Winter Has Returned

It was snowing pretty heavily when I finally dragged myself out of bed around 9:30. I read The Darkness Knows for a little while and wrote in my journal, then had corn meal mush and half of a grapefruit for breakfast. Watched Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall while I ate. This 1992 concert brought stars of the stage, some of whom had actually appeared in Sondheim's shows (like Bernadette Peters), to sing some of the composer and lyricist's best work as a solo writer. Numbers ranged from patter songs for neurotic comediennes Madeline Khan and Dorothy Louden to touching ballads from Patti LuPone and Peters to operatic numbers from Sweeney Todd featuring genuine opera stars. There was also dancer Karen Ziemba having fun with comic Bill Irwin in "Sooner or Later," the Follies number "Broadway Baby" sung by then-child star Daisy Egan, and a harrowing song from what was then Sondheim's most recent show, Assassins, "The Ballad of Booth."

The snow and sleet continued through the early afternoon, then on and off for the rest of the day. I spent the time inside avoiding it. Thank goodness I was already off today! I mostly puttered online and worked on writing and ideas. Rusty Arlington is Han's mechanic and handyman. He was the one selling wooden hawks to Leia. He's starting to pack up his wares when Cedric, Mon Mothma's butler, runs into him. The two are good friends...when they aren't insulting one another. Rusty's taking a mysterious machine to the Industrial area in the back of the park and literally drags Cedric along for the ride.

Meanwhile, Leia has met Luke and Bail at the fair grounds. Luke is dressed as a swashbuckler for his fencing exhibition. Vader's airship is the major attraction. It's dark and sleek, with a long projectile on the nose that resembles a slender cannon.

The snow finally ended by 4 PM, and the sun began to emerge. By that point, I was less worried about actual precipitation and more about the wind. Ice-covered branches were falling or being blown off the trees over my home. They fell hard against my bedroom windows, sometimes so roughly that I was surprised the windows didn't break. I can still occasionally hear them.

Broke briefly around 2:30-3ish for lunch and to bake Irish Soda Muffins. The recipe I used from The Beanie Baby Handbook wasn't very good. It didn't tell you what to do with the butter once  you got it in. I cut it in, and...I don't think I mixed it well enough. On a suggestion in the Vermont Country Store Cookbook, I added cheese (Gouda was all I had) and rosemary. Tasted pretty good, but it melted in the pan and made a buttery mess.

Ran two snow-themed Scooby Doo episodes while I ate and baked. "That's Snow Ghost" from the original show has the gang on vacation at a dilapidated ski resort. The area seems to be haunted by a spectral yeti that can fly, a creature from an old Tibetan man's story. The creature seems to be hiding something, something that's tied into the sawmill nearby. It's "A Scary Night With a Snow Beast Fright" when the gang finds themselves in the Arctic. They were called their by their friend the professor, but he and the local Eskimo chief have vanished. The kids have to figure out what it was that the professor found...and where the gigantic dinosaur-like "Snow Beast" sprang from.

I got so caught up with writing and Pinterest, I didn't break for dinner until around 7:30. I enjoyed the Felix the Cat cartoons I watched yesterday so much, I put on one of the disc of the public domain animated shorts Lauren sent me and watched a bunch of random ones. Little Audrey thinks nursery rhymes are a bore, but in "Goofy Goofy Gander," a hip Mother Goose proves otherwise, at least until the gangsters from Audrey's comic leap into her rhyme book. "Tarts and Flowers" has Audrey helping her Gingerbread Man rescue his angel cake bride from the Devil's Food Cake.

Finished the night with more Three Stooges. They're "Hairbrained Barbers" who manage to make a British rock star happy, even though they've made a mess of his mane. Their boss isn't as pleased. Two little boys are "My Littlest Martian" when they dress as spacemen to play a trick on the Stooges. "Flat Heads" has a robber pulling into the Stooges' new service station, hoping for them to fix his flat tire. Their attempts at replacing the tire ends with them stuck in the tires...and the robber getting arrested.