Girls Rule!

I awoke to another absolutely gorgeous day. It was just 69 degrees in my apartment this morning when I checked the thermometer. Good thing I pulled out the heavier comforter yesterday! It felt so wonderfully pleasant, seeing sunshine and blue skies out my window and feeling nice and comfortable in my room, especially after the hot and humid summer.

Spent the remaining morning putting my my general fall decorations. I've cleared a lot of decorations out in the past year or so and don't have as many as I used to, but that's not entirely a bad thing. I've debated dropping the old cardboard leaves for the windows in the recycling for several years. I bought them from the Acme the first year I lived here. While I do like them, they're up from September through Thanksgiving. Not only do they get a beating, but they attract the condensation that tends to run on the windows on chilly fall mornings. It's time I went to Party Fair or looked around for something similar, maybe even a bit smaller.

Didn't get to the Haddon Township Library until around 1. It was a perfect day for a ride across Newton River Park. Everything is so much greener and prettier than it was this time last month, before the storms came. I passed another woman on a bike, an elderly couple out for a stroll, another enjoying a picnic lunch on a bench, and a man with his cute German Shepard puppy.

The library was surprisingly busy for such a nice day. I had a lot of DVDs to shelve and organize, both in the children's and adult's sections. There were far fewer children's books. I only had maybe ten of those to shelve. Older kids are back in school; the parents of younger ones are probably encouraging them to play outside more often, now that Mother Nature is behaving herself.

I did find three DVDs of interest. It's supposed to be too nice all week to be sitting around, watching long melodramas and action films, but they had a few new girl-oriented animated shows I couldn't resist. Found two sets of the 2009 CGI revamp of Angelina Ballerina and the most recent Veggietales episode The Penniless Princess, their take on one of my favorite childhood stories, A Little Princess.

Last week, I received a menu in the mail from Pizza Villa, a pizzeria on the White Horse Pike across from WaWa on the border of Haddon Township and Oaklyn. I thought I'd try them out. While the business itself is new, the location is not. There's been at least four or five pizza parlors in that building in the seven years since I moved here, but I never actually tried any of them. It was about 2PM when I arrived, and other than one elderly woman watching America's Funniest Home Videos on Comedy Central and the man who runs the place, the small, maple-colored room was deserted. I had two huge slices of cheese and mushroom pizza. They were delicious, with nice, crispy crust and lots of cheese. The price was good too, no more expensive than Capitol Pizza down the street. I'll have to return there whenever I'm in the area and feel like pizza.

I made a quick stop at WaWa for milk after lunch, then headed home. I've been wanting to get the raking done for a while, especially after my next-door-neighbor Richard did his lawn. The front yard was still fairly covered with gray leaves leftover from summer. I could see the first golden leaves of the fall as well. For once, the side path leading up to my apartment was actually messier than the front yard, which had been done by Andrew and his family in early July. Despite the mosquitoes eating me alive, I managed to get the entire yard done in an hour and a half. The weather was perfect for yard work. Richard agreed with me - I saw him washing his van as I did the side path.

My cookie tin has been empty for a while. I made Whole Wheat-Carrot-Chocolate Chip Cookies while running The Penniless Princess. I've had an off-and-on affiliation with Veggietales over the years. They're a long-running series of CGI animated cartoons featuring fruit and vegetables retelling biblical stories, often while parodying a famous book or popular film. Some of their spoofs are creative and hilarious...but they can just as often lapse into preachiness.

While not exactly a spoof, Penniless Princess isn't too bad moral-wise. In fact, it's one of the more accurate adaptations of A Little Princess I've see on-screen, more than many live-action versions. Wealthy Sara Crewe (a broccoli stalk?) is determined to stay a princess no matter what, just like her gentle father (Larry the Cucumber) wanted her to. When her father dies and she loses her money, she struggles to stay kind to everyone around her, even nasty Miss Minchin. Thanks to a pair of French peas and their poodle puppy and a kindly asparagus stalk (Archibald Asparagus), Sara and her friends Becky (Laura Carrot) and Ermengarde (Libby Asparagus) learn that a person's worth isn't in what they own, but what's in their heart.

Very sweet. I like how they included segments from the book that other versions often overlook, such as Sara giving the street urchin (Junior Asparagus) the buns from the bakery, or the three vegetable-girls' attempts to conjure up "magic" in the attic with their imaginations. Boys may want to wait for the next Veggietales episode coming out in October (the DVD's previews indicate that it'll be a spoof of The Avengers); for girls, this delightful musical is a lot of fun, especially if they're familiar with Veggietales and/or the source material.

Switched to Angelina Ballerina: Making Our Dreams Come True The Movie while making Salmon with Chinese beans, tomatoes, and peppers in Lemon Sauce and deliciously sweet corn-on-the-cob for dinner. Everybody's favorite British rodent dancer is now enrolled in the Camembert Academy, a much larger general arts school in her home town of Chipping Cheddar. She and her best friend Alice have been joined by French dancer Gracie, jazzy Americans Vicki and JZ, and Hispanic pianist Marco, along with their teacher Miss Mimi. Angelina hasn't changed much, though. She's still determined to become a star, no matter what. When she wins a chance to join a prestigious ballet academy and become a prima ballerina, she's excited at first...until she realizes she'll have to leave her family, friends, and especially her beloved little sister Polly.

On one hand, this was pretty much just a clip-show special, with scenes from other episodes tied into a rather obvious plot. If you've seen the other episodes, this one probably isn't necessary unless your little girl is a big Angelina fan. This was my introduction to the new series, so it was less of a problem for me.

I was especially delighted with the depiction of the charming relationship between Angelina and Polly. Polly is now about five-ish, and she adores Angelina and looks up to her in every way possible. Angelina, for her part, enjoys her little sister's company and loves teaching her new dance steps. Those two have come very far from the days of Polly's birth, when Angelina threw a fit over Polly getting more attention. I almost never see such a positive depiction of sisterhood in animation, and I really loved it.