Are You Ready for the Summer?

I slept in and got so caught up finishing Death at High Tide, it was noon before I got going. Had a quick breakfast and made my grocery list while watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. "Donald Hatches an Egg," while the others look for its mother. The egg is a very unusual long, thin shape, prompting the gang to ask everything they know of that lays eggs if they recognize the egg. Most animals lay eggs that are round or oval and small, but not this critter. And then Donald learns that the critter who does hatch from the egg is more likely to eat him than anything...

Let Super Password run briefly before I headed out to run errands, starting with dropping a book in the larger kiosk on Johnson Avenue. Next stop was Target. I didn't see the fish oil vitamins I wanted there, so I moved on. Sprouts wasn't a whole lot better. I didn't like their produce sales, and I couldn't find any cookies on clearance. Ended up with two boxes of granola bars (one on sale with an online coupon), coconut milk, and two cans of Culture Pop soda, also on sale. 

Rode down the hill and past the now-empty for the summer Haddon Township High School to the Westmont Acme. I won't make it to the farm market tomorrow, so I took advantage of online coupons on peaches, cherries, and blueberries. Had coupons for light bulbs (I used my last one on my desk lamp), buy one, get one half-off batteries, and bakery cookies, too. Restocked yogurt, Ollipop soda, and those Kind granola bars on clearance. 

Went home down Lakeshore Drive, past Newton Lake Park. The recent storms has helped the flora somewhat. The grass remains dry and brown, but not to the degree it was last week. It's certainly summer now. The leaves are big and fat and emerald green, and the banks of the lake are choked with greenery.

Went straight into checking my schedule for next week when I got home. In good news, slightly more hours, and not only Monday and the 4th of July, but the Friday and Saturday after the 4th of July off. My only concern is a 7 hour day on Wednesday. Not only will it be early, long, and busy, but it's supposed to get hot again that day and be worse by the 4th. 

Watched Vega$ while I put everything away, and later when a friend brought me a big barbecue lunch. Dan's not sure what to think when a just married bride comes to him in hysterics because her husband has vanished and no one seems to have even remembered he existed. Turns out the young man accidentally got doused with a government chemical that gave him the "Touch of Death." Dan takes on an Army Colonel running a clandestine operation in a so-called dairy facility that seems more than a little shady.

Daredevil Shara Stanley wants to make one big leap over two burning ramps. Her former lover Dan doesn't think it's "The Way to Live," but she insists that she has no insurance and needs the money. Dan gets a friend of of his who is a former engineer (Wilfred Hyde-White) to find a way for her to make the jump safely. The members of her team, however, want her to die in the jump to collect their insurance policy, and are even willing to kill a drunk mechanic to make sure she doesn't find out.

Went back out after the second episode ended to run more errands. I forgot nuts earlier and never did find fish oil vitamins for a good price. I was hoping for gummies. Found nothing at Dollar General or CVS, though I did get lightly salted cashews at the latter.

The real reason I was out for a walk was Final Friday. Oaklyn holds a block party on West Clinton the last Friday of every month between June and October. Not only was it busy with the usual food trucks and local food and craft booths, but this year, they expanded the fair into the parking lot behind the Armed Services memorials. I watched parents chat over fresh-squeezed lemonade, pierogies and lobster roll, and craft beer from Tonewood Brewery, and the kids chase each other, get their faces painted, toss bean bags into two Rutgers football-themed boards, play cute little mini-golf courses, and draw on the street with chalk. 

The food trucks were too expensive, even if I hadn't just had a big lunch, but the shaved ice truck was a decent price for what you got. I bought the largest souvenir cup, filled with granier chunks of ice than water ice and sweet pina colada syrup. Yum. Cool and sweet. It certainly hit the spot on a day that, while far cooler than it has been, wasn't exactly freezing.

Sat on a bench at the brick round near the memorials to enjoy my treat and the gorgeous afternoon. It was as perfect as it gets in June, sunny, breezy, and warm but not overly so, probably in the lower 80's. Two little kids, a brother and sister, chased each other around, the came over and asked me about my shaved ice and was I enjoying it? I laughed and said yes, I was, then told their father they weren't bothering me at all. I thought they were cute. Picked up two soft pretzels from the pretzel shop booth on the way home. 

Finished the night after a shower with Meatballs on Tubi. Camp North Star in eastern Canada has its wildest summer on record. The wacky head counselor Tripper (Bill Murray) leads raids to leave the camp owner Morty's bed (Harvey Atkin) in increasingly strange places and befriends Rudy Gerner (Chris Makepeace), a lonely camper, during their daily runs. The counselors-in-training are more interested in chasing each other and trying to figure out how they can beat their rich, snooty rivals Camp Mohawk in the end-of-the-summer Olympiad. Rudy's early-morning runs with Tripper prove to be more valuable than he thought when he's the only one who can run the grueling marathon that'll break the tie between the two camps.

Murray runs with his first lead role as the nutty counselor who lives to break rules. His hilarious and adorable interactions with Makepeace really make the movie...so much that director Ivan Reitman added more scenes with them and cut out a lot of gags involving the CITs. Maybe it's just as well. A lot of this hasn't dated well, including some of the raunchier gags and Tripper assaulting a female counselor (Kate Lynch) whom he later ends up with. 

Still, if you love Murray or the Animal House-esque slobs vs snobs comedies of the late 70's through the early 90's, you'll have a great time this summer with the wackiest group of campers in Canada.