Summer Breeze

Started off the day with breakfast and the Backyardigans DVD I picked up at the Oaklyn Library yesterday. I originally took this out when the library got it around December 2009; it's the only Backyardigans DVD Oaklyn got that Haddon Township didn't. The fourth season episode "Robot Rampage" was the last of the three hour-long Backyardigans specials. Disco accompanies the tale of Austin and his Robot Roscoe, who are repair men in futuristic Mega City. Austin's not getting much business. Robots never break down in Mega City...until Uniqua, Tasha, and Tyrone's robots malfunction. Now Austin has to keep Roscoe out of the flippers of Professor Bug (Pablo), who wants all the robots in the city to do his bidding.

Worked on writing for the rest of the morning. Hux takes his men down into the shaft to inspect the workers. His men claim they've heard a strange moaning sound and insist it's the ghost of the murdered Jedi Guards, who kept the secrets of the Khyber crystals to the order alone until Vader revealed them. Hux follows his men into the tunnel where the noises are coming from. They hear sizzling...and see two cloaked figures that seem to glow with an unearthly light. The smaller accuses him of forcing the natives to work in the mine and stealing the crystals for his and Coruscant's use. The soldiers are afraid, but Hux doesn't believe in ghosts. He starts to melt the crystal...

Broke for lunch and baking around 1. I wanted to make blueberry muffins while it was still cool enough to do so. Continued with The Backyardigans as I baked. Conductor Uniqua and Pablo Pablovich of Imperial Russia go on a merry chase to "Catch That Train," before Czar Tyrone discovers there's no one driving it. The trio don't have much more luck with a wormen that's been doused with Pablo's growth formula in "Attack of the 50 Foot Wormen." While excitable Pablo works on a formula to shrink the critter, Uniqua and Tyrone try to catch it, before it does more damage.

Headed to work a little bit early...which was completely unnecessary. We were dead the entire afternoon. It didn't even take me long to round up carts, with or without help. I cleaned the bathroom (twice - someone supposedly made a mess the second time, though I didn't see it), bagged the trash, gathered baskets, and did some bagging. Besides it being the middle of the week, the end of the month, and less than a week before one of the major holidays of the summer, it was just too nice a day for anyone to want to hang around in a grocery store. It remained sunny, breezy, and in the lower 80's, with nary a clouds in the brilliant cyan sky.

Took out my own trash when I got home, then changed, put away the blueberry muffins, and washed the muffin tin. Finished out the night with Charlie Chan In Shanghai as I went online. Charlie (Warner Oland) is in one of the largest cities in China, seeking an opium smuggling ring. A friend of his (David Torrence) holds a banquet in his honor. An ingenious gun planted in a box kills his friend when he opens it. His secretary Philip (Jon Hall) is the main suspect, but Charlie begins to wonder when there are two attempts on his life, and he and his son Lee (Keye Luke) are kidnapped. When Phillip's fiancee (Irene Hervey) helps him to escape, their guilt seems all but assured. Charlie's not so certain, especially since the FBI agent who's been aiding him (Russell Hicks) seems a bit cagey about their meeting the opium gang at the sketchy Versailles Club.

Definitely one of the twistier Chan mysteries I've seen. There's some genuine suspense to this one, especially with Charlie's life on the line. This is on the Charlie Chan Collection 1 DVD set if you're interested, as well as available on YouTube as of this writing.