A relaxing Saturday afternoon. I pampered myself with a pedicure and a set of nails. I have Valentine's Day red finger and toe nails. :-) Now to get used to having fingernails again - my own break off so using the keyboard with longer nails is interesting. But, the cool part is you can't even tell the tip of my index finger was cut off and my natural nail curls. I hated my ugly nail as a kid and it embarrassed me as a school librarian when kids would ask me what happened to my finger. I wasn't about to tell them that my dad drilled the tip off because I had my finger in the doorknob hole of the door he was making for the kitchen and was afraid to tell him my finger was stuck.

While I type this I am watching Timeline on the SciFi channel. I like watching movies on this channel as they take all the gory stuff out! I didn't read Timeline, but I have a copy of Crichton's The 13th Warrior, which is out of print. I have my own copy the movie of the same name with Antonio Banderas and a group of Scandinavians as the Vikings who are very realistic in their garb and speech pattern. Most are Swedes or Norwegians. A very cool movie, but do be careful when viewing with little ones around - the scene where they find the butchered family is pretty gory. It is supposed to be based on Beowulf. I think it stands on its own, with no prior knowledge of Beowulf.

Read Cameron Dokey's Before Midnight: A Retelling of "Cinderella". I have never been a big Cinderella fan because I dislike the Disney version of it with the dumb singing birds and the mice. Basically, I dislike all of Disney's remakes of the folk/fairy tales of the past. It is so sad to think that many children know no other versions of the stories. Anyway, Dokey's YA novelization, a part of Simon & Schuster's Once Upon a Time series, is wonderful. I love this retelling because it is the father who is wicked, not the stepmother. She is just an unhappy woman who is married off to Cendrillon's father by the King and sent into exile at his country estate by her new husband. She does not know that the young woman who meets her at the door is her new stepdaughter as no one at court knows about Cendrillon. When her mother died in childbirth he abandoned his daughter and swore to have nothing to do with her. Cendrillon isn't alone in her exile prior to the arrival of her new stepmother and sister. Raised at her side is the infant boy her father delivered the same night Cendrillon was born, Raoul. Old Mathilde raises them both. They will play a role in the future of the kingdom. Such a fun retelling, set on an isolated ocean side estate with magic all of its own and wishes that sometimes come true in the strangest ways, including Cendrillon's wish for two stepsisters, so one will like her. I might just have to read the rest of the series now.

All for today.