As much as I would have liked to, I did not sleep late this morning. I had the dishwasher to load and I wanted to get the Christmas gifts off the hearth. Well, our Christmas gifts, anyway. We still have three gifts that haven't been distributed. Hoping to catch up with their owners at Anachrocon in two weeks.

I had Today on for Snowy and noticed how cold it's supposed to be this weekend: down to 19°F on Sunday night, which is Arctic for Georgia. The best remedy for cold is hot soup, so—yeah, I drove out to Sprouts for Italian wedding soup (plus two muffins for dessert, some beef bits, and Inka corn). I remember last time James wanted another serving, so I got two of the 32-ounce containers instead of one.

Once I had the soup seat-belted in (long story which involves how the cashiers stacked the containers), I crossed the intersection to the Prado and went to Barnes & Noble. I had a coupon and wanted to pick up Death Comes to London, the sequel to Death Comes to the Village, which I finished last week. I paged the newest Derrick Storm book; you know, the ones that are supposedly written by "Richard Castle." I've got some of the Nikki Heat books, because I know they're just Castle stories in disguise, but I've skipped the Storms because I'm not interested in spy stories. Still, I had to laugh looking through it, because there are still multiple Castle mentions: a military man named Captain Roy Montgomery, an orphan named Katya Beckotva (or something like that), a reference to an Espi gadget, and his dad is even a spy.

Then I brought the food home, set out to walk Tucker—and there was James, home early. We decided to go out for Valentine's Day tonight, to "avoid the Christmas rush," so to speak. We went to Atkins Park, whose food we've only eaten during Taste of Smyrna. They're pretty expensive, but we figured we'd have a treat. We had the "drunken pork," which is small, tender pork medallions with a luscious sauce containing bourbon, which comes with cheese grits that are more the consistency of mashed potatoes. With the sauce the grits are edible. :-) It's a nice place; we sat in the main dining room, with the wood paneling, and a crackling fireplace, and enjoyed our meal. We both had enough left over to have a little lunch for next week. Glad we didn't come this weekend because they are having an Oysterfest, complete with blaring music.

James was feeling tired, so we went straight home. I decided to put on Addie and the King of Hearts, which was just officially released to DVD (I had a copy I got off iOffer a couple of years ago) along with The Easter Promise. I love The House Without a Christmas Tree and The Thanksgiving Treasure, and The Easter Promise is pretty good, but every time I watch King of Hearts I am disappointed that the series of stories ended on such a low note. Everything in the story is by-the-numbers: Addie's jealousy, her crush, James' involvement with a woman totally unlike his first wife, the handsome teacher who encourages Addie but turns out to be engaged. No one seems to have his/her heart in the performance, especially Jason Robards, who was so magnificent as the grieving man of the first story. This touches on a lot of emotional issues with Addie reacting to her dad paying attention to another woman after thirteen years and her very real and eventually hurtful crush on her substitute teacher, but none of the emotions seem real. Ladd's performance is the most lively, but slightly overdone. I wish they had used the story the way the book arranged it, except for including Irene's story of her past from the television version, and recast Cora Sue and Billy Wild (especially since Addie seemed at a loss without a best friend to bounce her emotions off). And the sets look cheap; if you notice, the door to the living room is always half-closed because they never rebuilt the actual room, and even the school cloakroom lacks the richness of the one in the first story. Not the best send-off for an otherwise excellent set of films.

Then we finished off by staying up too late; my fault, as I was revising a graphic I want to use for a story I haven't written yet.

Labels: books, food, television, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:39:00 PM

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