30 Days of Blogging: Day 5

 

Day 5 - your favorite quote

“Perduto è tutto il tempo che in amar non si spende”

This is straight out of Belladonna, my favorite book I mentioned yesterday. Simply put, it means “All time not spent loving is lost.”

30 Days of Blogging: Day 4

Day 4 - your favorite book

Without a doubt, hands down, my favorite book is Belladonna by Karen Moline. I cannot get over the fact that I discovered the hard back version at Dollar Tree. It looked pretty good so I decided to give it a try. I came across a paperback version at my local library’s book sale and I have almost worn out both copies. I read this gem at least once a year.

The first line? A whiff of a killer is a potent aphrodisiac. Tell me you don’t want to read it now and I’ll tell you you’re crazy!

30 Days of Blogging: Day 3

Day 3 - your favorite television program

I have a handful of TV shows that I DO.NOT.MISS. I like to record them on our DVR and watch them about 30 minutes after they start so I don’t have to deal with commercials. I love technology!

Don’t judge :) You know you love them, too!

I think you should play along and let us know a little bit about you!

30 Days of Blogging: Day 2

Day 2 - your favorite movie

I can’t say I have one favorite movie, but I definitely have a top 5:

30 Days of Blogging: Day 1

Day 1 - your favorite song

I love love love “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” I really like it in Stepmom. I bawl every time I watch that movie!

The Lizard of Oz

This year marks the 71st anniversary of the movie The Wizard of Oz’s theatrical release. I stumbled across a blog pointing this out and I know there are tons of folks who grew up watching the movie over and over like I did. I found some really neat trivia on IMDB.com. The “Lizard of Oz” (as my nephews used to call it) is a timeless classic and I can’t wait to have kids of my own to share it with!

Judy Garland's dress and blouse were in reality not white but pale pink. True white did not photograph properly in Technicolor and made the blue of her checked dress seem too bright.

The movie's line "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain." was voted as the #24 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007. "There's no place like home." was voted #11 in the same. "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." was 62.

Judy Garland had to wear a painful corset-style device around her torso so that she would appear younger and flat-chested.
 

Although Judy Garland was always the favorite to play Dorothy, there were many other actresses in Hollywood who were also considered to play her. Among them were Shirley Temple, who was closer to the actual age of Dorothy and extremely popular at the time.

According to lead Munchkin Jerry Maren, the "little people" on the set were paid $50 per week for a 6-day work week, while Toto received $125 per week.

"Over the Rainbow" was nearly cut from the film; MGM felt that it made the Kansas sequence too long, as well as being too far over the heads of the children for whom it was intended.

At the end of the sequence in which Dorothy and the Scarecrow first meet the Tin Man, as the three march off singing "We're Off to See the Wizard", there is a disturbance in the trees off to the right. This was long rumored to be one of the crew (or, by some accounts, one of the dwarf actors) committing suicide by hanging himself, but it is in fact a large bird stretching its wings.

The horses in Emerald City palace were colored with Jell-O crystals. The relevant scenes had to be shot quickly, before the horses started to lick it off.

The film started shooting on 13 October 1938 and was completed on 16 March 1939 at a then-unheard-of cost of $2,777,000. It earned only $3,000,000 on its initial release.

The ruby slippers were silver (like in the book) until MGM chief Louis B. Mayer realized that the Technicolor production would benefit from the slippers being colored.

The song "Over the Rainbow" was ranked #1 by the American Film Institute in 2004 on the 100 Greatest Songs in American Films list.

 

In the song "If I Only Had A Heart", the girl who says, "Wherefore art thou, Romeo?" is Adriana Caselotti, the voice of Snow White in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

The name for Oz was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence "Oz."

The "tornado" was a 35-foot-long muslin stocking, spun around among miniatures of a Kansas farm and fields in a dusty atmosphere.

 

P.S. The folks over at Google changed the doodle today to this:

A little thing I have learned…

Because of our affinity for home improvement, I make a weekly pilgrimage to Lowe’s or Home Depot. Sometimes we get lucky and hit a great deal. I have learned through a series of trials and errors that I can indeed fit 20 pots of gerbera daisies in my car, as well as a full size metal wheel barrow. I can also fit a great deal of blinds, ferns, and curtain rods if we stick things in just right and don’t stop too suddenly.

What I didn’t know until today, however, is that a super jumbo all-in-one laser printer will not fit in my trunk or my back seat. It will fit in the front seat, but only if you let it allll the way back and lay the seat alllll the way down. Only then can you even imagine fitting this mammoth box in the car (and if you tilt it and hold your mouth open just right). Here’s my travel companion (don’t worry--I was still in the parking lot when I snapped this):

It set my seatbelt sensors off because it weighted more than 50 pounds so I had to listen to “ding, ding, ding” all the way through the drive thru at lunch, all the way to the monogram shop, and all the way back to work.

To top it off, I have been on the phone with HP for the past 1 hour and 42 minutes and 36 seconds exactly. Apparently the printer was created before Windows 7 came out so there were no drivers in the box. Hurumph. If ya’ll buy an HP Color LaserJet all-in-one and have Windows 7, just go straight to the website to download your drivers.

I am happy to report it’s working now, and hopefully I might have saved one of my readers a few minutes of frustration by them learning from my mistakes.

Prayers and Loss

 

Prayers go out to Lisa’s beloved Captain John and all friends and family as we have lost our beloved Bumpkin on a Swing. She was a great supporter and friend. Take a quiet moment today at hold them in your thoughts and prayers.

This weekend…

was a BLAST!

My bestie’s getting married on September 4, so we headed south to St. Augustine for her bachelorette beach weekend. Here are a few snapshots I grabbed on my phone—I forgot the camera at the house, but at least 6 of the 12 other girls that were with us were snapping pics like crazy so I should have a CD by the end of the week!

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*The Octagon…cool little house that we stayed in.