Summer Sunshine

I was amazed at how gorgeous it was when I finally headed out around 11:30. The heat, haze, and humidity had been replaced by brilliant blue skies, a cool wind, and mid-80s temperatures. It was as perfect as the weather gets in Southern New Jersey in late July. I dodged several joggers, walkers, and other bikers as I rode through Newton River Park on my way to the Haddon Township Library. I saw a man playing fetch with his handsome Golden Retriever, too.

The library was surprisingly busy for such a nice day. Though there wasn't a lot to do when I arrived, more DVDs came in after I organized the children's titles. I also pulled foreign titles from the regular DVDs - there were a lot today, for some reason. I eventually ended up with the Oscar-nominated Hugo, the 80s-set comedy Take Me Home Tonight, and Puss In Boots.

It was so nice, instead of running errands, I rode to WaWa and bought a turkey and provolone hoagie instead. I ate my lunch outside on my porch while reading Moe Howard's biography. While the dry summer and my landlord's recent clean-up efforts have been keeping the mosquitoes at bay, the flies can still get bad. I went in as soon as I finished my lunch.

But not for long. The weather was far too lovely to spend the rest of the day indoors. I didn't have much time left, so I went for a quick walk down around Woodlawn Terrace and to West Clinton Avenue. I stopped at Leo's Yum Yums and treated myself to a Yum-Yum, a grainier water ice. I tried their Cotton Candy flavor for the first time. I'm not all that fond of real cotton candy - it's too sweet and sticky for me - but their version of the flavor was delicious. Creamy, a bit less grainy than usual, and not nearly as sweet as the real thing. I think I'll get that one more often.

I did spend the last hour before work taking advantage of the somewhat cooler weather to make Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies. Ran an episode of Wonder Woman revolving around the Olympics as I baked. "Screaming Javelin" has Diana Prince protecting a young Olympic-quality gymnast who has recently defected to the US after she gets word of a rash of disappearing athletes. When the girl vanishes as well, Diana finds herself dealing with the foppish, insane ruler of a tiny country. He believes that the only way to literally put his miniscule kingdom on the map is to kidnap top athletes and force them to compete on his company's Olympic team.

One of the strangest episodes of the otherwise fairly thoughtful second season. In fact, only a few episodes from the third season are weirder. Henry Gibson (of Laugh In and the animated Charlotte's Web) is over-the-top and  tad grating as the King who is desperate to change his country's image.

The cookies had literally just come out of the oven when it was time to hurry off to work. Work was pretty much the same as yesterday - busy during rush hour and on-and-off thereafter, but mostly quiet. I spent a lot of time putting away two full carts of candy.