Woke up, walked around the house, had Collage Club, hung out until 3:30. Worked on my coat. Chatted with people. We will continue this gathering even though boards are more or less done. Talked about manifestation and stuff like that.

After that, I drove the car and washed it, and walked around for a half hour on the patio. It's apparently in the 70's today, which is nice. I'd go outside again tomorrow, but they are predicting heavy winds tomorrow...sigh.

Today I watched (online streaming) The Half-Life of Marie Curie by Lauren Gunderson.
So a widowed Marie Curie is in A Scandal for being caught having an affair with a https://history.aip.org/exhibits/curie/scandal1.htm married man named Paul, and it's fucking up her career. Her visiting friend Hertha is all "This is sexist and unfair" and 'You shoveled uranium in a shed, you can withstand this." ("Uranium was nicer.") She thinks her career is over even though she just won ANOTHER Nobel Prize. Hertha invites Marie to her house in England to get away from it all. Marie is totally angsting over her married boyfriend and feeling like shit about losing everyone she loves, while Hertha tries to buck her up.
Hertha changed her name from the boring "Sarah Marx," hahah.
Marie feels stripped of everything she knows, she says. Marie got a letter from Paul saying he loves Marie and is getting a divorce...but not actually leaving his possibly pregnant wife and children.. "What an idiot," says Hertha. After a spontaneous swim in the ocean in her dress, Marie declares that she will be fine without him. Hertha has polite objections to the NECKLACE OF RADIUM that Marie is never without, because she rightfully suspects something bad about it since Marie is sick ALL THE TIME and has burned black hands frequently. They have a whopping fight about it, and Hertha yells, "I hope I'm wrong about that vial around your neck!" "You are!"

Hertha is the bomb diggity, I must say. She definitely has the better/more fun part, as Marie is firmly in Emo Stage and needs someone to get her out of it. They do a lot of drinking and talking about boys in this one. Then the last ten minutes of the show is recapping https://history.aip.org/exhibits/curie/war1.htm her war efforts. (I do enjoy Hertha's snark about Marie offering her help and medals to France, who shit on her.) Meanwhile, Hertha invents a giant gas-blowing-out- fan. Later, Hertha dies of blood poisoning from a spider bite while Maire is trying to get to her. "I know you!" Marie cries, and finishes recapping her life. You gave my life back to me, she says. A dead Hertha says "Talk to the spider, not me" and blames the radium for Marie's early death. "One more experiment left. One more," Marie says, as they take hands and die.

Quotes:
"Science would be so much better without all the scientists." HAHAHAHAAH.
"How are your girls?" "Barbie's in jail and I couldn't be happier." (She's in for suffragist protests.)
"I thought we agreed to leave the radium in Paris." Uh.... Marie won't leave it alone. Is this a problem? OH LORD YES.
"If it's powerful enough to cure cancer, why are they putting it in goddamned toothpaste?"
"We didn't stop arguing about radium decay until we were alone together in my room at 1 a.m."
"We are goddesses of the goddamned EARTH if we want to be."
Marie loves her children more now that they can "pour their own milk and do their own physics."

I think I want to try to see all the Lauren Gunderson plays. That's going to be difficult (she has 20 full length on her website so far....so far....) . Ah well, I shall work on it.

In other news, I mentioned this to Doreen and she watched it and called me up afterwards to discuss it, so I passed on all the links to things I looked up on Marie Curie and Lauren Gunderson, and also mentioned The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. She got addicted after that, of course.

Tonight's Hallmark:

"Wedding Bells." Danica McKellar as maid of honor, Kavan Smith as the best man. He's a chef serving "modern American fusion." Her dinner is a tiny quail egg. "Tastes like an eggy pickle. Two things I enjoy. Separately." Nick is unthrilled to catch her raiding the fridge after dinner. Later: "You know what makes a restaurant good? Ranch dressing." Nick is offended at her rhapsodizing about ranch that isn't from a jug.
Then the bride finds out her dad just got swindles and lost all their money, including wedding money. They end up borrowing some abandoned inn of Nick's cranky dad's, leaving Molly the MOH and Nick to plan it all and discuss cooking a lot. ("You need to realize that the three food groups aren't cheese, bacon, and ranch dressing.") Seriously, I really like these actors, but they need more to do than deck the inn as a plot point.
On a funnier note, Nick scorns ladies taking off their shoes at weddings. "The second the conga line breaks out, the rest of y'all turn into hillbillies." He likes "refined," she likes "comfy." (She grew up in one of those hermetically sealed places.)
By the end of this movie, he's making siracha flavored fried chicken ("with a Nick Turner twist") and meanwhile he made Molly mac 'n cheese.
I should probably mention that the bride and groom are not doing well, as they are having ye olde Green Acres fight over country vs. city. AWKWARD. "I don't even think they're in love." "Me either." They agree to not say anything to their best friends because "it's none of our business." Lies: they go to their best friends and basically give the same speech, which gets blown off. And yet, sure 'nuff, they show up to the wedding in casual clothes saying they're not going to get married. ALL THAT WORK FOR NOTHING!!!! but they seem fine with it.
This is YOUR wedding, says the former bride. So Molly and Nick more or less break up after making out a few times, then we fast forward a few months and he proposes and they decide to run the inn. I am all "uh...y'all haven't really even dated yet? Give it a few months?" Cut to the wedding! Actual gone through with wedding!

"Easter Under Wraps." Seriously, there's an EASTER VERSION of Under Wraps?! No, it doesn't involve Candace Cameron Bure, is not a sequel to it, etc. Totally different plot, just Hallmark recycling plot.

Okay, I'm gonna have to rant about this. Most of this movie is fun, cute chemistry between the leads, etc. The plot is that Erin Cavendish, granddaughter of the Cavendish Chocolates founder, is currently director of marketing. She and her CEO dad hear that sales are down. Erin suggests that someone go undercover to figure out what's going wrong at the factory and her dad says why don't you do it, you keep yourself under the radar.

This turns out to be a terrible idea for many reasons:

(a) You know how on some shows when someone has to get a new alias, they get some super easy one that's the same first name and a slightly different last name? Erin is apparently one of those people who needs to do that. The alias they use for her is "Veronica Aaronson" and dear lord, she is terrible at remembering that or answering to it. The only part of it she deals with well is when she hears "Aaron" and then answers as "Erin." They probably needed to call her "Erin Cartwright" or "Erica Cartwright" or something. I could play a drinking game based on how often she effs up her alias.

(b) Erin, sadly, can't act for shit. She perks up if anyone mentions marketing. She goes into great unprompted detail about the marketing of the Buttery Bunny. Every time she sees family photos anywhere, she can't stop staring at them.

I will note that she blows her cover within five minutes at the B&B she's staying at, except lucky for her the owners are all "we know your dad."

(c) This isn't her fault, but claiming that Erin was transferred in from another factory assumes that she knows anything at all about working on a conveyor belt, which she does not, and it's obvious, and it gets a bit I Love Lucy. Within 24 hours she's transferred into the basket department.

(d) She wears the "wrong shoes" to work (though they appear to be soft loafy shoes with gold heels, it's not like she wore Jimmy Choos, I'm a little stumped on the complaint from her trainer) and she thinks the lunch bell means the entire day is over. This last one is just dumb. (But it's not her fault that she thought she could go hit a restaurant/cafeteria/something for lunch and everyone there brings theirs.)

What this boils down to is that Erin is so effing bad at being a management spy that she might as well be wearing a T-shirt that says "I'm A Management Spy." I was brutally disappointed that nobody at the factory pointed out this at any point in time, because she is so bad. Nice girl, eager to work, certainly obsessed with the company and chocolate, and certainly notices the problems at the factory and passes them on to her dad, but I was really hoping that someone would have pointed out that they figured out what she was, and sadly, they do not. This makes this A Dumb Movie.

Anyway, problems at the factory: can't switch your job, the new automated systems kinda suck and the basket making machine only makes lackluster baskets, the management wants to get rid of handbuilt chocolate and that's what the company is based on, the local management won't let the head chocolatier (Brian, our love interest) do anything new, and he grumbles that the Cavendishes don't have any idea what is going on. Totally agree! Actual line from this movie: "Could I get a Cavendish to come down here, sit down next to me, face to face, and have a conversation?" LOLOLOLOL because guess who's right there at the table.

"Veronica" gets the bright idea to bring back the Cavendish Egg, which is a giant chocolate combination of Faberge and Kinder Egg. It is glorious. It is awesome and I want it. It is handbuilt and they get the idea to start production on this three weeks before Easter. Uh....yeah, I doubt that's a doable thing?

Then there's the "double life" thing. "Veronica" hits it off with Brian, but just decides to...not tell him her real name. This is dumb. Especially when:
(a) a management guy who knows Erin "surprise" comes to the factory and she can't duck being introduced to him, and she has to (fairly badly but scraping through) deal with the situation.
(b) "Veronica" suggests presenting the Cavendish Egg idea to "the director of marketing" (i.e. HERSELF) and her current boss is all, "Great, I'll call Erin's cell phone RIGHT NOW!"
(c) Somehow "Veronica" does the presentation with Brian on the egg, as "Veronica," in front of a room of execs who presumably know her as Erin, and nobody is all "Erin?" or "Why are you doing this claiming to be Veronica?" Brian is the only one who doesn't know, and is naturally quite ticked to find this out after the boss lady knocks over a photo of Erin.
(d) Oh yeah, THERE ARE PHOTOS OF ERIN IN THE COMPANY, SO WHY WOULDN'T SOMEONE SPOT THAT.

Of course it all resolves and Erin becomes Vice President of Whatever and the deserving get promotions and the machines are put aside for hand building and she gets the guy. And the rest of it is cute and springy and romantic and whatnot....but the whole charade thing is handled so badly, sheesh.

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