All American Weekend

Began the morning with Banana Oatmeal Pancakes and my Rainbow Brite kids' album to cheer up the blah weather. There's some surprisingly good songs here; my personal favorite is Rainbow's insanely catchy country-flavored ode to her flying horse, "Starlight-Rainbow Brite." The opening "There's a Rainbow In Your Heart" also isn't bad, and Rainbow's fuzzy buddy Twink gets the Irish-inspired "In the Twink of an Eye."

Spent the next few hours wrangling with the computer. I did get the ink, and it went in fine. After that...it just wouldn't print. The laptop kept coming up with the wrong model, no matter how much I tried to change it or make it come up right. I kept entering numbers to get it synced with my internet, and it wouldn't take any of the numbers. It printed the diagnostics fine, so it wasn't the printer itself. The printer is a decade old, and has never synced well with any laptop I've had in that time.

Finally gave up on it around 1:30. Had yogurt with blueberries and strawberries for lunch while listening to another kids' album. Yankee Doodle Mickey is a patriotic Disney release from the early 80's. Like with the Rainbow Brite album, there's a few gems. The Disneyland Glee Club does a rousing "Liberty Tree" from their movie version of Johnny Tremain. A very young Molly Ringwald gets "God Bless America" and "This Is My Country." My favorite here is the Armed Services Medley, with Mickey singing for the Air Force and the Marines, Goofy for the Army, and of course, Donald for the Navy.

Cleaned up while starting my other patriotic album. America the Beautiful is a 2-Disc set released in 1986 in time for the remodeling and 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. I remember it being a huge deal that year. They broadcast the reopening on the networks and everything. I listened to the first disc, which was the only one to feature some vocal music. Along with the title song, we heard "This Land Is Your Land" and Kate Smith's famous version of "God Bless America."

Went for a walk to WaWa after I finished the dishes. It suddenly got too nice to be inside. The clouds from this morning vanished by noon, becoming a gorgeous, warm day. I wasn't surprised to see lots of people out and about, from kids throwing balls in yards to families on bikes to young couples out walking their dogs.

WaWa was as busy as it's currently allowed to be. I decided to treat myself to a Peach Banana Smoothie. Drank it on the way home as I passed people working in their gardens and mowing lawns that had suddenly grown long again after the rain we had this weekend.

Took a nap when I got home. Lauren's been on shorter hours at work, and I've been up late with her for at least the past two weeks. Not to mention, I've just had a long couple of months, up to and including the broken elbow. One of the things I'm very much looking forward to doing in the next six weeks is catching up on my sleep!

It was past 5:15 by the time I rolled out of bed. No matter. Still got some writing in. Charles asks the head of the group of musicians, Jon "Bowzer" Bauman, if he'd mind having another performer. Not at all, says Jon. They'll even cover for Charles when he helps the others rescue Brett, Bill the Wolf, and Brett's sons from the dungeon basement.

Moved onto the rest of America the Beautiful as I had leftover chili for dinner. There's some classic material on these discs, which is why I always listen to at least the first record on every patriotic American holiday. Side 2 of disc 1 features The Grand Canyon Suite and a live medley of George M. Cohan songs you can clearly hear the audience singing along with. "American Patrol" kicks off disc 2, while side 2 boasts the theme songs of the various branches of the Armed Services, including "Anchors Aweigh" for the Navy and "The Army Air Corps Song" for the Air Force.

Finished the night online with Now You See It at Buzzr after tonight's Match Game premiere on YouTube. The blonde lady champ had no problems beating out two other women and getting to the final round...but that final round always seemed to make her too nervous. The most she won off the final round was 700 dollars.