As I sit in my warm living room writing this, it's 8 whole degrees below zero.
Last night, we packed air conditioner foam into the gap in our sliding doors. That door doesn't have a 'draft' it has a gaping hole, allowing frigid winter air to pour into the house like ice water. Well, a little duct tape and foam and we've solved that problem! Every year, it's hard to believe how much colder winter is than summer. It seems crazy that humans live here.
On the other hand, there's something really lovely about all the snow and days that end at 4:30 in the afternoon, allowing you to put back on the jammies you just took off at noon...
Or maybe that's just me.
My plan today is to get some shopping done then spend the afternoon filling orders and making Chocolate Pecan Crinkle cookies. These cookies need to go straight from the oven into the cold, to ensure they are crispy and chewy so the extreme cold is the best time to bake them.
Zack gave us tickets to see A Christmas Carol at the Guthrie for Christmas! The show was Sunday night and it was fabulous!! We went downtown early enough to get some dinner first. Our plan was to grab a bite at Kramarczuk's, a Ukrainian deli downtown that makes the world's best brats. It's cafeteria style, so we wouldn't have to worry about making curtain. Unfortunately, Kramarczuk's is closed on Sunday night. Plan B was our very favorite place in town, J.D. Hoyt's , which is also right in the neighborhood of the Guthrie. As it was, we didn't need to worry about time, we'd given ourselves plenty. As I ate my catfish sandwich, I said to Jay "When Hoyt's is you plan B, that's a great plan."
We arrived at the theater with a half hour to spare. There's a parking ramp right across the street but the trouble with parking there is you get caught in the rush afterwards. We lucked out and found a meter right around the corner and parked.
Jay had never been inside the Guthrie since it moved from the west end of downtown to its current location on the river. I'd been there many times but never to see a show until last year. A Christmas Carol was my fourth show there since last December, when Zack took me to see Noises Off!
We had time to wander around a bit, see the two on site restaurants, the gift shop and the endless bridge, which is more commonly referred to as the bridge to nowhere. it definitely ends.
Our seats were on the second level, stage left. I don't think there's a bad seat in the house.
The sets were magnificent, the costumes muted and beautiful and the production was top notch. The weak link was the access who played Scrooge. She knew all her lines but that's about all she did. I know there are actresses in the twin cities who could make you forget they aren't an old man but this gal wasn't one of them. She didn't even try. She was made up as an old man but she did absolutely nothing with her posture, voice or mannerisms to suggest 'Scrooge'. Having just spent three years of my life watching the Irishman, I know there's a lot more to differentiate between a 30 or 40 year old and a geriatric than wrinkles and gray hair.
But the rest of the show was so good, I didn't let her distract me. Jay thoroughly enjoyed the show but I think she distracted him a bit. He loved the woman who played King Herod in the last production of Jesus Christ Super Star that we saw. She was better.
Speaking of The Irishman, that movie sucked. I know it's going to win awards and kudos but it sucked. It's three and a half hours long and doesn't have more than 90 minutes of story. Also, using CGI to make the principals look younger didn't work. Oh, they looked younger than 70, but their faces never looked younger than 50, which was weird when they were supposed to be 30 and their voices, posture, gestures and eyes were always as old as the hills. The movie would have been easier to watch had Scorsese cast young actors to play the characters in their youth but it still would have been too damn long and boring as a chest cold. My sister's review was "Martin Scorsese has made his movie, again."
The only way anyone could think this was a great mob movie is if they'd never seen The Godfather, which is great. And btw, we've all seen DeNiro at 30. We know what he looked like and it wasn't like the puffy, smooth, weird looking apple head we got in the Irishman. And who thought it made sense to cast an Italian as an Irish hit man??? And I can't be the only one to think DeNiro is the most over rated actor of his generation. Denzel would have been better; I'd have believed Denzel was a 30 year old Irishman. He's that good.
Now I have to get on with my day; I've only got till 4:30 before I'm ready to put my jammies back on and start binging bad Christmas movies.