Storm's A 'Brewin'

Began the morning at work. Actually, work was pretty quiet for most of the day. It did pick up a bit during the noon rush hour, but other than that, it was slow. By the time it was starting to pick up again, one of the college boys was coming in for me. I was in and out with no problems besides some cranky customers.

It was hot and steamy as heck when I got out around 4. I thought about taking a walk, but I decided to relax at home and finish out the Scooby Doo set instead. The first two episodes were Scrappy/Shaggy/Scooby shorts, with no monsters or mysteries to be seen. My favorite of these was "Basketball Bumblers." Shaggy's team is losing to one that's much taller and stronger...and whose manager is using a video game to cheat. Scrappy decides to beat him at his own video game when he ends up with half of the machine. "The Creepy Case of Old Iron Face" drops back to the mid-70s show as the gang tries to out-water-ski a ghostly pirate with an iron mask who rides two sharks.

The set concluded with two racing-related episodes of the early 2000s show What's New, Scooby Doo? The kids deal with a worm that's attacking an off-road race in Mexico in "The Fast and the Wormious." Fred's hearing "Gentlemen, Start Your Monsters" when he enters a major car race that's under siege by a huge monster car driven by a skeleton.

Switched to the Hanna Barbara set as I had leftovers and some marvelously sweet Jersey corn for dinner. Disc 1 kicks off with cartoons featuring some of the company's most beloved animal characters. Western horse sheriff Quick Draw McGraw and his burro sidekick Baba Louie stop a bandit from blowing up a dam with the help of Snuffles, a dog who really loves his treats, and introduce Quick Draw's Zorro-esque alter ego El Kabong. Cat and mouse detectives Snooper and Blabs search for a ruby on Mars that was stolen by a monkey. Augie Doggie runs away to prove to his Doggie Daddy that he's a grown up now. Daddy tries to bring his son home, but in the end, it takes the opposite sex to show Augie that he's not quite cut out for adulthood yet.

I swept the porch between cartoons. It was a mess of downed sticks and leaves from the last storms we had. Even as I swept, I could hear thunder on the horizon. The clouds had been gathering since before I left work. Mother Nature was nice enough to wait until about 10 minutes or so after I finished sweeping to burst. It's rained on and off since then, though it seems to be off at the moment.

Positive thought....yum. One of the things I love about living in the Garden State is the produce. The snow we got may have driven humans crazy, but it did great things for the flora. The cherries were sweet and rich; the peaches drip down my chin. I've never had such sweet corn, either. I hope the rest of the summer produce is just as good.