A Very Busy Day Off

Today is my only day off this week, and I work 8 1/2 hours tomorrow. Today was pretty much the only time I had to get a lot done. I started after breakfast with going through the last of the CDs and floppy discs with data on them. I was able to retrieve all of my Sailor Moon, Remember WENN, and non-Dream World Monkees fanfics, all but two of my Perfect Strangers fics, and all but three of the earliest (2004-2007) story parts of the Dream World series.

Having gone through the stories, I can safely say that it's unlikely I'll do anything for Perfect Strangers or Remember WENN in the near future. I still like those shows, but I'm kind of off the writing bandwagon there. I may eventually finish my long-running WENN fanfic series "On the Edge of the Precipice" just to bring it to some kind of a conclusion.

My next two solo writing projects will probably be to complete Rini In Toyland and The Monkee Knight. Both are fairy tale-style fanfics, for Sailor Moon and The Monkees respectively. They're about two-thirds done, and I do have an idea of how I'm going to finish them. I'll finish the party story, too. It was intended as a short story and won't take long. I might be able to pull off the early talkie novel, but I'll need more research. I haven't decided if I'm going reset the young adult novel about the three girls who discover a Nazi plot in their hometown in the 80s or keep it 40s. (If I do reset it, the plot will probably become a fictional country's attempt to take over the US.)

Beyond rekindling some story ideas, clearing out the CDs and floppy discs had other uses. I'm either going to donate the zip discs, floppy discs, and the exterior drives that use them to Goodwill or give them to someone who wants them. (Lauren has put in a request.) From now on, I'm only going to use hard drives for written data, and perhaps for pictures. Floppy discs don't hold enough data; zip discs die too quickly. I removed the zip drive and now have a second free slot for hard drives. I put all remaining CDs in the plastic container with the blue top and moved the other boxes with the floppy discs and both drives to the back room. The hard drives were moved to a small leather box I got as part of a desk set in college. I think the box was intended for business cards, but it's just the right size to hold removable drives.

After I finished that, I worked on updating my record inventory. I probably have more vinyl albums than any other type of media in my apartment, including books, DVDs, CDs, and hard drives. Why? Simple. They're cheap. Almost all of my records but a few collectors' items cost me between three dollars and nada. I've bought records for literal pennies at yard sales and library book sales. Compare that to as much as twenty dollars for DVDs and CDs, ten dollars for videos, and between six and twenty dollars for some books. Adding my newest soundtrack album finds bumped the list up to 201...and I still have to add tons more rock, vocalists, jazz, R&B, disco, and spoken word and comedy LPs!

I watched Bowery Boys movies while eating lunch, taking down the general spring decorations, and putting up what little I have for summer and the 4th of July. Bowery Buckaroos takes the Boys out west and away from New York for the first time. Sach dreams that he, Slip, and the others find themselves in familiar cowboys-and-Indians territory as they search for treasure and try to help their friend Louie the soda shop owner, who had been framed for murder. This is my favorite of the first eight movies that featured original Dead End Kid Bobby Jordan (who dropped out after this one due to problems with physical difficulties and his limited role). The writers had a lot of fun spoofing typical Western cliches. I especially love the scene where Gabe passes Slip off as a gunslinger by tossing an already-shot-through card in the air and letting Slip shoot at it.

Angels Alley isn't nearly as fun. Slip sticks up for his obnoxious cousin when he catches him helping a car theft ring. He then goes undercover when members of the ring accidentally run over a local kid who admires him. This is my least-favorite of the late 40s comedy-dramas. There's way too much melodrama here, and too many out-of-character moments for Slip and the others.

Jinx Money is much better, in fact my favorite of the late 40s movies. Slip and Sach find $50,000 worth of money in a rolled-up newspaper on the ground. While Gabe (now a reporter) talks the Boys into donating it to local charities, a group of gangsters would do anything to get that dough, including taking out the Boys. An "umbrella with a hand" seems determined to take out the gangsters...but only Sach believes in his existence. This is one of the best combinations of suspense and laughs in the entire Bowery Boys series - love the gag where the guys actually "launder" the dirty money.

Spent the next hour or so cleaning the bathroom. Boy, was it grungy. I was going to do it last week, but things got so busy I put it off. I could not put it off any longer. The bath tub was disgusting, and the sink was worse. Finally got around to changing the shower curtain, too.

Went for a walk to WaWa after finishing the bathroom. I needed milk. I'd been avoiding going outside today because of the continuing heat wave. It was still steamy at 5:30, but I needed to get outdoors and get some real exercise in. I bought skim milk, a pretzel, and a Coke Zero fountain soda with vanilla and raspberry syrup for a treat.

Ran into Diane, one of my co-workers, and her youngest daughter on my way home. Diane and her family live down the street from me, on the other end of Manor Avenue. A short chat with her confirmed that I'm not the only one getting strange and very full hours lately. She, too, is working long hours for the rest of the week...and she has a family! It actually made me feel a little better to know that even people who have lives are getting stuck with crazy hours and it's not just me.

I made a tasty dinner of chicken breasts with tomatoes marinated in light Italian dressing, an arugula and radish salad, and gray zucchini sauteed in lamb broth for dinner, getting a much-needed cool shower after that.