As Luck Would Have It

Today is the second school snow day in a row (well, two and a half if you count the early dismissal on Tuesday) and I think the cabin fever is really setting in. We had a monster of a blizzard roll through here (no joke! We had snow with 40 mph winds and were under a blizzard warning for about 21 hours.) and have literally been stuck here at home because the road that gets us into town was closed. There was a drift for about a city block across the entire road approximately 10 feet high. Naturally, I haven’t seen it because I prefer being cozy and warm in my house. My husband told me about it after both of his attempts to get into town to snow blow his mom’s driveway. (She’s still waiting, but he’s talked to her a couple of times to let her know he couldn’t get through.) There is hope however, that the road has been opened this morning because we had a newspaper on our driveway when I let our dog out.

 

But I’m way off track already. Yesterday morning I got to sleep in (school officials announced the cancellation Tuesday night, so no need to set an alarm!) After I got up and started my coffee, I turned the TV on and started looking through the program guide to see what was on. I went all the way up to the movie channels (I guess to torture myself because we don’t get any movie channels in our programming package) and saw a magical sight. There was a information channel that the provider had put in saying to celebrate their 30th year, they were offering the Starz movie package free for a year!

 

I called my husband in for him to see it too because, honestly, I didn’t trust what I was reading. Being the pessimist that I am, I was sure there was a catch or that there would be a million hoops to jump through to get the package added. But no! The Fates were smiling on me and the channels were already there, listed in the appropriate color indicating they were part of our package and could be watched! I felt like I had just won the lottery!

 

I should explain that I seem to have a very unlucky bone somewhere in my body because luck is not usually on my side. If something could go wrong, it usually does. If we’re playing the odds (like with our snake eggs) we usually come out below or exactly even. (Although there was one clutch that did beat the odds. I’m crossing my fingers that we’ll have better luck this summer.) I don’t know if I am paying back all the bad Karma that I built up when I was younger or what, but luck doesn’t like me. She’ll sometimes smile at me and then turn her back. Maybe she doesn’t like pessimists. (New experiment: do the three good things exercise that Paul talked about to see if things turn around.)

 

Sorry, I got sidetracked over-analyzing myself. To continue with my story, I was super excited about the movie channels and started creating timers for all these movies that I wanted to see. I had timers overlapping timers; something like three movies all starting within an hour of the first. Well, obviously, that didn’t work, but I did get to see one movie yesterday afternoon and one last night.

 

The first was “Dear John” and oh my, I cried like a baby. It’s based on the book by Nicholas Sparks and I had read it two or so years ago before I even knew it was going to be a movie. I loved the book and loved the movie! It’s a hard thing to take a book and turn it into a movie and usually it falls way short. I know of only a handful of movies based on books that, in my opinion, turned out well. (And just three that were actually better than their corresponding books. Shocking, really that they would turn out better.) While I understand the difficulty in translating a book onto film, it doesn’t take away the disappointment when they fail. So when they succeed, I am thrilled! Much like I was yesterday afternoon as I watched with tears pouring down my face. (And I think I now have a new celebrity crush on Channing Tatum.)

 

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The second movie was “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” and while it was entertaining and funny in parts and kinda cute sometimes, I don’t think I would rank it in my all time favorites. I do love Kevin James, though, so that really helped. But, I’m not complaining in the least. It’s one of those movies you don’t have huge expectations for going into it and it was one that I had been saying I wanted to see. Plus, there’s no better way to spend a snow-bound evening than watching a movie.

 

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I can’t wait to see what movies I’m going to watch today!