Weekly Roundup

Pretty good week. Eric's car was having problems, and so he took my car and I took an Uber to work a couple of times. It worked out great!

Eric had to pay a lot to get the car fixed, and unfortunately this morning when we tried to start the car, it still seemed to be having problems. It's funny, it seems like every few months, our car has problems. It'll all work out...

In other news, on Thursday morning, I got Eric and I tickets to the 2017 US Figure Skating Championship at the Sprint Center. I was so excited to go, because growing up, Dad would always put figure skating on TV, and I would get distracted from my homework and just watch until it was late and I still had homework to do :)

The weather was beautiful, bright blue sky, and it's always exciting to be around the big buildings in downtown Kansas City early in the day. The Sprint Center is huge, and it reminded me of a baseball stadium. We had a great time watching the figure skating pairs, and Meryl Davis was there to host it. The music selection was great- "I Know You" from Sleeping Beauty, "Firebird Suite" by Stravinsky, and "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina" from Evita, among others. It was a great time!

Today was awesome too, because we went to church for the first time in few weeks. Last week was canceled for the ice storm, and the week before that, we were sick. Sacrament meeting was great, one of the talks was about serving when the Lord calls you to do something, and the other was about how we can find joy and peace when we focus on those around us instead of on ourselves. Great messages :) And we met our class, and that was really cool! They are the nine and ten year olds, but I think they were all ten. It's a great age, because they are smart enough to understand pretty much anything you tell them, but they aren't hormonal yet and "too-cool-to-participate", so they still are willing to engage. We are really happy with the class! And when we were in sharing time with our class, we didn't have to worry about our class members grunting and whining that they wanted to go, they needed water, they had to go to the bathroom, they were hungry, their butts hurt, when could they leave? Or jumping up and hopping around in a circle in the front of the class. No, our kids were good. And they actually sang during singing time! It was like a vacation. 

And it was hilarious to hear the sunbeams in the room next to us... Screaming, pushing against the curtain divider, sticking a sheet of paper through the curtain divider... Eric and I just looked at each other, and leaned back and we like, "Not our problem!" It was fun. 

After church, we had the elders over for dinner, and Eric made pesto tortellini and garlic toast with olive oil and balsamic vinegar to dip the toast in, and a spinach salad. It was great, and the missionaries always give our home such a nice spirit when they visit. 

Anyway, that's all for tonight! Eric has been imitating the breathiness of this kid from this crappy 90's movie (You'll have to set it to 15:04 to start the correct scene. The Blog is setting the scene back a minute or so. It's when he's talking to his parents.)

"I coulda had class... I coulda been a contender! I could have been somebody... Instead of a bum."

Pretty much spot on, right?

Sannah McDonough

Catch up from the past few days

Today was supposed to be Eric's and my first Sunday of teaching the 9 & 10 year olds. We're going to miss the little 3-5 year olds, they were really cute and fun. However, the worst of my cold seemed to hit yesterday, and so I didn't want to go and expose everyone to my illness. Eric, who had been getting better, got sicker again, so he is home today and taking it easy as well. I thought now would be a good chance to write a quick post.

We have recently watched a few movies: Rebel Without a Cause with James Dean, and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp with Roger Livesey, Anton Walbrook, and Deborah Kerr, and Sully, with Tom Hanks. (And Rock A Doodle, which is kind of sad to admit... 😁 )

Rebel Without a Cause was different than I thought it would be. I thought it would involve some guy in a leather jacket who is too cool for school and doesn't follow the rules. Instead it's about a (pretty weird) kid who can't fit in and can't make friends even though he tries, and instead ends up as a target for bullies. Through it all, he tries to maintain his sense of honor, although his situation continues to get worse and worse. There's also an under-running current of inadequate fathers. Overall, a kind of depressing, but interesting film, with quotable lines. ("You're tearing me apart!")

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp was good. It's basically about the life of a British career soldier (played by Roger Livesey) who was accustomed to the old honorable way of waging war, and who learned early in his life that "right is might". Those who fight fairly and with honor win. He befriends a German soldier (played by Anton Walbrook, who later went on to play the impresario in The Red Shoes). Near the end of his life, he sees the rise of the Nazis, and must come to grips with the new way of waging war. Of course, there is a romantic interest in the film, an intelligent and opinionated woman played by a young Deborah Kerr (from The King and I).  Anton Walbrook is one of my all-time favorite actors, and Eric and I both really liked Roger Livesey. Livesey was a British stage actor who was only in a few movies--his home audience didn't enjoy the rough quality of his voice, something Eric and I really liked. He did a phenomenal acting job in this movie, looking very convincing as he aged. (Anton Walbrook's old-man makeup wasn't quite as good.)

And I guess here's the whole movie! We saw the restored version, which if you can get it, I would recommend. The Technicolor in the restored version is among the best of any movie I have ever seen!

We also saw Sully, which was a very satisfying movie about Captain Sullenberger's emergency landing on the Hudson river.  It felt realistic (kind of freaky!), and was not very long (hour and a half), but was just as long as it needed to be. At the end, they had the real passengers and the real Captain Sully there, and he seemed more pleasant and more like a real person than how Tom Hanks had portrayed him. It might have been necessary to have Tom Hanks as sort of distant at first for the story arc, though I'm not sure.

Also we watched Rock a Doodle because Eric had never seen it and I had seen it several times as a kid. It was funny to see Eric making fun of different parts. Something that will always surprise me is Don Bluth's ability to get famous voice actors and regular actors for his movies... Jodi Bensen, Charo, Gilbert Gottfried, Christopher Plummer (Captain Von Trapp!), Jimmy Stewart, Phil Harris, and John Cleese. It makes it seem like the movies will have some credibility! Haha.

Anyway, in other news, Eric and I went sledding yesterday on the hill behind our apartment, and then we went to eat at Grunauer, an Austrian-German restaurant that Eric had a gift card for from Matt for Christmas. It had a really cool, classic atmosphere, with jazz music playing.

I got Pork Schnitzel, which turns out to be a lot like tonkatzu, a Japanese breaded pork cutlet. Then we went out to do some grocery shopping, and got one of our pictures framed. I got Eric a copy of a painting we like at the Nelson for Christmas, The Pearl of Great Price.

On our way home, we tried Jack in the Box's tacos. They were pretty much how people described them. Cheap, but not bad!


Anyway, I think that is all for now. Have a great Sunday!

Snow Day!

My car didn't make it up the hill near my house today because of the snow. I had to turn around and go back home, so here I am! I've had a pretty lazy day. I caught the cold Eric had that kept him home yesterday.

Two days ago I watched scenes from Whiplash, a movie by the same director of La La Land. Eric fast-forwarded some of the parts (it was kind of intense for me), but I thought it was really thought-provoking! Basically, it's about a Jazz drummer who is invited to join one of the best college jazz bands in the country, but he finds out that the director sadistically belittles the students to get the best results from them.

Good music in that movie! Here's a piece called Caravan. 

And then yesterday, Eric and I watched The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, or Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. The whole movie is sung all the way through. It's surprising how quickly you get used to it! I liked it, it had a lot of things going for it visually! The 60's vibe was strong :)

And famously from this movie is this song "I will wait for you". The girl's boyfriend was drafted for the Algerian War for two years... I can relate to the rip-your-heart-out feeling of seeing someone you love leave for two years.

It's so funny, because lately I feel like when I have asked Dad about whether he's seen this movie or that movie (usually something I hadn't heard of before), he's just like "Oh yeah! Of course!"

Like when I was really into The Red Shoes (and I might go into that sometime), I asked him if he had ever seen it. He said "Every student who wanted to be a dancer has seen that movie!" When I texted him last night about whether he had seen The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, he responded "En francaise? Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. I have the video. I, along with every other male French language student was in love with Catherine Deneuve."

This was a movie that I had never heard of until that evening when Eric was talking about it. And Dad has the video! He sure knows a lot. Anyway, poor Mom has had migraines and seizures lately. I hope she gets better!

Now I'm going to try to clean bit before Eric gets home!

-Sannah

Last Day of Christmas Vacation

Today was my last day of Christmas vacation. It started at 7:10 when we woke up to take Laura to Union Station. They still had the Christmas decorations up, so that was cool. We saw her off, then got a chocolate scone and an almond scone, and then went home and played a game of Monopoly. Eric won, but I had a lot of fun! :) Now we're just trying to relax before the day's over.

-Sannah

2016 in Review

The years seem to go so fast now, it is pretty easy for me to remember what has happened this year:

• We took a train to Chicago in April for Eric's birthday, and had a blast going to the museums, the aquarium, seeing the site of the 1893 World's Fair, and sampling different deep-dish pizzas!
• My sister had her first child, a little baby daughter, and my best friend Jenni had her second child, a little baby girl. Several of my other friends had babies this year, and so I am getting a lot of cuteness on Facebook.
• We got to visit Jenni and Jake in Colorado Springs, and had a lot of fun seeing them and doing outdoorsy stuff. 
• I discovered a love of silent comedies. Me favorite movies are probably Charlie Chaplin's, the funniest guy is Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd has very likable movies and looks sort of like my dad when my dad was younger!
• I discovered that I really like the movie "The Red Shoes". Criterion released a great restoration of that firm, and I've probably seen it 7 times in the past 2 months.
• I have one semester left of the paralegal program. Woo!
• Sarah and Matt came for Thanksgiving, and we had so much fun spending time with them and meeting their little baby.

Highlights of the recent Christmas Holiday:

• Had very nice Christmases with Eric's family and my family. 
• My little sister Laura came up to visit for a few days this week. Went shopping, to the Tiny Toy Museum, watched a lot of our movies here, played games, and more. We saw La La Land (great!), and Rogue One (all right). Eric had a great insight after La La Land (It's a spoiler, so I'll post it at the bottom)*
• Made some nice New Year's Eve food. Black Eyed Peas for Luck, Collard Greens for Money, and Ham and Swiss Rolls for deliciousness. 

Trailer for La La Land. When the director first tried to make the movie, they told him to change the leading man from a jazz pianist to a rock star, get rid of the opening and to change the ending. Would have been awful!

Things I'm Looking Forward to in 2017:

• Reading more
• Writing in the blog more, and hopefully writing some hand-written letters (or typed because my handwriting is awful). My only regret is I don't take time (unless it's an assignment) to make the writing very good. There are usually a lot of typos and awkwardly worded things.
• Exercising a bit more (and getting thyroid issues under control!)
• Reading scriptures more
• Getting done with school
• Maybe, just maybe, learning a few songs on the piano

I hope everyone has a great 2017! 

-Sannah

*SPOILER* 

*After La La Land, Laura and I were sad about the ending. Eric and I have been watching a lot of classic films this year, both musical and non-musical, so we were picking up on a lot of references.  (Top Hat, An American in Paris, and Singin' in the Rain for the few right off the top of my head.) Eric said that he thought the ending was symbolic. Mia didn't choose Sebastion. In a way, he represented the "classical" in art (at least Jazz and Film). He had been described as being "stuck in the past", because he saw that although audience taste may change, the audience is not always right, and sometimes their taste changes for the worse. He respected the "pure" Jazz, and recognized that the newly preferred pop-y style was an inferior art form. Mia imagined what life could have been like if she had chosen to be with Sebastian, and although it seemed romantic and possibly better than her current life, the reality was she hadn't chosen to be with him. Similarly, audiences can imagine what things would be like if we had demanded more classically-styled movies: they might be superior to most of the movies we have today, but the reality is we didn't choose that. Hello Dolly was one of the last big classically-styled musical movies, and it did not do well when it was released because audiences wanted the more gritty, realistic films at that time. La La Land hearkens back to the time of the great musicals, but lives well within the present. It invites the audience to reconsider the past without forgetting the things we have learned along the way.