Running the Gamut From A Drive to E Drive

My detachable A drive has been giving me trouble for the last week. It keeps saying certain files are write-protected when they aren't or just plain not opening, even files it never had any trouble opening before! My stepfather gave me the A drive when I bought my current computer in early September 2005. Apparently, he'd had it but never used it. I still had a lot of empty floppy discs at that point, and all of my files were on floppies.

I'm giving up on that darn A drive. Instead of spending twenty to forty bucks to get another one, I'm just going to do what I should have done all along - transfer my files to CD. It'll take a while, but I'm sick of this "write protected" stuff.

Spent most of the morning doing laundry, doing pilates, and watching Nick and TCM. In addition to The Adventures of Mark Twain on TCM ("artists and writers" being the biopic sub-theme of the day), I caught a couple of cute Nick Jr. episodes. Wonder Pets was the favorite this time around. The globe (and storybook)-trotting school pet trio Linny, Tuck, and Ming-Ming headed for the woods to help a baby bee gain enough confidence to fly and make honey, and to Coney (not "corny," Tuck!) Island to help a baby squirrel find it's way to the only tree on the boardwalk. The latter reminded me of why this show has been growing on me - it can be pretty weird sometimes, but incredibly imaginative, too. And someone did their homework - the baby squirrel's mother actually had the appropriate Russian/Brooklyn accent. (She sounded like a fuzzy Gertrude Berg.) (I also wonder if that tree growing in a Brooklyn boardwalk was intended as an in-joke...)

I also saw Blue's Room for the first time on an actual episode. Blue's Room is a puppet/live action segment of Blue's Clues where Blue talks to the audience (as opposed to the puppy sounds she makes in the actual show) and interacts with her "toys," various puppet dolls and furniture. Not unlike Elmo's World on Sesame Street, I think it's cute, but takes away from the actual show - finding clues with Joe.

I also enjoyed the Dora the Explorer episode today, because it revolves around one of my favorite past-times - storytelling. Dora reads "The Three Little Pigs" to Boots, who keeps asking what happens next, even after the story ends. To appease her monkey buddy, Dora concocts a sort-of sequal that somehow involves her and Boots helping the goofy king of the land find his mother by the end of the rainbow and turns into a trip through several familiar fairy tales. This was one of the better stories from Dora's "Catch the Explorer Stars" arc. King Juan El Bobo and his mommy proved so popular, they both turned up in several later stories.

The Acme was a bit of a pain today. We were still short on help, and there weren't even any call-outs this time. We just didn't have enough people scheduled.