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| Settling in for movie night |
I just had a great weekend. On Saturday morning the snow was coming down and I enjoyed being out under the cloudy skies. The EFT group was excellent as usual, and on the way to the meeting I visited Bulldog Bakery at Belmont and Elston. I had a cupcake and a chocolate croissant. MMmmmm…good stuff. Then I walked the rest of the way to the meeting. I love gray snowy days.
My husband and I had John Belushi night: I made “cheeseborgers” for dinner and then we watched The Blues Brothers. I’d never seen it, but Bob had it memorized. I liked it a lot because it was set in Chicago, had great music, and I love jokes about Catholics. My favorite part was when Elwood and Jake visited Sister Mary Stigmata, to whom they refer as “The Penguin.” I also liked the Aretha Franklin performance and found it funny that the man she’s singing to still walks out even after her powerful anthem. Sometimes it’s like that.
On Sunday I sat down with our finances and got a grip on what Bob and I are now bringing home in 2013 and how we need to adjust our budget. Like most Americans, we’ve been regularly adjusting our budget since 2007 because money just seems to evaporate out of our checking account. We want to keep supporting the economy with vacations and purchases, but our paychecks and rising bills just aren’t cooperating. As frustrating as it is, at least I know everyone is in the same boat, and it felt good to work with hard numbers and know where we are.
On Sunday I also did some good walking and stretching (felt great), and plenty of napping with the dog. I caught up with my sister on the phone and then Bob actually made it home from work in time to watch most of the Superbowl. The 49ers lost, but that’s okay. I’m not enough of a fan for it to really matter (sorry, San Francisco). At the end of the evening, I started a good book called The Losing Role.
It was just an excellent weekend all around! Life was good.
[UPDATE: this evening happened a bit over two months before my then-husband ended our marriage.]
I'm glad I could help. The Blues Brothers movie is such a tribute to Chicago and its many musical traditions that I think it should be taught (at least in Chicago) with notes so kids know who all those guest musicians are. And Carrie Fisher. I'm glad I watched it with my husband, who is Mr. Chicago, because he explained a lot to me and pointed out musicians I would have missed.
Jesus Hubert Christ on a craker!!! I've been trying for YEARS to remember where I got that image from, calling the sisters 'penguins'!
I used to teach at a beautiful Catholic university in Miami Shores–Barry University, and of course, the paradiasical green tropical campus was crawling with nuns and priests, as well as non religious faculty like me, but everybody had to pay strict respect to the nuns. This was in 2001-2003. Most of the nuns wore regular clothes with small indications of their nun status and nun super powers pinned to their clothes, and some of the nuns wore special tropical robes and hats that were very ecclesiastical but thin for the tropical weather. Full robed nuns who could nevertheless run and jump and fight evil.
I started calling the nuns 'the penguins' behind their backs and everybody thought that was so funny–I think there must have been an added humor in it that arose from translation (found in translation) because the Brazillian, Cuban, and Argintinian students and faculty laughed particularly hard at the image.
But I kept telling people, no, I didn't make that up, I got the image from somewhere. I just couldn't remember where. Just last week I was talking to my students at Wayne State here in Detroit and mentioning 'the penguins' and again I wished I could remember where…THE BLUES BROTHERS…one of my favorite movies from when I was young! I love the scene that Carrie Fisher appears in, in a cameo, as Belushi's ex girlfriend who is about to kill him and he seduces her and gets away. And the big dance scene with Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin and the huge choreography of dancing in the Chicago streets (which by the way I think was ripped off to a slight extent by "Ferris Beuller's Day Off" another Chicago film). As long as i am excitedly babbling, I always loved Chicago films. Another is Tom Cruise's "Risky Business."
Ok. I'm done.