Hilary Booth... of course!

DC is looking to the skies anxiously tonight. We're supposed to get a ton of snow tomorrow through Saturday. I went ahead and did a grocery run on Thursday for necessaries. Work has shortened my little return assignment sadly with the possibility of coming back sometime next week.

That sums up the bad news. The good news is several fold: The foot doctor says I can switch over to two shoes, if I take it easy and do some calf stretches. I seem to have solved the computer issues last night with Windows Update & Chkdsk utility. One of those things did the trick, because I'm back to my usual browsing and writing and working. Safe mode was going to drive me nuts especially not having sound. Taxes are done and refunds are coming my way.

Curious news (if you know me -- I do not take after my namesake Ms Child): I have attempted boiling red potatoes and haven't killed myself that I can tell...

And the sad news today: Days of Our Lives' great matriarch Frances Reid died at the age of 95. She played the serene Alice Horton, everyone's favorite grandmother. I watched Days back in college. I remember when MacDonald Carey died in 1994 and they took out the second half of the credits. Only he could say "Like sands through the hourglass..." And I was reminded of Douglass Watson's death in 1989. He was already gone by the time I started watching AW so seeing the SoapNet reruns was like a revelation. And I remember what a hammer hearing him toast Thanksgiving in that 1988 rerun saying "I give you life!" knowing he'd be gone all too soon. We joke so often about death in soaps, but this... *cries*

Disappointing news to start off the new year. PGP Classic Soaps blog posted the news that as of 2009 AOL would no longer be streaming old episodes of Another World, Edge of Night, Search for Tomorrow and Texas. They're working on alternative methods so maybe the break will be temporary, but I'm afraid we'll lose all the episodes that were already streamed. I haven't had time to watch all the EON or AW episodes! There's valuable pop culture I'm missing out on. 1991 era Another World is still airing on Hulu. I'm not even sure where they are in the storyline.

I was nearly awoken by the sound of music. Not the dulcet sounds of the radio, but the blaring of the high school marching band. They were having one last practice session before going off to some competition. I could do without hearing "West Side Story" again.

The cable company is coming tomorrow. My dvr/cable box is doing that weird thing where it freezes and resets completely. It's happen often enough to replace it with a new version. Hopefully that will solve the problem. I will lose whatever I've already recorded on it. I'm thinking certain shows are lost causes for me this year. If I haven't gotten around to watching them, it's probably not going to happen.

So I've been trying to make sense of my closets. I need to go through my pants and dump whatever ones don't fit anymore. I'm really missing my old long closet at my parents' house. Never mind how many clothes it could hold, the number of comics long boxes was just astounding. *grins* Why, yes, I'm a geek, can you tell?

I've also been watching old soap operas. Along with old Another World & Search for Tomorrow, AOL Video has old episodes of the half hour soap Edge of Night. I really wish I'd known about that soap when it was airing. The mystery plots would have appealed to me. It's serving to cleanse the palette of "All My Children", which is rather horrid right now. It is a little disconcerting when I recognize a familiar face. The weirdest is Denny Albee who plays a police detective on Edge. Another World fans might recognize him if his hair was shorter as the smooth and villainous Drew Marsden. Eureka fans would recognize his partner Deborah Saxon aka the delightful Frances Fisher still sporting her short red hair. Could Edge be considered an early AU? Originally it was supposed to be a daytime drama version of "Perry Mason".

RIP Eileen Herlie. She was best known as the fiesty Myrtle Fargate on "All My Children". She would always set the people of Pine Valley straight. I loved her interactions with everyone, especially Zach Slater. He could never fool her, even when he first blew into town. Myrtle saw right through him. She had been in failing health in recent years and only made a few precious appearances on the show.

Must be saying something about the character, but just the other day, I was asking my mother what was wrong with the name "Myrtle".

Starting to wonder how much longer we'll keep James Mitchell too. Not that I want to lose that old codger Palmer...

I'm going through my old Ellery Queen vhs tapes. They were taped off A&E in the Dark Ages over 15 years ago. They're catch-all tapes so there are other things on them as well, including the glory days of NBC soaps, when they had three soap operas, instead of barely hanging onto one. I had episodes of each: Days of Our Lives, Another World, Santa Barbara.

Days: Jack/Jennifer! Isabella! Nick/April! And Carrie's a teenager! It looks like the episodes surrounding shooting the horror movie in Salem, if that helps.

AW: Looks like Cass & Frankie's first honeymoon. Evan is playing Amanda and Jake is playing Paulina...

SB: Cruz/Eden! The late Terry Lester as Mason, the fabulous Nancy Grahn playing the smart and well named Julia.. not that I'm biased...

Oh yes, there's Ellery too eventually on the tapes. But it's kinda fun watching the old stuff fly by. The news reports were about losing contact with the Magellan probe so I'm guessing August 1990 or thereabouts. Also a report about trouble in Iraq... the more things change...

We have more snow coming down. Apparently they're nice localized snow squalls and one is smack over my county. Lovely. So glad it's a long weekend.

I did my usual catch up with a week's worth of "Another World". Melinda Mullins made at least one more appearance as annoying reporter Connie Kaminsky. The "Who shot Jake" saga is mostly over, thank god, although the repercussions continue. Even at the time I remember wondering when it would end. With Carl's arrival, I think we've finally reached the point I stopped watching "Another World" before its end. As an ardent Cass/Frankie fan, I was not pleased to see Kathleen reappear from the dead. But it was good to see a soap actually use and remember its history with Vince's appearances and how they integrated the reactions to Carl. In some ways, this old soap is a nice reminder of what the genre can be. It'll be depressing when the recasts start happening and I won't recognize half the cast though.

There's a popular old saying. No one's really dead in science fiction. And it's equally true in soap opera land. Characters rise from the grave more times than we can count. But for some reason, I have different reactions to deaths in one genre than the other. For sf fandom, when a character I like dies, I'm furious, I'm upset. My anger usually knows no bounds, unless it happens to be someone I don't like, which rarely happens. With soaps, I'm just saddened. I don't know why I have such a different response. I grow equally attached to characters in both genres. Soap characters usually have longer to grab my attention, so maybe there's more history involved. Is it seeing the storyline come to final close? Even so, I don't get nearly as riled up. Maybe it's knowing a) they could be back someday b) the actor/actress could go on to better things I'll like just as much. But that's true with sf too, right? I've watched sf characters be thrown away with just as much disregard as soap characters, too. It's very odd.

I noticed this especially this week on "All My Children". AMC is badly resembling AW in the latter days with all the complaints on underused characters and the treatment of veterans versus newcomers. In their usual fashion, they need to clean house, so they invented yet another serial killer storyline. Every time I'm turning around, there's a big murder mystery or massive event. You'd think there'd be an easier way to eliminate characters. ( Cut to spare the soap melodrama & recent AMC spoilers )

Awhile back, SoapNet showed the first two episodes of "Days of Our Lives" from 1965 as part of their anniversary celebration. The episodes are quite a trip. I'd forgotten how much I missed Macdonald Carey's calming presence and familiar voice. The trippier part is seeing the younger versions of Julie and Mickey. I recognized Mickey's voice immediately. I needed to check a Who's Who list to understand who Julie was. Still a character even 40 years later. I can see how she can roll her eyes at the current crop of teenage angst. After all she was the original rebellious teen in Salem.

I'm only now getting around to watching them. I may actually not have anything on my DVR after I wipe off the two JLU episodes. That hasn't happened in forever. What will I watch?