I rose early to watch the movie The Miracle of the Bells, in which Steve Douglass from My Three Sons runs a promotional scheme to promote the film of a late tubercular
mining town actress, which, if you ask me, is better than other wheezes that Steve Douglass does on film, such as doing murder schemes for insurance money or using new techology to bounce around in Model Ts. It's amazing how much different the young Frank Sinatra looked in this bell film than he looked in the later-vintage films. Who would have thought this young priest would end up doing a casino heist and then later
become a hard-living fixture in odd nightclubs?
We went to Christmas lunch at Mignon, a cool restaurant in Plano with a really nice intimate setting and a great menu. I had pork chops served with one of those alternative spinach deals and a hip garlic-y potato, as well as a cocoa dessert crepe afterward. Pleasant holiday songs done in jazz renditions quietly soundtracked the meal.
We came back to our house and opened presents. I got cool books, a happening CD, great clothes, and various other worthwhile things. I felt quite under the weather, so I took "A Christmas Carol" to bed with me, and then fell asleep before the ghosts got going good. My wife, imbued with holiday spirit, spent the afternoon baking a cake to take to our neighbors. I was instead the sleeping slug of slothville.
When I awoke the day was over. I'd had the ChessMaster 9000 computer game since the Summer, thus far unused. I loaded the game, and played blitz chess against faux opponents the game provides, "characters" of varying strengths. Each character has a picture and his or her own bio. The bios read like this "undervalues pawns" or my favorite, "sometimes plays randomly".
I'm glad I still have Sunday to rest up, for although I feel much better, I am not nearly up to par again. But we have peanut butter, and jelly, and perhaps even tomato soup, and happy days are not far around the corner.