04.18.02 - 7:12 p.m.

Ha ha ha ha...oh, what is it with Annie this week? Or month, for that matter?

It all started with our visit to Daddy Warbucks' mansion. Which is actually an administration building at a university near Dan's house. I'd been there last summer, but Dan and I weren't sure which building on campus was the right one, and we couldn't get in anyway, what with it being a weekend on a college campus in the middle of July and all.

We went back, though, when Moomy came to visit over Easter. And THIS time we went inside, and Lordy Hannah, I was suddenly four years old again. Everything was the same - the marble walls stretching way way up to the stained glass ceiling, the pipe organ on which Annie bangs out a few notes, even Daddy Warbucks' office on the second floor. I wanted to slap on a red dress and wig and belt out the tunes right on the staircase.

Incidentally, in my heyday I had TWO red dresses and an orphan dress as well as the wig, which I wore daily in hopes that people would believe it was my own hair. Much like the time when I tried to convince everyone my name was Jane and not Casey, but that's another story altogether.

So we went to the Annie mansion. And watched the movie again. And I was sad that my copy cut off in the middle of the big finale medley, because it was taped in the early 80's and no one knew about EP or SLP yet, and come to think of it, I'm glad we've got the movie on VHS and not Beta because we were definitely a Beta household. We were so the losers in video's evolutionary war.

ANYWAY. My video copy cut off, and as a 24-year-old with wider entertainment possibilities, this would not do. As luck would have it, I found cute little Aileen staring out at me from the featured DVD rack at Target the very next weekend. Since I'd already replaced my old Annie record (that skipped during the orphans' portion of "You're Never Fully Dressed" without fail: "and not from- and not from- and not from-...") with a CD, my Annie multimedia collection was finally complete.

And now both Heather and Weetabix have mentioned it in their diaries, and it's just hilarious. I wonder if the cosmos hasn't been sending out some kind of Annie Nostalgia vibes.

Oh, and one of my red dresses was stolen from my three-foot tall Annie doll who was exactly the same size as me, and whom we later unclothed for good, drew a bra and panties on, tattooed and renamed Scumsquat until she was cruelly discarded by Dictator Dad, but that's another story too.

As well as the time we made up completely new words to all the songs, which I'd post if they'd be understood by more than the four who actually wrote them. I think one of the best is "We have but one request/Please put us to the test" becoming "We have but one request/That you do not undress." Ha!