Rose Girls of Summer

I didn't sleep very well last night and got up fairly early. Spent some time reading and writing in my journal before having breakfast while continuing my Bowery Boys marathon. Live Wires was the first Bowery Boys movie. Fed up with the producer of the East Side Kids series, Leo Gorcey and his agent took to producing their own series about trouble-making young men in New York. Here, Slip Mahoney lives with his sister Mary, who's frustrated that he can't keep a job. Sach, for once, can - he's a process server. The movie becomes a series of gags about Slip and Sach trying to do their work, until they go up against a huge gangster who is easily three times their size...and find out who his boss is.

I did some stuff on the computer and didn't make it to the Haddon Township Library until nearly noon. It was a rather chilly day for late July, cloudy, windy, and probably in the upper 70s-lower 80s. Newton River Park was busy with kids playing with their parents on the playground and people going for lunchtime jogs.

Haddon Township Library was busier. Most of the librarians were busy, so I was on my own today. I shelved the children's DVDs. With more kids out of school and the weather iffy earlier this week and this weekend, many families were taking DVDs out. I once again managed to get everything on the shelves, even the "S" titles. Likewise the adult movies and non-fiction programming. Shelved some audio books and CDs as well.

Ended up at Friendly's for lunch. They're having a lunch sale - I got an All-American Burger, fries, a Diet Coke, and a Happy Endings sundae with hot fudge and two scoops of coffee ice cream for a little over $10 with tax and the extra cheese on the burger. They had a good-sized lunch crowd today, mainly mothers and grandmothers treating the kids to lunch and ice cream.

Made a short stop at Dollar Tree next. I'm finally almost out of sponges after I bought all those cheap ones from the Acme a few months back. I also saw a pretty rose-themed notepad that would work to write grocery lists on. Mine ran out some time ago.

The day was getting nicer by the minute. By the time I left the Westmont Plaza, the sun was out, and it was a little warmer, but neither humid nor overwhelmingly hot. The day practically begged for a ride. I've been meaning to get up to Haddon Heights and Barrington for months now, but I haven't had the chance. I decided it was a great day to explore the Barrington Antique Center.

The Antique Center is a barn of a building a few blocks from the ramp over the White Horse Pike. Tiny rooms are jam-packed with every kind of collectible item you can imagine, from the usual glassware, dishes, old magazines, and dusty knick-knacks to vintage clothes and linens, toys, games, records, and even CDs and DVDs. In fact, my first find was a DVD. I picked up the Tyrone Power Mark of Zorro for a dollar, a bit of a surprise given that the Antique Center's prices aren't always that great.

My best discovery of the day was a book. While I was able to pick up the majority of the 80s Rose Petal Place hardback storybooks on Amazon.com, two of them eluded me. Three smaller hardbacks had been released with cassettes. A Garden of Love to Share was a reprint of one of the full-sized books, but Rose Petal and the Evil Weeds and A Matter of Music were original stories. I finally picked up Evil Weeds for $2, much cheaper than I've ever seen it online. Rose Petal and her friends are attacked by weeds, who were sent by the evil Nastina the spider to choke Rose and her pals out of their homes. They fight back by cleaning up - and not letting Nastina's plotting get the better of them.

I went straight home after I left the Antique Center. The rush hour traffic was kicking in, and I was tired and not up to any more running around. Spent the next hour or so enjoying a relaxing bath. I read the American Girl Samantha mystery The Stolen Sapphire and Calvin and Hobbes comics while listening to one of my Lena Horne CDs.

After I finally got out, I just made a simple dinner of a summer vegetable and cheese omelet while watching more Bowery Boys. In Blonde Dynamite, the Boys turn Louie's Sweet Shop into an escort service after they talk Louie into going on vacation. While they try to make themselves presentable for the ladies, a group of gangsters blackmail their friend Gabe into giving them the combination to the safe of the bank he works at, then try to tunnel to the bank from Louie's.