$.99 candy and other important stuff

My local pharmacy devotes a large section of its candy isle to cellophane packages of $.99 candy.  The packages hang from pegs on a pegboard — some with signs featuring “buy one get one free”.  The sale candy is never what I want; it is always something like Canada mints or hard candy.  What I want are the packages of Double Bubble bubble gum and sour gummy worms. Swiss chocolate has its place, Italian nougat has its place, glaced fruit dipped in dark chocolate has its place — they all line up after $.99 candy from the drugstore.

Which reminds me of the show I attended at the Museum of Fine Arts recently about the style of the Napoleonic Empire. It is quite clear that Napoleon was torn in terms of Interior decorating.  His philosophy was to reject the opulence of the previous decades, to return to the simplicity of the ancient Greeks and Romans.  But he also felt it was vitally important that France be seen as the best of the best… and that in Napoleon’s mind that was translated into gilding, ermine, and lavish finery. The execution of his philosophy missed the mark completely.  All I could think of was that Marie Antoinette looked like she shopped at the thrift shop in comparison. My favorite object in the exhibit was a cup made of silver that had been molded around Napoleon’s sisters breast (apparently it was quite the rage to have a set of boob cups).

I am reading two books about Marie Antoinette at the moment — Antonia Fraser’s biography of the Queen and Abundance, a fictionalized account of her life by Naslund. I became fascinated by the woman and the period while watching Kirstin Dunst portray Marie Antoinette in the movie.  She managed to convey qualities of both intelligence and bovineness mixed with a well trained duty and sweet disposition.  It is a strange movie with a background of contemporary music, little dialogue, and sumptuous sets and costumes.  Once I have had enough of the Queen I will move on to study Madame Du Barry — another fascinating woman of the court of Louis XVI.

In addition to my New Year’s resolution to read more, I have resolved to retire my credit cards and live on cash.  I am happy to report that it is January 5 and I have not use my credit cards once all year!  My immediate goal is to save enough money to go on holiday in March to some place warm.  I am thinking about Key Biscayne since they have a tennis tournament there and fine beaches.

I am making good progress with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.  I learned how to create macros to do important things like send love notes to my husband via e-mail, insert pictures of kittens in word processing documents, and how to open my web browser and go directly to my favorite site.  I got very confused last night because the voice recognition software would just not work at all unless I spoke very loudly.  It took me a while to realize I had put on the wrong headset(I use a headset for conference calls on the phone) and my Dragon headset was lying on the desk and only picking up those words I spoke sufficiently loudly that they were recorded in its microphone. Nero Kitty does not like all the headsets and wires that surround me at my desk — he prefers simplicity.  His new favorite toy being a mylar helium balloon with a long ribbon.