Rainy Day at Home

It was pouring cats, dogs, and the rest of the animal kingdom when I got up this morning, and rained for most of the day. It was no day to be doing any running around. I stayed home today, working on the budget. I also found a folder to keep my receipts in, instead of throwing them in the front of one of my file folders.

I ran Scooby Doo and the Zombies this morning. Actually, it's a collection of three What's New, Scooby Doo? episodes revolving around the titular monsters. My favorite was the last one. Growing up around lighthouses, I've heard stories like the one that spooks Shaggy, Scooby, and the gang on the Great Lakes in Wisconsin. The five handle a spooky lighthouse keeper zombie, the spirit of a ship that sunk in the rocks off Lake Michigan, and a snotty local shop owner who seems awfully familiar...

When I finished the budget, I had lunch and dubbed "Casey at the Bat" for Mom. "Casey" is another Tall Tales and Legends episode. Unlike "Annie Oakley," this one is purely comic fiction. Based around the famous baseball poem, Casey (Elliot Gould) is a wanna-be player during the game's infancy in the 1880s. He's finally given a chance to revolutionize the game when he tells his sweetheart's (Carol Kane) father that he plays or quits. The local owner of Mudville's Industrial Revolution mud-furniture factory isn't thrilled that Casey's popularity is re-energizing the game. He wants to by the stadium to use as a sludge dump! Can Casey find a way to beat the "machine" at their own game...win or lose?

This was another "Tall Tales" winner, a hilarious and sweet spoof of the Horatio Alger myths of baseball and the Industrial Revolution era that spawned it. I've always been especially fond of the anachronistic but still awesome ragtime/swing score. And for a little verisimilitude, it's narrated by two of sports commentary's greats, Bob Uteker and Howard Cosell.

I had a little time left before work, so I ran a Tiny Toon Adventures episode that also has fun with Casey at the Bat before I went to work. In the second show to make fun of ABC's Wide World of Sports, Buster is the big star of Acme Loo's baseball team. Sylvester narrates the story as only he can as we see Buster step up to bat. Other stories here has Buster buying a bike from a huckster that turns out to be a lemon (and how he gets his revenge), and the gang's participation in the Acme Acres Olympics.

Went to work right after the Toons ended. It was busy when I came in, but it was also 4PM, the start of rush hour. Though it was spitting by then, it wasn't raining so hard that I couldn't ride to work and get more than slightly damp. By the time I left, the rain had picked up and cleared out the customers. It was so dead at 9:30, I left slightly early.

Good thing. Twenty minutes after I got home and took out the trash, the spitting had become another heavy shower, though it doesn't seem to be doing anything at the moment.