Dusty Balance

Hit yoga class first thing in the morning. My heel spur and sore fingers are still acting up, so doing the back bends and Camel positions we emphasized today wasn't easy. Not to mention, I'm still not terribly flexible. I did the best I could. The class was fairly busy today, not as much as usual, but more than the last few weeks. Now that kids are back in school, parents and some college students probably need things to do in the morning.

Volunteering was a bust. There was absolutely nothing going on at the Collingswood Library. I organized the DVDs downstairs and shelved three non-fiction books upstairs. I browsed through a couple of Images of America books on Collingswood, Camden, and Audubon before heading out.

The Oaklyn Library had been almost completely rearranged. The adult DVDs were moved to where the oversized and reference books had been, and I don't know where those books went. Two beautiful black couches and wood tables had replaced the old adult DVD shelves. The computers, formerly stuffed into an area along the left wall next to the circulation desk, now took over where the couches, table, and newspapers were. The kids' section remained the same, and that's what I concentrated on today, especially the series titles and picture books.

I did things around the house for the next few hours. I swept the porch, which badly needed it. I hadn't done it in weeks, and there was a ton of debris leftover from the last few storms. I shook the dust out of the rag rug in my bedroom and hung it on the porch railing to air. I changed the sheets on my bed, then made it, also for the first time in ages. (Who's going to see it?) I vacuumed the entire apartment. I cleared out the vacuum cleaner's canister. I updated AVG and ran a virus search on my computer. (Didn't find anything.) I made Summer Fruit Oatmeal muffins from the muffin recipe cookbook I took out of the Haddon Township Library yesterday. (They were originally Peachy Oatmeal Muffins, but I had a few plums and an apple that were starting to get soft. I tossed them in with two peaches.)

I went for a short but pleasant walk between vacuuming and making the muffins. By late afternoon, the cloudy, cool, slightly humid day had become absolutely gorgeous. The sun was out, there was a soft breeze, and it was warm and a little humid, but not nearly as bad as earlier in the week. I even turned the air conditioner off. I strolled over to the school, passing people firing up lawnmowers to deal with grass that had gone from fried to overgrown in the space of a week. A little girl climbed on the jungle gym with her daddy at the playground behind the school. Older girls chatted about their first two days back on the swings. A group of grade-school age girls in soccer uniforms practiced as their coach directed them around the field behind the Oaklyn School.

When I got in, I made chicken burgers and steamed Chinese beans for dinner while running Supergirl. Superman's little cousin Kara got her first (and to date, only) big-screen outing in this notorious mid-80s cult favorite. Kara (Helen Slater) comes to Earth looking for a powerful sphere. She turns herself into a (brunette) prep school student, Linda Lee, to fit in. Turns out carnival sorceress Selina (Faye Dunaway) found the sphere, which she hopes will give her world domination. Dunaway also has her sights set on a hunky carpenter who has done work for the school...who falls for Linda after one of Dunaway's spells goes awry. Supergirl has to retrieve the guy and the sphere, all while dodging Selina's powers and keeping up appearances with her new best friend Lucy Lane.

As with fellow early and mid-80s oddities Xanadu and The Pirate Movie, your mileage will probably vary on this one depending on how cheesy you like your superhero movies. Personally, I get a big kick out of it. Slater is very cute as Supergirl and her school girl alter ego (and she manages to change hair colors in a single bound!). Dunaway chews everything in sight as the evil witch, and Peter Cook, as her mentor in evil, is only slightly less hammy. Like Flash Gordon, the colorful special effects haven't dated well, but otherwise, this remains a fun ride and one of the few times a solo superheroine has made it to the big screen.