Joan Crawford Week Day 5

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Today's movie is The Damned Don't Cry with Joan Crawford, David Brian, Steve Cochran, Kent Smith, and Selena Royle.

Plot:  Joan Crawford is a socialite with a secret past who is now suspected of murder. 


Trailer:


I hope you enjoyed the movies this week.

Joan Crawford Week Day 4

I have limited internet access right now, so comments may take a while to post.


Today's movie is Possessed with Joan Crawford, Van Helfin, Raymond Massey, Geraldine Brooks, Stanley Ridges, John Ridgely, Moroni Olsen, and Gerald Perreau.

Plot:  Joan Crawford struggles with the obsessive love she feels for a man she can never have.

Trailer:

Joan Crawford Week Day 3

I have limited internet access right now, so comments may take a while to post.


Today's movie is Humoresque with Joan Crawford, John Garfield, Oscar Levant and J. Carrol Naish.

Plot: Joan Crawford plays a wealthy woman in a loveless marriage who uses her money to help a struggling violinist. She falls deeply in love with the violinist, and is tormented by the fact that his music will always come first.

Trailer:

Joan Crawford Week Day 2

I have limited internet access right now, so comments may take a while to post.


Today's movie is Mildred Pierce with  Joan Crawford,Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth, and Bruce Bennett.

Plot: How far would a mother go to win the love of her daughter?

Trailer:


PS: If you need a laugh, here's Carol Burnett's take on Mildred Pierce.

Joan Crawford Week Day 1

 I have limited internet access right now, so comments may take a while to post.

Today's movie is The Women with Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Mary Boland, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, Ruth Hussey, Marjorie Main, and Lucile Watson.

Plot: This movie is about a group of wealthy NYC women and what happens when one of them learns that her husband is having an affair with another woman.

Trailer:

It's Alive!

This past week felt so strange to me without my laptop. I did fire up the desktop one day so I could check my email, make sure all was well with our ING and Smarty Pig accounts, and scan the news headlines. I moved some of our furniture around so that the desktop computer is now back in the "master bedroom" which we are using as the study/computer/kitty room. The cats were kinda annoyed with me being back there, as they had gotten used to having that room pretty much to themselves during the day. They are both grouchy old ladies who prefer a warm and quiet room for their numerous naps.


I'm still working on unpacking boxes. It's going slower than I had hoped as I keep finding boxes that I can't do anything with at this point, and if haul too many boxes around in one day, my back starts giving me fits which affects what I can do the next day. *grumble grumble* The closet in the "master bedroom" is a work in progress. It will eventually be my main kitchen pantry, various storage, and where I put the clothes that won't fit in the small closet in our bedroom. I've got two of my food storage racks arranged in there the way I want, but I'm having trouble getting a third one put back together. I need to remember NOT to take that third one apart before the next move as it's a real bear to get back together!


 The dress code at Mr. Hairball's new job only lets employees wear jeans once a week, so I also spent some time hemming and taking up some of his dress pants that were too long and too big in the waist for him.


As for bad news, it seems that the portion of Mr. Hairball's paycheck discrepancy related to getting credit for all of his education and work experience will take longer to resolve than we had hoped. In the good news column, I think I'll be able to finish this month about 10% under budget for groceries, so that's more money we can put towards the "New Laptop For Mr. Hairball Fund". I've been putting my grocery store receipts up on the refrigerator as a reminder of what I can do when I put my mind to it. *grins*


We don't have cable at our new place, and the local channels I can currently receive seem to be paid up primarily of Judge XYZ, talk shows, televangelists, infomercials, and programming directed at small children. Needless to say, when I found my box of DVDs I was really excited to have some more viewing options! I spent the last week in a nice retro bubble as none of the DVDs I watched/listened to during the day contained movies or TV programs made after 1980.


I was thinking maybe I should start doing theme weeks where at least one movie/program a day fits into a theme.  I own this set, so the theme for next week will be Joan Crawford movies. I'll watch them in chronological order so I'll start on Monday with The Women.

Hope all of you have a good week!

A Programming Note And Money, Money, Money...

My plans to start posting more regularly have hit a snag. Mr. Hairball is going to be taking my laptop to work with him everyday, because he needs access to a decent equation editor before he goes completely insane. Tech UnSupport at his new job just keeps offering him Kool-Aid and mumbling about the awesomeness of Microsoft Office while he begs them for permission to install OpenOffice.
 

Because of the never-ending trainwreck known as the Human Resource department, Mr. Hairball's current pay is about 18% less than we had planned. Some of the discrepancies in his pay related to his education and experience should be resolved before his next paycheck, while others, like the signing bonus he was continually promised until someone at HR realized that he wasn't eligible, will not. Oopsie! *sighs*


In light of the above, I have reworked the household budget based on the numbers from his September paycheck, and right now, we will be able to save slightly more than 13% of our after tax income. If the people at HR do decide to finally give him full credit for his education and experience, then we will be able to increase that percentage. After all those months of pulling money out, it is a start in the right direction to finally be putting money back in savings.


Anyway, after living off our savings for a few months, paying for all of the various moving expenses, and with another large expense looming on the horizon, neither of us is comfortable right now with using some of of our current savings to buy Mr. Hairball a new laptop.  I'm on the old Linux desktop right now, but my use of that computer will be limited to times when the outside temperature is less than about 85F. This baby pumps out some serious heat, and having to crank up the A/C so I can use it, really defeats the purpose of trying to save money to build our savings back up. I will have some access to my laptop at night and should have regular access to it on most weekends. Please be patient if it takes me a while to respond.


 We have changed one of our Smarty Pig saving accounts goals to a fund for a new laptop for Mr. Hairball. There's a widget on the right hand side of my blog with my Smarty Pig savings goals if you want to watch my progress. My goal is to try a save a little extra wherever I can, so that the new laptop fund continues to grow every month. Mr. Hairball and I have agreed that while other savings goals need to take priority at this time, a small portion of any extra money we manage to save will go towards the laptop fund.

More later...

Old Ghosts And Hometown Rivalries

In my brief post about Mr. Hairball getting a new job and us packing up for another move, I left out some rather interesting details:

• Mr. Hairball's new job just happens to be located in my hometown.

• My hometown is one of those places where high school football is an overwhelming obsession a really big deal , and there is an intense rivalry between the two public high schools in town. 

• Mr. Hairball stumbled into a job working for the local school district, and will be working for the high school I did not attend when I lived here. 

I never thought in a million years I'd be living back in Hometown City, and dealing with the  whole high school rivalry and the football obsession thing again. It was insane back then, and from the stories Mr. Hairball is telling me about what goes on at work, nothing has changed. To make things simple, we'll call the school he works at Crosstown High School, as it is the "new" school that was built when Hometown City grew large enough to need another high school. Papa Hairball attended Hometown City High, as did Brother Hairball and myself. It feels quite strange to now live in Crosstown High's district.

Mr. Hairball is constantly hearing talk of how Crosstown High School is so much better than Hometown City High in regards to X,Y, and Z, and any instance where Hometown City High School actually is doing better, is regarded as a case of bad data or some other excuse.  I guess heads would explode if someone broke down and admitted that Crosstown High is usually better at X and Hometown City High is usually better at Y. *shrugs*

I drove out to see the old homestead a couple of weeks ago. The new owners have made some changes and the old house looked nice. I hadn't done that in many years as I was afraid it would be painful to see new people living in "my house". Mama Hairball told me that they were a nice family and she felt they would take good care of the house. It looks like she was right. I had forgotten just how far out of town we used to live. It's about a half hour drive from our new apartment near Crosstown High out to the old place. Pretty much another world as far as I'm concerned. I passed a gentleman driving a pickup truck on the way down my old street, and he waved at me as I passed him. Can't remember the last time a stranger waved at me like that!

Mama Hairball asked me how the town had changed as she had moved away before the last oil boom happened, and I told her that the "affluent" side was now an unending sea of big box stores, strip malls, and chain restaurants.

I guess never being more than a block away from a chain restaurant is considered progress to some people.


Still unpacking, I'll post more later on.