A quiet enough day

Work was quiet enough. I got my write-offs all prepared for Monday.

I was SO glad when I got off I didn't have a damn thing to do. The plan was to go home, dig out some of my "magic elixir" cough syrup from when I had the flu this Spring, and go to BED.

This cough medicine is strong stuff. Usually, I could go to my doctor with my head in a basket and she'd tell me to take a Tylenol. But last Spring she really came through for me. When I went to get my prescriptions filled, the pharmacist came out and said "Mr. Shumate, we have a problem with this prescription. I think your doctor's dosage listed is too high. I'm going to call her about it." I was like whatever. Well my doctor is a very assertive woman who is not used to being Contravened. I guess when he called her she let him hold it. When he came back, he said he was leaving the prescription as written, but he still thought the dosage was too high, and advised me to take less. The prescription was for 1-2 teaspoons every 12 hours! He advised me to take only 1/2 a teaspoon, since this medicine could cause respiratory suppression in too high a dose. Frankly I was skeptical. I'm a big guy, and 1/2 a teaspoon didn't seem like much. Besides the fact that my ribs were sore from coughing at the time. So I took a teaspoonful, laid down, and woke up like 11 hours later, thinking "Wow, I must have really been wiped out." I took my medicines again, and slept for another 10 or so hours. I didn't make the connection until the third dose, when I woke up actually catching my breath. The penny eventually dropped, and I was like "Hmmmm, maybe I better cut back on this stuff for a bit." So basically, this is like the anti-Jim-Croce medicine. Instead of time in a bottle, it's time eaten by a bottle. But it sounded just like what I needed tonight.

But I had to eat something first. Between the food day at work yesterday and the Lipton cup-o-noodles I had eaten for dinner last night (at Olive Garden), I felt like I had been eating crap all week. What I wanted was a nice big healthy, innovative, crunchy salad. And what better place to get it than Whole Foods, right? I thought they had built one closer to my house, but when I got there it was a Fresh Market. Which is fine. Unfortunately what I wanted was a really cool salad, like the ones they make at Publix. I was thinking they'd have something even better at the Fresh Market, but I was wrong. Their salad selection was actually kind of pitiful. I kind of wandered aimlessly around the store for a while, but really couldn't find anything I wanted. So I picked up a rather unimaginative Garden Salad (figuring if it wasn't spring greens with walnuts, it was at least vegetables), and an over-priced bottle of salad dressing (I was at the Fresh Market). I was really pissed when the fog in my head cleared enough as I was pulling out of the parking lot to realize that I was passing TWO Publixes on the way home. Dammit.

Still from the "Miser Brothers Christmas", the craptastic new Christmas special from ABC Family Channel - almost but not quite completely unwatchable

When I got home, I remembered that they were running the new "Miser Brothers Christmas" tonight on ABC Family Channel. Miss Kat and I both LOVE the old "Year Without a Santa Claus" just because you get to see Heat Miser and Snow Miser do their stuff. I also love how Mother Nature goes "Buh-OYS, PUH-leeyas!" Anyway. I missed the first broadcast of the new one because it aired while I was at D'relda's party last weekend. So I thought I'd just catch that while I was eating, then go to bed.

Sigh. It was pretty craptastic. The problem was that they were taking two two-dimensional characters and trying to pad them to an hour special on their own. The style of animation was lovingly like the original. They even dug out the original Heat Miser to reprise his role (sadly, the Cold Miser passed away in 1987).

The problem was the story, which just frankly sucked. Someone was trying to steal Christmas (ala Nightmare Before Christmas), and Santa was hurt and confined to bed (ala the original Year Without a Santa Claus), and the Miser Brothers were going to have to learn how to work together to save Christmas. OK, that retread came over on the Mayflower. The other chief characters were a lackluster ego maniacal villain loosely based on Kelsey Grammer, and a chief elf named Tinsel, who was trying to re-design Santa's sleigh (following in is father's footsteps), but feeling that he fails after the sleigh crashes due to sabotage (kind of a composite of Rudolph and Herbie from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer).

I think Christmas has been saved more than that woman on the railroad tracks. But charming characters could have saved this special. Sadly, the Miser Brothers spent most of the hour in distinctly tiresome quarrelling. Wisely, the producers didn't change their theme-song, leaving it the same as in the original (since new songs were pretty damn bad), and in the interest of Giving the People What They Want they even padded out the song with more choruses, more backup lil heat and cold dudes, and even a reprise close to the end after they tried to get along. But really, the first one is the one you remember, and why not just watch the original?

The other Characters were pretty much charm free. Santa was pretty dull, and the Mrs. Claus cast had a distinctly irritating voice. I think they were trying for a Shirley Booth novelty voice, as in the original, but failed. Likewise the voice cast as Mother Nature was trying for the original, but majorly missed the mark. Tinsel is the character you're supposed to feel sorry for, but he's such a wuss he isn't very sympathetic. Honestly I almost went and washed dishes rather than finish watching it. It was that bad. But at the end, of course Christmas is saved, and the Miser Brothers learn to love and value each other, and I got a little misty, just cause I am so EASY at the holidays. But seriously, it was a lotta garbage for very little pay-off.

I did sign on to the computer and got a good surprise. An old beau was coming to town on his way to Virginia to see his family, and asked if he could stop and see me. Of course I said sure. He is a super-nice guy and I really like him, but he's a restless spirit. He was living in Charleston when we met, then moved to Atlanta. He lives in Florida now. It will be really good to see him though. I'm really looking forward to it.

After that, I took my elixir and went to bed. Justin called and we talked for a little bit, but I was asleep by about 8:30.