Organizing the Fall

I slept in again this morning, then read Peril at End House and wrote in my journal until nearly noon. Maybe it was just as well. When I did poke my head out, it was hot and humid as heck! It's not supposed to last this time, thank goodness. The weather reports pretty much say it'll be nasty hot today and tomorrow, then it'll rain and cool off considerably.

Spent what time I had washing the windows, then doing a few things on my laptop. I completely redid my reading list. There's only two more books left in the apartment I've never read at all. The list now consists mostly of books I have read, but not in two or more years. I'm going to start with lighter children's books, like Alice In Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Charlotte's Web, and the Winnie the Pooh stories, this month. I'll then move onto swashbucklers - The Pyrates, The Prisoner of Zenda, the 50s pirate novel The Sword and the Shadow, The Scarlet Pimpernel books, Wings of the Falcon, and the first three books in the Amelia Peabody series.

After I finished that list, I reorganized the list of things I either wanted to get done this fall (like dental appointments and repainting those black shelves), or just want to keep in mind (don't buy as many DVDs new, try to eat better, try not to get so crazy about job hunting). The printer had been acting weird ever since I got the new laptop. I thought I synced it, but it appeared I hadn't. I got that fixed and printed out all my lists.

Work was relatively quiet when I came in. It got much busier later, to the point where it was just starting to slow down when I left at 8. This time, most people were in a decent mood. There were no major problems, and I was in and out.

And I do remember what today is. I was in college when 9/11 happened. I went to an early class, then upstairs to the library to take some books out. When I came out, one of the media center secretaries announced with a pale face that the World Trade Centers were being bombed. I got there in time to see the second tower fall. It was a crazy day. I don't even remember much about that week. It was scary.

Chocolate Chip Morning

I slept in again today. Thankfully, unlike yesterday, I had nowhere I needed to go until work. I made Chocolate Chip Muffins while the weather was still decent and listened to CDs. I dubbed Mandy Patinkin Sings Sondheim from a double-CD set at the Haddon Township Library years ago. He uses songs from various Sondheim shows (mostly Merrily We Roll Along, Follies, Sunday In the Park With George, Sweeney Todd, and Company) to illustrate what sounds like the up-and-downs of a composer or writer who ultimately decides he'd rather have love and art than meaningless success. After that epic show, I switched the less dramatic Kristen Chenowith solo CD Let Yourself Go, a favorite of mine ever since I picked it up from the Audubon FYE a few years back.

It took me longer than I thought it would to clean up the muffin mess. I got into work just under the wire. Work was mostly the same as yesterday - quiet when I came, very busy during rush hour. This time, with no Eagles game, it stayed steady. Some of the customers were a little annoying, including one woman who snuck in as I was trying to shut my line down, then rearranged all the bagging I did. I wasn't very happy when I finally got out of there.

If You Need Me, I'll Be Here

I slept in this morning, hoping to dodge the beginnings of some nasty weather this week. Thankfully, it was still sunny when I did get up, though once again a bit warmer and more humid than last week. It took me so long to get going, I didn't get to the laundromat until quarter of 1...and I had work at 3! I was lucky that the laundromat was quiet. When I came in, it was just me and The Young and the Restless. There were a few more people in and out, including a young couple, but I had no problem getting a washer and drier. Good thing too, because I had a big load, including towels. I rushed home after it was all done and had just barely enough time to change into my now-clean uniform, eat some leftovers for lunch, pack dinner, and rush off to the Acme!

After all that, work wasn't that bad. It was quiet when I came in and dead as a doornail when I left. It did get really busy during rush hour. For one thing, today's the first day of school for many districts, and the first full day of school for the others. Tonight was also the Eagles' opening game against the Redskins on Monday Night Football, a big game as the Eagles have a new head coach this year who would be getting a big test against a rival team.

I found out why the Acme cleared out so fast when I finally made it home. Chip Kelly was passing his first week's test with flying colors as the Eagles were killing the 'Skins 33-7 when I switched on the radio. They faltered in the second half, but still held off the Redskins long enough to win their opener 33-27.

I Left My Football In San Francisco

Started a still-nice but warmer and slightly more humid day with Brunch With the Beatles. Solo Beatles songs were in the spotlight on this morning's show. John's hits on his own included "Instant Kharma," "Whatever Gets You Through the Night," "Imagine," and "Just Like Starting Over." Paul had a number of hits with his group Wings in the early and mid-70s, among them "Live and Let Die," "Jet," "Band On the Run," and "Silly Love Songs." Ringo had his greatest success in the mid-70s with "It Don't Come Easy" and the remakes of "You're Sixteen" and "Only You." George's "My Sweet Lord" went to the top of the charts in 1974.

Had a short but interesting chat with Mom after I finished my Lemon-Rosemary Pancakes. She was going through fabric swatches, trying to decide on a design to make an outfit for herself. Apparently, she's been making clothes for herself for the first time since she was a young adult. We talked crafts, and then I told her about my heavy upcoming schedule. She said basically to slow down this week and try to rest as much as possible before work. I need to tell my managers about my sore knees and heel spur, too.

I do intend to take her advice on resting, especially since it's supposed to get much hotter later in the week. The laundry can't be put off, and I could probably get away with the short walk to the Oaklyn Library. I'm not going to be able to pull off the Haddon Township Library visit, though. I need to dust and do the windows before vacation next week, but that won't require a lot of heaving lifting.

Headed off to work about a half-hour after I finished with Mom. Work was very busy all day, not surprising for a Sunday or the beginning of the first full week of school. Thankfully, the afternoon went quickly, my relief was actually a little early, and I was in and out.

When I got home, I changed into regular clothes, then plopped on my couch to work on a new crocheting project and listen to the first football Sunday of the 2013-2014 NFL season. Since the Eagles play tomorrow night, local sports radio station WIP had the San Francisco 49ers-Green Bay Packers game on. I listened to the game all afternoon, while crocheting, taking "beginning of the school year" photos of the dolls, and making salmon with fresh peppers for dinner.

And what a way to kickoff the season! The game was amazing. Neither team dominated the game - one would score a touchdown, and then the other would turn right back around and get another one. Both teams played fiercely. There were flags and penalties every other minute, some of them rather vicious, including a fight. In the end, the 49ers' two field goals and a final touchdown helped them to victory, 34-28. 

Stressed Out

Started another beautiful day with this week's American Top 40. I would have been about six months old in early September 1979, when these songs were new. Among the hits were "The Main Event" by Barbra Streisand from the movie of that title, "I'll Never Love This Way Again" by Dionne Warwick, "After the Love Has Gone" by Earth, Wind, and Fire, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" by the Charlie Daniels Band, "Lonesome Loser" by the Little River Band, "Bad Girls" by Donna Summer, "Sail On" by the Commodores, "Suspicions" by Eddie Rabbit, "Let's Go" by The Cars, "Sad Eyes" by Robert John, and "Mama Can't Buy You Love" by Elton John.

The top song of that week wound up being the year's biggest hit. Despite the album covers with them posed like the Beatles and the smash success of their single "My Sharona," the Knack would prove to be far shorter-lived - this was their only major hit.

Though I had to work relatively early today, I did have enough time to get a farm market run in. I'm glad I did. The place was packed when I arrived with people buying food for parties and barbecues, probably making up for the messy and hot weather last week. The arrival of fall was indicated by the first winter squash, pumpkins, and decorative gourds of the week. I stuck to the summer produce - white peaches, tiny Gala apples, a mini-watermelon that looked like a heavy green-striped beach ball, Chinese beans, zucchini, a tomato.

I rushed off to work at 11. We were busy the entire afternoon. In addition to the barbecues and parties that people couldn't hold last week because of the weather, most kids go back to school full-time this week, people are still using their beginning-of-the-month money, and we're in the midst of the Jewish New Year. Not to mention we're giving out those stickers for the Rachel Ray Dinnerware promotion.

I was so stressed. Everything seemed to go wrong. People were mostly nice about it, but one lady got upset when all the coupons for those Sierra Mists with the 75 cent coupons brought her order to five dollars instead of one dollar. She must have bought thirty bottles of soda! She should have been happy to get it for that price. I tried to apologize because she was so angry, but she said I wasn't sorry, paid her money, and flounced off. I wish people would listen, instead of having a fit.

At least the party food was good. While it wasn't as big as the Christmas blow-out we usually have, there was still plenty to enjoy. I sampled a pulled chicken sandwich, a spicy macaroni and cheese casserole, a tomato and mozzarella salad, mini-pretzels topped with softened Rolos and a candy corn, and decadent peanut butter fudge brownies. I did notice almost no one seemed to want my Lime Mini-Cupcakes...

When I finally turned over my line to the college girl around 5PM, I went straight home. My stomach was in knots. My knees were sore. My heel spur hurt like hell. I went straight in the bath when I got in and stayed in the bath for over an hour. It felt so nice. The warm water was really soothing for my poor legs and feet.

I don't know how I'm going to survive a whole week of this. I work literally through the week - I don't have a day off until next Saturday! Everyone keeps telling me to try to balance my life. How can I balance my life if I have to work through it? I feel so trapped. My stomach is still in knots, even after the bath and the peanut butter and apricot sandwich and the white peach I had for dinner.

All In the Golden Afternoon

The weather continued to be perfect today. It was a mere 70 degrees in my apartment when I got up this morning, and probably a lot cooler outside. I celebrated fabulous fall weather with breakfast and one of my favorite episodes of Fairy Tale Theatre, "The Dancing Princesses." Six princesses who are locked into their room by their overprotective father every night somehow manage to wear out their dancing slippers by the next morning. Fed up with paying the shoe bills, the King puts out an announcement that any prince who discovers how the girls keep wearing out shoes can have one of his daughters for his wife and inherit the kingdom. A soldier down on his luck gets help from an old lady who gives him an invisible cloak in order to tail the princesses and discover just how they manage to go out dancing every night.

I spent most of the afternoon at work. It was steady, not quite as bad as last week, but not crazy, either. It did pick up later as we got closer to the usual rush hour. Giving away the stickers for the Rachel Ray Dinnerware went fine, too. They come in books instead of rolls - they look a bit like the tickets they used to use for the Wildwood Boardwalk amusement parks. That makes it a lot easier to count them and give them out. There's only four pieces, so it'll take a lot less time to collect a full set. They look a bit like Fiestaware - I might end up saving for some myself. I even managed to sell four bottles of 5 cent Sierra Mist soda to a couple who didn't want to buy five sodas to get the Coke bottle dollar sale. (We were overloaded with bottles of Sierra Mist with a 75 cent coupon that makes them 5 cents a few weeks ago, and have been trying to sell them ever since.)

My relief, one of the college girls, was right on time, which gave me plenty of time to do my own shopping. Once again, there wasn't much. I mainly needed to restock baking items - chocolate chips, whole wheat flour, cake flour. Bought three of those single fish fillet packs for a dollar each. I used the last of the white cooking wine on my chicken dinner yesterday, so that needed to be replaced. Bought yogurt, too. Found mini-cupcake tins on clearance and thought they'd be perfect for a baking project.

It was too nice to eat outside. I treated myself to dinner at Sonic after I finished my shopping. I'm surprised there weren't more people on the patio. I was there around 5:30, so I guess people would come around later. I enjoyed tater tots, a grilled chicken sandwich, and my favorite cherry limeade while admiring the view of the Black Horse Pike and the wide, rich blue sky.

When I got home, I changed into regular clothes and worked on that baking project I mentioned. The Acme is having a big Football Kickoff/Beginning of Fall party tomorrow in the break room. I wanted to bring something that would be easy for me to carry....hense the aluminum mini-muffin pans with the plastic top. I made a simple yellow cake recipe. I forgot vanilla, so I added lime juice. (It wasn't quite as lime-y after I baked them, thankfully.) I'll frost them with Whipped Cream Frosting later tonight.

I watched the Disney Alice In Wonderland while I baked. This is an old favorite of mine. I know a lot of people don't consider this version of the story to be one of Disney's better films, but it think it's really fun. I love the colorful animation and one of Disney's first celebrity voice casts (Ed Wynn and Jerry Colonna were a great Hatter and March Hare, and Verna Felton had so much fun as the Queen of Hearts, I wish she voiced more out-and-out villains in Disney movies).

Not Quite Fall

The weather remains incredible. It was a bit chilly in my apartment this morning when I got out of bed. I celebrated the fall-like day with mildly spooky episodes of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Piglet is "A Knight to Remember" when he dreams that he's a real knight who must fight a fearsome dragon. Poor Piglet's also having weird dreams in "Rock-a-Bye Pooh Bear." When he has a nightmare about his friends disappearing, he refuses to sleep at all. The others prove to him that bad dreams don't necessarily come true. Piglet lets his imagination get the better of him when he and Tigger tell the story of "The Monster Frankenpooh." He also lets his imagination go wild in "Things That Go Piglet In the Night." Spooky noises send him running, so the others go after him. Pooh and Piglet think they go on an intergalactic trip in "Pooh Moon," but they're really just still in the woods. Meanwhile, the others try to capture the Grab-Me Gotcha that Tigger described.

Work was still very busy, despite the nice day. Lovely weather or no lovely weather, people still need to buy beginning-of-the-month groceries and food for kids going back to school. It didn't help that my register went down about an hour or so into my shift, and they never were able to fix it. I had to move to another one.

It also looks like we're starting a new promotion tomorrow. We're going to give people stickers to collect in order to buy or get Rachel Ray Dishware for free. On one hand, the last time we did this promotion with a huge pot set in 2010 was nothing but a pain. It took forever for people to collect enough stickers for the better pots, the stickers were tiny, easy to lose, and not fun to give out, and you had to count each one out, which held up the line.

The sticker board they have for this promotion already reveals some improvements. For one thing, if the board is an indication, the stickers are larger, and hopefully easier to keep track of. Since it's only a six-dish-set, there's less to collect. Also, I doubt a lot of people will need to keep collecting and collecting for the whole set unless they really need a ton of dishware or plan to give it away.

When I got home, I did things around the apartment. I swept the porch, which was a mess. There's still pepper nuts and nut bits all over. The first leaves of the fall are starting to come down, too. I vacuumed the living room and emptied the vacuum canister. I put the braid rug in my bedroom and the strawberry mat in the kitchen outside to air.

I put on Rockin' In the Rockies while baking a Rosemary-Lemon Cake and making chicken breasts in white wine-balsamic vinaigrette sauce with Chinese beans and Persian Cucumber Salad for dinner. This Columbia B-western is one of the few full-length films featuring the Three Stooges during their heyday. Moe is the foreman of a ranch owned by a young man just out of agricultural college (Jay Kirby). He convinces two vagrants (Larry and Curly) and a pair of showgirls (Gladys Bake and Mary Beth Hughes) to put money into his prospecting scheme. Meanwhile, the ranch's cowhands would rather be playing music than chasing cattle. They accidentally mistake the mining surveyor (Forrest Taylor) for a rustler. When the group hears about a big Broadway producer vacationing in town, they do their best to get him to hear them and several other local groups...and get around Rusty's objections to turning his ranch into a music showcase.

Much to my surprise, this was very cute, and actually better than some of the features Moe and Larry made with Curly Joe in the 60s. All of the actors do fairly well with the silly but effective plot, especially Bake as the slightly dim-witted brunette singer who falls for Moe. I will warn you that this is also very much a musical  - all plot comes to a halt whenever anyone starts singing and dancing. Anyone who can't handle that, or prefer the Stooges as more of a unit (Curly and Larry spend a lot of time on their own), may want to skip this. If you're a fan of B-westerns, 40s Big Band music with a western touch, or the Stooges, look this one up on Amazon.com as part of the made-to-order Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Choice Collection.

Miss Redmer and the Sunny Day

It was absolutely gorgeous when I climbed out of bed this morning around 8 or so. The heat and humidity had completely vanished, replaced by warmth, dryness, and temperatures probably in the upper 70s-lower 80s. I did a couple of episodes of Tiny Toon Adventures while having breakfast. In "Sawdust and Toonsil," Buster and Babs rescue GoGo the Dodo and several of his fellow Wackyland citizens from an evil sideshow owner, while Plucky sees the sideshow as his way into show business. Babs (and the audience) learn a lesson in Warner Brothers animation history in "Fields of Honey." Babs is one of the few Tiny Toons who is largely an original character...which means she has no mentor to show her the art of being animated. When she goes seeking a previous female character in the Warner vaults (besides Granny and Witch Hazel), she comes upon Honey, the girlfriend of Warner's first cartoon star Bosko in the late 20s and early 30s. Trouble is, Honey vanished years ago after hers and Bosko's popularity waned. Babs builds a theater to show the public how much fun those old black-and-white shorts could be.

(A personal and historic note on "Fields of Honey": I encountered Bosko and Honey not long before I first saw this episode, in shorts on the Nickelodeon Looney Tunes show. In real-life, they were Mickey and Minnie Mouse imitations whose shorts could occasionally be fairly inspired. Their popularity didn't end because of Porky Pig; actually, their original creators, Harmon and Ising, left Warners and took their characters with them two years before Porky's debut. They continued appearing in MGM shorts into 1938, redesigned somewhere around 1934 to look more like real African-American kids.)

I headed out after the Toons ended. It was a perfect day for an errands run, starting with a trip to the Oaklyn Library. Needless to say, the library was empty. The only other people besides me were the librarian and two men discussing fundraising ideas for the library. Just as well. I had a lot to do. The adult DVD shelves were a mess, with more than half the DVDs out of place. The kids weren't much better. There were kids' books to shelve, too.

Rode into Audubon for an early lunch around 11:20. Between the early hour and the nice day, Simply Soups was also quiet. No matter. I had a lovely lunch of breadsticks, a can of Diet A&W, and a small cup of Sweet Potato Soup with Carmelized Ham and Pecans. Yuuuummmm. Sweet and a little spicy, the soup was basically sweet potato puree with glazed ham and pecans. I love pecans and sweet potato and can handle ham in small doses (my stomach doesn't always deal with pork well), so I loved this.

I took the long route across Audubon and past a busy Paul VI Catholic High School instead of dealing with the traffic on Cuthbert. Other than school seemed to have let out early and there were quite a few cars coming out, I had a pleasant ride. It was nice to be able to enjoy the scenery and the peace.

Made a quick stop at Thriftway for peanut butter, but decided I liked the Acme's prices better and left with nothing. Went to the Haddon Township Library after that. Unlike the Oaklyn Library, they were very busy with kids out of school and parents looking for ways to amuse younger children who no longer had siblings at home to distract them. I shelved the largest pile of DVDs I've seen at the library in months. A lot of people must have taken movies out during the long, wet holiday weekend.

(And I didn't take any DVDs out myself. I work for the rest of the week after today and probably won't have time to watch them.)

Headed straight home after that. Stopped long enough to pick up a new American Girl catalog, then went indoors. Spent the next hour and a half cleaning the bathroom and the kitchen. The bathroom was especially grungy. I ran records by The Who (Odds and Sods) and Bruce Springsteen (Nebraska) as I scrubbed.

It was too nice to be inside all day. I went for a short walk around quarter of 5. While most of the area is pretty much still in summer, trees and gardens are beginning to show the first rough signs of fall, including some trees that are already losing leaves. There were lots of people and animals out and about with me. I stopped and petted a large, handsome German Shepard and chatted with his owner and was barked at by an adorable beagle puppy through his fence. Picked up skim milk at WaWa and treated myself to a Coke-Kiwi Strawberry Icee. Wanted to say "hi" to Rose at her house, but even though hers and Craig's cars were there, I didn't see anyone.

When I got in, I took a long, relaxing bath. Digging around in the back room, I discovered a small bottle of Strawberry Shortcake-scented bath gel that came with the recipe box/toiletries holder Rose gave me several years ago. I'm glad I didn't get rid of that. It smelled wonderful in the water and created lots of bubbles.

My bath was so late, I didn't get to making dinner until 7! I whipped up flounder poached in wine sauce with leftover green salad and macaroni salad from Jodie's party and a farm market corn on the cob. I ran The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh while eating dinner, and later while making Zucchini-Chocolate Chip Cookies. I love this classic anthology of the three original Pooh shorts. It's pretty much what the title says - lovable teddy bear Pooh and his stuffed pals in the Hundred Acre Woods have some really fun adventures, from Pooh's attempts to get honey to Tigger's perpetual bouncing getting on Rabbit's nerves.

Obviously necessary if you're a fan of Pooh; also nice for very young kids who may not be up to some of Disney's faster-paced and more goofy fare. Disney's released this one three times over the last 12 years or so, including a Blu-Ray copy a couple of weeks ago, so it's pretty easy to find.

(Oh, and the cookies came out perfectly, soft, chewy, and just sweet enough. Who every thought Zucchini would make a great addition to a chocolate chip cookie?)

Busy Is the Word For Work

Thankfully, by the time I headed out to finally get this week's laundry load done, the storms were long gone. It was sunny and warm but not as bad as the weekend, and the haze was dissipating. NBC's news casts confirmed this when I arrived. It would be warm and clear but not humid for the rest of the week. There were a few people in the laundromat, but it wasn't overwhelmingly busy. I had no problems getting a washer and a drier and finishing The Han Solo Adventures while the news and Today blathered in the background.

When I got home, I put my clothes away, then made tilapia for lunch along with leftovers from the barbecue last night. I pretty much only had time for The Three Stooges before work. They're "Termites of 1938" when three society ladies mistake their exterminating business for an escort service. "Violent Is the Word For Curly" when the trio find themselves as professors in a girls' school, teaching them their famous "Swinging the Alphabet" song. Another society lady mistakes the janitor Stooges for interior decorators in "Tassels In the Air." They find themselves "Playing the Ponies" when they trade their hash house for a race horse. The horse is a dud, until they feed him something that'll really make him a hot prospect - Curly's chili pepperinos!

And yes, work was busy for most of the day again, though not quite as bad as yesterday. Some kids go back to school today. Some go tomorrow or later in the week. Some don't go until next week, especially schools with heavy Jewish populations - Rosh Hashanah is this week, and that's one of their major holidays. (I remember being a little envious of the kids from the several Jewish families in Cape May Elementary who got to stay out for several days in the first month of the school year to celebrate their holidays. Not only did they sound cool, but they were out of school after just going back!)

Other than some mildly annoying people and today was my long shift (7 hours) and I was really worn out by 7PM, there were no major problems. My relief was right on time. When I got out, I found that the broadcast weather was right, for once. It was clear, sunny, and dry, with no humidity or haze in sight. I even turned off the air conditioner for the first time since early last week.

Storming Into Labor Day

Ugh. I slept in again this morning and awoke to thunderstorms. Not a good start to the last major holiday of the summer. I was going to go to the laundromat this morning. Needless to say, I never made it. I went over old journals and watched Three Stooges shorts about jobs and working. "Ants In the Pantry" has them as exterminators who release pests into a swanky party to save their jobs...and end up being the hit of the party. In "False Alarms," they're firemen who are two steps from being kicked off the force, due to their laziness. While Curly sneaks out to see some ladies, Larry and Moe get locked in a closet, and then race to meet Curly in the chief's new car. They're "Slippery Silks" who inherit a dress shop from their late uncle...but it's their furniture-based designs that really have their customers' attention. In "Dizzy Doctors," when their wives say get a job or else, they become salesmen peddling a new medicine who create chaos in the hospital when they try to sell the stuff to patients.

It was still raining around quarter of noon, and I had to work at 1. I ended up calling for a ride. Jodie took me; she had grocery shopping to do anyway. Ironically, the rain was slowing down even as we drove to the Acme. By the time I finished at 5, it was sunny and hot and the storms were long gone.

I almost wish it had kept on raining. The Acme was a madhouse today. Not only is it the beginning of the month and a major holiday, but most kids return to school this week or early next week. If people weren't buying food for barbecues that were now back on or for their kids' lunches, they were buying what they needed for the month. It was a mob scene. I was glad my relief, one of the college girls, was on time, and Jodie picked me up on time as well.

I went straight back to Dad's house with Jodie. They were having a small Labor Day get-together with some of their neighbors, my sister Rose and her family, and an old friend of Dad's. Bill had known Dad well in college, in the Army, and later when Dad would make business trips up to Alaska. Bill had made the audacious undertaking of riding a big three-wheeled incumbent bike from Seattle to New Jersey, and was now going to take it down to Central Florida to visit his parents. He had some great stories about being a bush pilot in small towns in rugged Alaska.

We had green salad, tomato and mozzarella salad, macaroni salad, spicy hot grilled chicken, Jodie's so-tender-they-fall-off-the-bone ribs, grilled asparagus with lots of garlic, and fancy creme-filled donuts from MacMillan's Bakery in Westmont for dessert. It was all delicious. I tried everything but the chicken. (I've eaten a lot of chicken lately, and from what Jodie said, it was a bit too kickin' for my taste!)

I spent an hour or so watching Spongebob Squarepants with Khai while he played with his cars and ride-on firetruck. In one episode, Spongebob and Patrick do everything they can to keep Sandy the Squirrel from leaving the ocean, even putting on a party to remind her of her beloved Texas. In another, Spongebob and Patrick find a (real-life) pencil that was dropped by a live-action artist. The doodles they create on the ocean floor become real...including a Spongebob clone that's bent on "rubbing out" it's creator! A third story was a bit less dire. Patrick can't afford a vacation, so Spongebob tries to give him one at his home and Squidward's, much to the latter's annoyance.

I finally hitched a ride home with Rose, Craig, and Khai around 7:30, then jumped in the shower after I got in. I hope everyone else who celebrates Labor Day had a great end of the summer season, whether they celebrated it in the rain or not.

Ship-Shape Sunday

Started off a sunny, hot, and muggy day with Brunch With the Beatles and Apple-Peach Pancakes. The theme today was the "Paul is dead" rumor that started somewhere in the mid-60s and apparently lasted through the rest of the decade. I've always wondered what people were smoking then that made them believe things like that. Songs associated with the rumors ranged from "I'm Looking Through You" to "Strawberry Fields Forever" to "I Am the Walrus" and "Glass Onion."

Called Mom after I finished breakfast. She was just getting dressed and cleaned up, and was trying to get my nephew Skylar to do the same. Mom was ok, but Skylar was having a rough time of it. His mother, my younger sister Anny, accidentally dropped his glasses in the bay yesterday, and they couldn't find them even though they searched for an hour. Not a good thing - he starts school Tuesday, and he's blind as a bat without them. Mom said Anny had gone out to see what she could do about getting new ones, even though they wouldn't be there by Tuesday.

I spent the rest of a very quiet afternoon watching movies and finishing a crocheting project. I've been working on a new dish rag for months now. I just haven't had the time for crocheting, or much of anything else. I probably used acrylic yarn that was too heavy...but that turned out to have the advantage of being scratchy enough to get some really caked-on gunk off the old pan I use for pancakes.

The first movie of the day was Summer Rental. One of several mildly pleasant but unremarkable family comedies John Candy did in the mid and late 80s gives us Candy as stressed-out air traffic controller Jack Chester. When his boss finally says he needs a vacation, he packs his family up and takes them to a small shore town in  North Florida. They think their new rental home is gorgeous and perfect...until they realize they're in the wrong house. Worse yet, their actual rental house is a dump, the beach it overlooks is notorious for parties, and the local snob (Richard Crenna) insults Candy whenever he can. As in One Crazy Summer, a boat race settles all disputes, this time with the help of the crusty owner (Rip Torn) of a dilapidated vessel remade as a seafood shack.

As I said, this is cute if you're into 80s comedies or Candy, but it's otherwise nothing you absolutely must see (or haven't seen before). Worth a rental if you're a big Candy fan.

Went right into Captain Ron as I made an omelet with Cheddar with Herbs, mushrooms, and the last of the ratatouille for lunch. Here Martin Short is the stressed executive Martin Harvey who wants to take his family on an adventure. He gets his chance when he inherits a boat from an uncle who ran off to the Caribbean. Turns out, the boat is a mess, and the only pilot they're able to hire is the unreliable and very wacky Captain Ron (Kurt Russell). Ron may not be much of a pilot, but he does know enough of his stuff to teach Harvey and his family something about sailing. Ron's antics (including getting lost and inviting revolutionaries on the boat) drives Harvey up the wall...but when pirates attack, it'll take their combined efforts to save Martin's family and the ship!

This is a long-time family favorite. Russell and Short have wonderful chemistry as the harried executive who wants a perfect vacation and the laid-back island bum who is clueless about how badly he's screwing it up. Some references to Cuba and the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90s makes it a little more dated than the other summer movies I've run this weekend, but otherwise, this is a fun vacation comedy and is recommended, especially for fans of Russell or Short.

Work, on the other hand, was not fun. I don't know if people were upset that we still haven't gotten the rain they've predicted all weekend or what, but I was ready to tear out my hair. People were rude. People were cranky. At least five people misinterpreted the soda sale that allows you to buy four 12 packs of Pepsi, Canada Dry, or Coke...and only those brands. You can't mix and match the brands, only the flavors within the brand. One guy was cool and said he wanted his Diet Coke whether it was on sale or not. Everyone else fussed that they had to get the right thing. I was so happy when it finally quieted down enough by 8 for me to leave without a relief.