I wish my life was as good as an ABBA song

A girlfriend invited me last night to go see Mamma Mia. So we headed out, on a Tuesday night, to see a 7:30 show. It was sold out! What's up with that? Quickly, we got into our cars and drove to another nearby theater to see the 8:00 show. Whew, there were tickets left. But there were also THREE bus loads of teenage Italian tourists. That's pretty weird, isn't it?

I thought I was being so wild, going to see a movie on a weeknight. I guess people do it all the time. Who knew?

I enjoyed the movie, although it made me wish I was watching three other things:

Pride and Prejudice, the BBC version, of course. It is a truth universally acknowledged that all women of a certain age (um, my age) are in need of Colin Firth*. He was very good and very funny in Mamma Mia.

Muriel's Wedding: I'm sorry, but this movie still holds the title for "best movie to use ABBA for the soundtrack". Mamma Mia came close, but couldn't quite dislodge it.

Veronica Mars, the first season, of course. I believe Amanda Seyfried will always be Veronica's dead best friend, Lilly, to me, no matter how great she is in other things. And she was pretty good in Mamma Mia. But again, it was no Veronica Mars.

So all in all, a very fun night. And now I have a lot of DVDs to pull out and watch!

Random unrelated thought: I got some awesome purple beans at the farmers' market the other day. They look like green beans, they taste like green beans, but they're purple! The boys were pretty excited about them, and both took a bite of the raw bean as we were getting it ready to cook.

So I steamed them, took off the cover, and GASP! They were GREEN! I mean, it's kind of neat that the beans turn from purple to green, but I'm pretty sure my boys thought I just switched out the fun purple beans with regular green beans so they wanted nothing to do with them.

Don't you think the purple beans should come with a warning: "These beans turn green when cooked."

But anyone with older kids and a glass topped pot might want to plan a "watch the purple beans turn green" experiment that if you're lucky, will end with all the beans being eaten!

*Did I go a bit too far in mixing my Jane Austen references? I hope not! I also am being too lazy to pull out my copy of Emma, so I hope I came reasonably close to "quoting" it.