Early Autumn

First of all, would this fellow named James who keeps insisting I need help please stop posting here? For the past few months, he's been claiming that I'm autistic and racist and might hurt someone. He called me an idiot for getting Red Skelton's name wrong. Spare me the nasty comments and your so-called pleas for help. Right now, I'm getting the kind of help I need...the kind that comes from friends, family, and books on self-help. Your kind of help is no help at all. You're just making me feel worse, not better.

This has been a rather long day. I awoke to heavy rain and decided better dry than sorry. I spent the morning working on editing the Bowery Boys stories Lauren and I have wrote over the past few weeks. Look for them at the new "Bowery Boys' Basement Clubhouse" page at my site within the next week.

The rain let up enough by 11:30 for me to walk to the Acme to pick up this week's paycheck and do my grocery shopping. It was only raining a little when I headed out, but it still made for a very pleasant fall walk. The rain we've had all week has made everything green and growing again. The leaves are just starting to turn colors here. I saw some very pretty ones leaving smears of red and brown on a driveway. The plants along the Oaklyn ramp are covered with seed pods in every shape and size. The wildflowers are growing in profusions of gold, magenta, and white.

The Acme wasn't busy at all when I arrived. Due to the weather, I opted to just go grocery shopping and get my schedule and paycheck today. I didn't need a lot, anyway. I mostly needed meat - bought small steaks for stir-fries, ground turkey, shrimp, and those dollar fish packs. I restocked my yogurt (Yoplait has great Light flavors - I can't wait to try their new Black Forest Cake) and my brown sugar, and indulged in a sale on Fiber One, my favorite granola bars.

The clouds were finally starting to break up as I walked home. I went upstairs and put everything away. I made an omelet with Parmesan cheese and vegetables for lunch and ran Spooks Run Wild, one of the two East Side Kids horror-themed movies. I actually thought this was by far the best of the ESK run. The boys get lost in the woods while sneaking out for a date and encounter a haunted house, Bela Lugosi, his midget helper, and lots of spooky goings-on. In fact, I think this was the best of all five of the East Side Kids/Bowery Boys scary films. There was tons of atmosphere, and the scares and laughs were mixed up much better than in the later Bowery Boys horror movies. Bela Lugosi was marvelously spooky, and I liked the twist with his character at the end.

I did the other one, Ghosts On the Loose, later. It wasn't nearly as much fun. In fact, it was more a typical find-the-Nazis romp than a horror film. It's probably the best known of the East Side Kids movies due to a very young Ava Gardner being the ingenue, but neither she nor Lugosi make much of an impression here.

I decided to give the bike another chance after yesterday, since it was almost 3 by the time I finished lunch and I really didn't have the time to walk to the bank. I ended up walking half-way anyway. The chain came off again. I did make it to the bank and home, but it was really annoying.

And I'm broke, too. I don't have enough money in the bank right now to cover my rent. It's just going to have to be late.

When I got home, I grabbed my tools and tried to figure out what was wrong with the bike...but all I did was curse at the thing. My neighbor Michael heard me and came in back to find out what was wrong. He did finally help me figure out what was wrong. Some of it was I put the break on wrong yesterday. Some of it is simply the chain is getting old and really can't be tightened further. It'll probably hold out for now, but I may look into getting a chain when I finally have some money again.

Ironically, after all that fuss, I cleaned for the rest of the evening. Got the kitchen done, then made tilapia, Persian Cucumber Salad, and roasted red potatoes for dinner and watched Piglet's Big Movie.

Piglet feels left out of the plans the other residents of the 100 Acre Woods make. They keep telling him he's too small to help. He sets out to show them otherwise. Meanwhile, the others think he's lost and use his scrapbook of pictures of his favorite memories to find him...and learn that even the smallest person can have a big place in your heart.

Like The Tigger Movie, which came out a few years before it, Piglet is a sweet tale about one of the most beloved Winnie the Pooh characters. It's not quite as good as Tigger Movie. A lot of it is segments, but it's all tied together very well. Carly Simon wrote some lovely music, including the cute march for Pooh, Piglet, and the gang when they're on a trip to find the North Pole.