Called Uber after the record ended. I hadn't been to Sprouts in ages, and I needed something at Target, too. Ironically, considering the cloudy and chilly weather and all the trouble I've had getting rides from them lately, they arrived in 4 minutes.
In fact, I started at Target. I was walking past the coolers in the grocery area when I noticed they had a lot of new Slice flavors I'd never seen at the Acme. I wanted all of them, but since I'd also have to carry them, I just got Apple and "Pacific Pop" (likely their version of Mountain Dew) to try. I was really there for a gift card for Mom. I didn't see what I wanted, but I still got her something. Stopped at Starbucks for a tasty Iced Double Berry Matcha (lavender berry foam, berry syrup on the bottom, very sweet).
I saw a young woman holding a box of Thin Mints when I was at Starbucks. Sure enough, there were two Girl Scouts dancing around outside of Target, attracting customers by singing their idea of "Girl Scouts" horror sales songs with rather macabre themes. They were too funny. I had to get Peanut Butter Sandwiches and their new "Explorermores" (chocolate sandwich cookies with almond cream middles) with that kind of a sales pitch!
Sprouts was the busiest I'd ever seen it! Good thing I didn't need a whole lot. Their coconut milk is a lot cheaper than the Acme's, and they have smaller bottles of buttermilk, too. Raided the bulk bins for lemon-raspberry dried mangoes, dried cranberries, and raisins. Found one of those kids' lunch bags with a sandwich, applesauce, cookie, chips, and small bottle of water on clearance; grabbed the almond butter-jelly.
I walked home. I won't be doing any walking tomorrow! It's supposed to pour all day. The weather today wasn't much better. It was cloudy, breezy, and chilly, into the lower 40's. Even so, I still sat at a black metal picnic table near a clearing for my first picnic of 2026. You'd never know we're so close to the first day of spring. Though green grass is sprouting through the yellow, the trees remain bare gray husks, and the flowers haven't bloomed. There weren't even many Canadian geese around. It was such a depressing scene, I hurried over the stone steps and down East Clinton to home soon as I finished lunch.
Spent the rest of the afternoon trying to focus on writing and listening to spring or Irish-themed music and Broadway cast albums. Finian's Rainbow debuted in 1947, when the story of a leprechaun who follows the title Irishman and his daughter to the deep south after his pot of gold and end up helping sharecroppers was a breath of fresh shamrock-scented air. Scotswoman Ella Logan headed the original cast, introducing "If This Isn't Love," "Look to the Rainbow," and "How are Things In Glocca Morra." Impish David Wayne joined Logan for "Something Sort of Grandish" and got the hilarious "When I'm Not Near the Girl I Love."
The Music of Spring and Tune Up for Spring are two collections Columbia made to sell at tire dealerships in the early 60's. Ray Conniff's bouncy "Younger Than Springtime" is my favorite from both albums. Rosemary Clooney's "I Could Have Danced All Night" and Jerry Vale's "Camelot" are a bit more out of place in Music of Spring. Leslie Uggams doing a lovely "April In Paris" and the New Christy Minstrels' "Green Green" are more fitting. Al Jolson's "April Showers," Polly Bergen singing "Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year," and the Hi-Lo's "Everything's Coming Up Roses" are the standouts in Tune Up.
The Broadway version of Once was a surprise hit in 2012 that ended up winning the Tony for Best Musical that year. The 2007 film was already lovely, but it ended up making a rather nice intimate stage show, too, if bittersweet numbers like "Leave," "Sleeping," "When Your Mind's Made Up," "The Moon," and "Falling Slowly" are any indication.
The other famous modern Irish musical is probably The Commitments. I loved my cassette version of the soundtrack as a kid, and I was just as happy to find it on CD a while back. The cast's passionate renditions of "Mustang Sally," "Destination Anywhere," "Try a Little Tenderness," "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man," and "In the Midnight Hour" wound up being an even bigger hit than the film and introduced teens of the early 90's like me to classic R&B and blues.
Jessa dubbed Snoopy's Classiks - Beatles on Toys for me last Easter. This is exactly what it sounds like, Beatles songs played on toy pianos, with Sally and Chuck introducing the first number "Do You Want to Know a Secret?" "She Loves You" is just the kids singing that over and over. They do much better by a charming "Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds" and "Yellow Submarine." "Here, There, Everywhere" and "When I'm Sixty-Four" are the best of the instrumental numbers.
I couldn't focus on the writing, but I did get a little done. C.J, Sir Scott Sherwood's squire, is guarding the oddly silent and closed gates. Hilary demands to know what's going on. King Rollie the Snake King has taken over, he tells them in a whisper. Lord Comstock opened the gates and let the snake men invade. Sir Sherwood and King Jeffery were supposedly killed in the invasion. Betty and her Heart-Quill are horrified. How could that happen? Scott had his men. He was overwhelmed, C.J softly explains. His men were out searching for Pavla, and he had little protection left at the castle. Betty doesn't believe him, even as he takes the ladies and their mounts through the silent gates and into a quiet, motionless town...
Finished the night with a late Match Game marathon. Handsome Robert Walden was playing a cocky young reporter on the drama Lou Grant when he first turned up on Match Game late in 1978. He had once been a pupil of Charles Nelson Reilly, and Brett Somers certainly had no problems ogling him either. Neither did Patty Duke when she ended up wrapped in his sweater after he stripped it off once. He was there for the infamous syndicated episode where the contestant Ginger gave an extremely strange answer for what a jock caterpillar buys, and he was the one who had to answer her when she gave an even weirder answer for "Cuckoo __" in the Head to Head. His most memorable nighttime appearance pit a handsome Naval officer against a pretty young Israeli woman who didn't seem to grasp the language very well. Marcia Wallace was much happier to match an unusual answer for "He's So __" in another memorable Head-to-Head.
Go "cuckoo" for this disco-era hunk turned dedicated reporter in these hilarious episodes!
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