"Another Fine Mess You've Gotten Me Into!"

After the excitement yesterday, I wanted to keep my only day off this week more laid-back. I started the morning with taking down the Fourth of July decorations. I figured I might as well. I'm working the rest of the week after today. Besides, I don't like leaving most holiday decorations up after the fact. (Except for Christmas. I like having them up, and they take forever to put up and take down anyway.) My very few general summer decorations will stay up until early-mid September.

I took a leisurely stroll to the Oaklyn Library a bit later in the morning. It was very hot today, but surprisingly not humid. The sky was a pale blue, with a few fleecy clouds. Actually, I wish we would get some rain. The grass is looking so brown and dry!

The Oaklyn Library needed the organizing. I finally decided to take out the DVDs that were listed wrong and get the librarians to fix them. Someone listed at least ten or fifteen titles under the words "The," "A," and "An," which as any good librarian could tell you, aren't counted as words. I'm tired of putting them in the right places, under their actual title, and then having someone try to put them under the letter listed. (And The Mark of Zorro goes under "Mark," not "Zorro." Conversely, the Angelina Ballerina and Backyardigans discs should be listed as those series, not the episode names.)

The kids' section was worse. There were young adult titles mixed in with the picture books, non-fiction in with fiction, and very large gaps where older material had been hastily removed. I put the out-of-order books where they belonged and fixed the young adult series section, which had gotten completely disorganized after its move from the metal shelves to the wooden ones.

Hiked over to WaWa after leaving the library for lunch and milk. It was even hotter by the time I headed out. The sun beat down relentlessly, despite a not-bad breeze. I grabbed a half-gallon of skim milk, a turkey and Swiss Junior hoagie, and a pretzel, and quickly made my way home.

I spent the next few hours inside, watching The Devil's Brother and doing things online. The Devil's Brother is one of the few musicals Laurel and Hardy appeared in (usually as comic relief). Dennis King is the title character, a Robin Hood-like figure who robs from the rich to give to the poor. The "rich" in question is a lovely noblewoman (Thelma Todd) with an older and very rich husband. Stan and Ollie try to rob King after they lose their money to bandits, but King ends up taking them on as aids to help him pull the wool over not only Todd's eyes, but her husband's and a young soldier after King.

Finally headed to the laundromat around quarter of 6. It had cooled off considerably, enough that it actually felt quite nice outside. Some clouds had begun to build up in the afternoon, but they'd completely vanished by 6. The laundromat was quiet, too. There were only a few people and the local Channel 6 and Channel 10 newscasts. This was a good thing. I had a lot of laundry to do, thanks to Lauren's visit and the sheet I used yesterday at the fireworks.

When I got in, I ran Bonnie Scotland and made Flounder in Teriyaki Sauce with mushrooms, steamed green beans, and cucumber and tomato salad. Bonnie Scotland is something like a more exotic Bowery Boys movie. In this case, when Stan and Ollie come to Scotland for Stan's inheritance, they find themselves stranded with no money, no pants for Ollie, and no way to get home. Joining the Scottish Army provides them with clothing and travel...but they quickly prove to be even worse soldiers than they were Scotsmen.

While I did like the swashbuckling Devil's Brother better than the bizarre Bonnie Scotland and neither are the pair's absolute best, they both have their moments. And the set comes with segments that Laurel and Hardy did for other MGM films (including Hollywood Revue and the otherwise lost operetta Rogue Song) and a documentary on the short subjects of the 20s, 30s, and 40s.