Friday morning shorts

[magid]

The Perfect Man is a fun chick-flick sort of movie, though with the usual issues (apartment size given likely salary, a U-Haul not nearly large enough, stuff like that). A bit funny, technologically reasonably savvy. Fun. And I was pleased to see a trailer for Pride and Prejudice before it. (Thanks to Queue for the pass.)

I just tried a Kudos chocolate granola bar, which was fine, nothing to write home about, not worth actually buying. The descriptor, though, is what got me: "Kudos with Snickers brand chunks". Eh? Peanut butter chips, in other words? I'm still not sure, even after eating it.

Huzzah for thunderstorms. It was gorgeous, though surprising to walk home through, given that it wasn't raining when I got on the T four stops away.

And the plants on my porch are well watered now. The tomato plants have flowers blooming! And everything else is looking reasonably good. It looks like I'll be able to have weekly arugula, basil, chives and pansies for salads :-). And I should figure out something to do with the bountiful sage (I tend to think of it going with poultry, or in stuffing, and that's it.).

eggs, hot peppers, bell peppers, tomatoes, an apple or two, tortillas, maybe some other fruit?
Planned food for Shabbat: bread, pizza, refried beans, green salad, something with the ground turkey that should be cooked (sautee with spinach(/turnip greens) and preserved lemon again?), possibly cornbread and/or mashed neeps

I get to have bugs, snakes, and frogs in my chapters. Pleasing.

I finally read Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family last night. I didn't like it nearly as much as the others; I got the impression it was written far later, and perhaps Sydney Taylor was no longer in the right mood, or something. It was mostly about Ella's dilemma (go on stage or have a quieter life with her Jules, working and singing in a non-professional context), and it just didn't hang together as much as the others, episodic as they were. No one mentions Shabbat (which she's working on), for instance. The other siblings are barely there, except as occasional color, and cousins have completely vanished (though aunts and uncles remain). It doesn't have what I enjoyed about the earlier books, really. I wonder, though, if I'd've liked it better had I read it when younger...

Comments

[fj.livejournal.com]

The Perfect Man is a fun chick-flick sort of movie

I just came from rottentomatoes.com, and all the reviewers hate it. I have to agree that a daughter under an alias chatting up her mother romantically in a chat room is a bit icky.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Put like that, it does sound smarmy. And yes, it went farther than real people would. But it worked in the context of the movie, actually; each got a greater understanding of the other. And the chatting up was more chat than up, really.

off-topic: homemade ice cream

[magid.livejournal.com]

Thought you (and Pinkfish) would be interested in this recipe.

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

I love the All-of-a-Kind Family books!! I rarely meet anyone else who's heard of them! I agree that Ella... was lacking compared to the others, though it's been a long time since I've read it.

I do so miss those books! I must have read them a hundred times growing up (or at least the first one...the others I read often, but not quite as often). No exaggeration.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I realized over Shabbat that I have only two of the first four, which I suspect I'll have to remedy (finding used copies if possible, since the cover art will be the 'right' ones). I loved them too, though I sometimes cringed in sympathy when they ate the wrong dinner, for instance, or something Henny did...

I didn't think they were so obscure that no one's heard of them. I mean, what other Jewish kid books had such great girls in them? :-)

[(Anonymous)]

I thought _Ella_ was different, too. My copy also had a photograph rather than the drawn illustrations on covers the first four. But I was so pleased that _Downtown_ (if that was the fourth one -- wasn't it?) the end of my beloved series that I wasn't too upset, just observant of the differences. The illustrations inside were different too. I think what bothered me more than it focusing on Ella -- after all, that was the title -- is that there was _Ella_ but then that was the final one, no _Henny of . . . _ or _Sarah of . . . _ and so forth.

[equinoctial.livejournal.com]

Oh, I really miss those books. I should reread them all. I used to penny-dust like, is it Sarah? And I still vividly remember the scenes where they bite the heads off chocolate babies (or is that Betsy-Tacy and Tib?). Oh and when the library book gets lost@ That still makes me cringe too.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Sarah penny-dusted, but all the rest of them had a chance to, also. And it's Charlotte and Gertie with the chocolate babies (and mixed crackers, and other snacks in bed). *nod* about the library book, though that one somehow never struck me as hard as the eating of the other family's dinner, for some reason.

[magid.livejournal.com]

*nod*
I just figured that if Ella was going to be the last one, then there should be more 'wrapping up' about the rest of the family, too. Plus, I wondered when it was written, because there's that whole career/relationship question that for some reason struck me as much more modern. (And improbable, somehow, that she'd end up in vaudeville. It still doesn't seem like 'what happened next' to me.)

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe Taylor died before the series could be finished. That's what I always figured.

Yes, you are right, it was different, didn't seem exactly like what would happen next. I never thought of it that way.

[(Anonymous)]

I often use the story of Sarah refusing to eat the soup and then having trouble giving in, and how her mother tried to in the end make it easier for her, as an example or analogy of many life situations today.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I hadn't realized for years that Ella even existed.
I was thinking about it more today, and even Bill and Grace, who'd naturally appear in an Ella-focused book, don't really appear much.

The way Ella always organized things like plays and such, she struck me as someone who'd be happy to have a family, as long as she could have some fun hobbies and some non-family-based friends.

[magid.livejournal.com]

The part I always found odd about that story was that for me, having meat was a rare thing, so it would've been no vegetables, no meat, etc.

But yeah.