Busy weekend and Tangled

We've nearly finished painting the house: Saturday was a big day, with one of our sons also giving us a hand to do a couple of bits we didn't fancy trying to tackle - too far off the ground! Today, with the heavy rain, we won't be doing anything, and yesterday, being Sunday, we had a day off.  Well, sort of: I was at church in the morning, at a read-through for a play at 2 pm, and at the first practice of the year for the choir Sunny Side Up at 4 pm.  So not quite what you'd call a quiet day.  Plus we talked to our son in the States on Skype around 1 pm, and caught up with what's been going on with him.  So perhaps it's just as well it's raining today!  I might get time to breathe.  (Might also have to swap my shorts for long trousers for the first time since early January - it's been so hot this last month, I've hardly been out of shorts since I had to buy a pair in Christchurch just after New Year.)

The play we're doing is about the woman, Rosalie Macgeorge, who was the first Baptist missionary sent out from New Zealand, back in the 1880s.  It's been written by one of our congregation as part of the celebrations for the 150th Anniversary of the church, which is happening this year at Easter Weekend.  I've got a couple of small roles in it, one as a bumptious minister and the other as the doctor who has to tell Rosalie that if she doesn't leave India soon she'll die from her ill-health.  There are twenty or more in the cast, most of us taking more than one role.

Last night my daughter reminded me that the animated movie, Tangled, was on and that I might like to watch it.  I'd heard it was a bit quirky, and certainly it lived up to its reputation.  Rapunzel has been imprisoned by a woman who isn't her mother for years - not to protect her from the big bad world, as the mother claims, but so the pseudo-mother can keep Rapunzel's hair (which has magical properties) under her control.  The male romantic lead, who unwillingly rescues Rapunzel, is a young man who's fallen into a life of crime as a result of being an orphan, and who has based his personality on the heroic character Flynn Rider whom he read about in his childhood.  He has quite a bit of growing up to do - as has Rapunzel, especially as her main reaction to any stranger is to thump them with a frying pan.  There's a horse, Maximus, who seems to think he's also a dog, and a variety of crims who all have a dream - as we discover in a riotous song and dance in a tavern.   The story is probably a fair way away from the Grimm Brothers version, but that's never stopped Disney and Co using one of their fairy tales as a springboard for whatever works in the 20th or 21st centuries.

Talking of movies, Our TV stands on a cabinet that was intended to hold videos.  Remember videos?  You can't give 'em away now - except to op shops.  We sent a pile to one of the town's op shops a while ago.  Obviously there are still people out there who watch movies on video, but they must be getting fewer and fewer.  I think we need to clean out our few remaining ones before it's too late.  Now that painting is nearly done, it might be time for another patch of de-cluttering around the house.  I'm noticing more and more books that I've finally decided I can live without.  The bookshelves might start to look bare...!