Tuesday, December 29, 2009

A Nice Piece Of News To End The Old Year With

I know 2009 has been a very difficult year for most of America, but for me it's been pretty wonderful.

As penance, I spent most of yesterday doing tedious but necessary jobs. Post office/motor vehicle/bank/supermarket to use up about to expire coupons. And that was just before lunch. In the afternoon I went to the Village of Goshen town hall to renew my mother's handicap parking permit, only to discover her paperwork was at the Town of Goshen town hall. Lucky for me, the Village and the Town both have very nice people working there, and the necessary papers were faxed over and the permit renewed for another five years, at which point my mother will be 103.

I also made a number of boring phone calls yesterday to let various businesses know my charge card expiration date had changed, and I found out what to do about the dvd of The Dead I'd bought in November. The Dead, which is one of my favorite movies ever, is 83 minutes long, but the dvd was only 73 minutes long. Sunday's New York Times reviewed the dvd, and while I didn't much care for the review, it did say the manufacturer of the dvd had learned of its mistake, and had reissued it with the missing 10 minutes and here was the phone number to call. Which I did Monday, along with all those other phone calls and tedious errands.

If doing boring jobs qualifies one for sainthood, I should be polishing my halo.

Last night, as a reward for getting so many things accomplished with a minimum of whining, I bopped around the Google listings of Pfeffer "Life As We Knew It" . And it was a good thing I bopped, because I discovered that the state of Idaho has named Life As We Knew It as their 2010 Idaho Kids Read The Same Book teen selection.

Naturally, I am thrilled about this. But I waited until this morning to tell my mother. I figured she'd had excitement enough yesterday learning her handicap permit had been renewed!

5 comments:

Sydney Lakewood said...

You truly had a day full of snoozers! And I loved the line about your mom having enough excitement for one day with the permit renewal. :o)

lisa-marie said...

Wow, after a day like that, I'd need a nap!

Mr. Cavin said...

You think the company will fix the terrible cover they put into THE DEAD's DVD slipcase? Who knew Joyce wrote feel-good romcoms?

That said, this is totally making my wish list now that the missing ten minutes have been restored. Thanks for the pointer. What didn't you like about Kehr's DVD review?

Susan Beth Pfeffer said...

Hello to Susan and welcome lisa-marie-

I was actually pretty stimulated after my exciting Monday activities. It's so gratifying getting dull jobs done, especially the kind you absolutely have to do (like getting your driver's license renewed).

I did a fair amount of equally boring jobs yesterday, but I did them all indoors, since it was very cold and windy outside.

Today I'm going to the Hideous Mall in Nyack to have lunch with my friend Geri and see It's Complicated.

Now how's that for a reward for being grown up and responsible the first part of the week!

Susan Beth Pfeffer said...

Hi Mr. Cavin-

Your comment really confused me when I read it first thing this morning. I thought you meant my friend Joyce, and I had to figure out what romcom was, and let's just say I'm not at 100% before brushing my teeth and feeding my kitten.

Now it all makes perfect sense to me. Although I must confess, I don't mind the cover design. I guess it is a tad romantique, but it's not offensive.

It was so disconcerting to watch the DVD with the missing 10 minutes. I had seen The Dead fairly recently on TV (before I knew a DVD would be coming out), so I was very familiar with it, and then I watched the DVD and there was this hole in the middle of the movie. I raced over to the Amazon reviews and discovered everyone had the same hole, which made me feel a little better.

The Times reviewer was condescending about the visuals of most of the movie (which I love) and singled out for praise the visuals at the end of the movie (which I thought were lovely but unnecessary). So basically we totally disagreed.

Anyway, it's a beautiful beautiful film and I look forward to having a complete version of it!