughts. Even so, some of the scenes are hilarious: 1) the scene where Mel's assistants' thoughts are blank (!!!) 2) the scene where Bette Midler tells Mel that knowing what women think is the best gift he could ever hope for, and  3) some of the many scenes when Mel realizes that most women think he's a jerk.

Actually, Mel does progressively become a better man during the movie, and by the end of it he's far from being a jerk.

Two four-day weekends!

I made the most of my vacation this year by taking both Christmas Eve and New Years Eve off. Since Christmas and New Years are on Tuesdays this year, it effectively gave me two four-day weekend! Yippee!

Next year, because of Leap Year, Christmas and New Years will not fall on the dreaded Wednesday, but on a Thursday, so I'll have an opportunity for two more easy four-day weekends. I'm already looking forward to it!

National Treasure: Book of Lists

As  we've done in years past, we spent Christmas afternoon at the movies, and so did a lot of other families. You'd be amazed.

Our movie of choice was National Treasure: Book of Lists. Don't ask me to explain the plot, because I didn't get a lot of the subtleties of it. In fact, I must say that I don't even know exactly how the family's good name was vindicated at the end, although it had something to do with discovering a lot of gold under Mount Rushmore. But, not to get bogged down in details, the movie was chock full of thrilling scenes: flying a remote-controlled helicopter around Paris' Statue of Liberty, sneaking into Buckingham Palace and the Oval Office, "kidnapping" the president, and of course the finale at Mount Rushmore. I kept thinking during the movie that none of this is plausible, but the main characters ran into just enough trouble to keep it real.

National Treasure is worth seeing at the big screen, and if you can explain how the city of gold underneath Mount Rushmore cleared Thomas Gates' family name, will you let me know?

Soup Tip

Although I don't claim to be a cook, I do have a tip for soup that prevents it from turning to mush by the second or third day. I discovered it by accident this evening while reheating last night's chicken soup. I had to cook the rice separately last night because there wasn't enough rice to mix in with the soup. We then spooned the rice in our bowls and added the soup on top. Good news is that tonight, the soup still had a good consistency, even after sitting in the fridge all day. The rice had not soaked up all the liquid turning it to goulash. I'm going to separate the rice (and noodles) from soup from here on out!

Hmm, I wonder if I should patent this process?

Love Actually is All Around Us

My favorite Christmas movie came on last night: Love Actually. The title comes from the first two words of the movie's theme: Love actually is all around us. It's set right before Christmas and tells the tales of several couples who are either falling in love, trying to stay in love, or being burned by love. Lots of good little plots that are at least loosely interrelated.  For example, while the Prime Minister is falling in love with his catering manager, the Prime Minister's sister is trying to keep her marriage safe from a sexy secretary. The sexy secretary lives next door to the catering manager. The catering manager pulls the Prime Minister along to the same Christmas pageant that his sister's children are in. There are several more connections too, but you get the message. The sum of the plots truly is greater than each on standing on its own; and just a few of them are not tied up nicely by the end of the movie. But, I guess that's the way love is actually in real life.

The music is good too!

New kind of mascara

If you are make-up challenged, particularly with eye liner and mascara (like I am!), you should try a new mascara that I picked up at Eckerd yesterday: Lash Stylist by Maybelline. Instead of using a brush, it uses a little bitty comb. It goes on much neater; you can actually comb your lashes; and there's no big brush to get in the way. It's about $7.00, and since there's not a brush for the mascara to get gunked up in, I spec the mascara will last a few weeks longer than regular mascara.

For 7 bucks, it's definitely worth trying to see if it'll work for you!

Party survivor

I survived the three parties. They were actually a lot better than I thought. At Tuesday night's party, we sat at the table with the banjo player, who turned out to be entertainer for the night. He was very interesting and had even "picked" with Earl Scruggs! And he could do the Donald Duck talk like no one else I've ever heard (including Martin!). Thursday night's party was at the Piedmont Driving Club, and I'd never been there before. (It's very elegant) Plus, I had fun catching up with Sallie. We both lamented how we'd lost touch with so many friends from college, and I decided that I'm going to quit using the excuse that "I'll wait until I retire" to stay in touch with people! Last night's party at the Tabernacle was fun. It was quite a bash, with a lot of "important" people in our midst... not that we knew who they were. Bottom line: Charles and I were actually with the hip crowd for a few hours! The funniest thing about the evening, however, is that I'd spent $6.50 on a nice silky pair of "thigh-high" panty hose and when we were walking from our car to the party, one of them started slipping down and dropped to my ankles! I had to pull them off and go hose-less for the whole evening. Speaking of socks (well sort of), Charles has a funny story too: a lady next to him tipped over a glass of wine. It hit his shoes, and his socks ended up soaking wet!

Hmm... I'm debating whether to return the stockings or not.

Party glut

Due to bad timing, I have 3 parties to go to between now and Friday night. That's three out of the next four evenings, which is about two too many! I am not a party gal; I hate party food; and two of the parties are on a "school night." Bah humbug!

I need to think positively. Tomorrow night's Square Dancing party is next door at Peachtree Presbyterian Church. (no commute!) Thursday night's party begins at 6:30, so if I'm lucky I'll be home by 8:30. Friday night's party will have a silent auction, and Broadway tickets are among the items being auctioned. I guess the most positive aspect of all is that I can sleep in on Saturday! I'm already looking forward to Saturday morning! And, I may not say a word to anyone the whole day!

Of course, after this week, I won't have another party to go to for probably several months. 

Here's a Fun Game

Ever wonder what to get when you go out to eat? Eat This, Not That, a recent book, has put out an online game to raise awareness. Here's the link:

http://www.menshealth.com/eatthis/

I didn't do that well, when I played, and usually I can detect a fat gram a mile away! However, it is fun to see foods stack up to each other: for example, French toast vs Belgian waffles!