Okay, two-and-a-half, but it felt like eight hours.

The R.C. and I are both big Austen fans and are always up for trying a new movie or miniseries from any of her works. Unfortunately, Persuasion (coincidentally, the favorite of each of us) has never been brought to screen successfully. About a year ago, we purchased a DVD that we thought was the "best" of what we'd seen--talk about damned with faint praise--and yesterday we sat down to re-watch it for the first time.

That’s two-and-a-half hours of a gloriously sunny Sunday that I'll never get back again.

All I can say is that if, at a time when we were trying a lot of versions, this one not only struck us as the "best" but as something good enough to spend money on, I hope I never remember how ghastly the others were.

I remember a time, quite a few years ago, when the local art house was showing a new adaptation that was getting a lot of good press and word of mouth. I took myself off to see it one day and then walked out--very early on--at the point where Our Heroine was packed off to visit her sister, dangling her legs off the back of a farm cart.

I want my weekend back!

Pauses to blush.

Yes, mostly because I got a new Harvest Moon game. Sunshine Islands! I need to be home playing with it.

Also because we got a new television Saturday. Not because we're rich, but because our VCR is going out and we got a new one and then it turned out that our TV was so old that it didn't have the necessary connectors on the back to hook up the (inexpensive) new VCR. So, the $80 VCR led to a $400 television expense.

Anyhow, I need to be, not home, but at Micro Center, buying a set of cables--I got the new TV hooked up and working fine, but we didn't have the right cables for the new VCR, so now we have a $a brand-new television and still can't watch anything on tape. I'm stopping at Micro Center on the way home tonight.

I can't think of anything else that needs to be said right now.

(In response to the R.C.s recent complaint about excess randomness, I have not footnoted. Thus, the world is spared my opinion on how Persuasion could be fitted to a movie screen, my idle thoughts about one one-hour stage adaptation, and a discussion of the daffodils that are blooming outside the office. You're welcome.)