Susie has three godmothers, and she and Stephanie are having a tea party for them this afternoon, even as I type. So I have absented myself and am now at the main library bringing this blog up to date. (I had to ask a librarian to unblock the site for me!) I brought along nothing but my diary, a copy of Andrew Vachss’ Only Child (which I am reading for the second time), and a paperback of Nelson Algren’s The Man with the Golden Arm, since I plan to watch my DVD of that movie soon.
My DVD of Se7en came in the mail Friday, exactly one week after I mailed Amazon.com the payment. Now Susie wants to camp out at the mailbox for her American Girl doll to come. (In the end, the final cost was about $200!) I wish she could have earned this doll by saving proof-of-purchase stamps or box tops.
The closest I’ve come to that in recent memory is saving the red caps from Coca-Cola products. As you probably know, I am the Diet Coke equivalent of a chain-smoker, so it didn’t take long to save enough enough red bottle caps to earn prizes. I opted for a year of Esquire, and I’ve received two issues thus far. (The December issue should be arriving before long, and I’m sure it’ll give our letter carrier a hernia.)
They should offer free dialysis for a lifetime as one of the prizes.
For family night, we’re watching the original, 1977 Star Wars. I have it on VHS tape, when Steph and I began our vainglorious (and ultimately abandoned) effort to own all 100 movies on the Motion Picture Association of America’s Top 100 Movies of All Time, but I borrowed the DVD from the library so Susie could see it in all its glory. Here’s a true confession: I saw it once, and only once, when it first came out. I was 14, and I saw it at the Colony Theatre in Marietta. (Another confession: The first movie I lied about my age to see was Saturday Night Fever.) So, for me, it’ll be almost like seeing it again, since it’s been almost 30 years for me.
I am not sure whether the rigamarole I’ve had to go through to get onto LiveJournal here at the library is permanent or not. I am not crying censorship, since I was able to get in. But it is a pain in the butt.