Of Mice, Backyardigans, and the Quest for Balance

Began today with this week's Yogawood class. It was cloudy, cool, and damp when I went out this morning, though not as cool as yesterday. It was a mid-sized class, not really big or small. A lot of people are probably busy with things put off over the busy weekend or rallies for one political candidate or the other.

(Which reminds me, allow me to say right here that I'm neutral. I'm not endorsing one candidate or the other. I have no interest in politics whatsoever.)

I wish I were better with balance. I still can't stand on one foot for very long, especially on the right side. I still can't go upside-down, either. I guess my shoulders just aren't strong enough. I also lack control. I can't lower myself to the floor without flopping.

I went straight home after class. I went straight over to Uncle Ken's after I got in for this week's laundry session. I had the house to myself, a rare thing. Dad's still on the ocean, Uncle Ken and Dolores had doctor's appointments, Jodie was at work, and Jessa was at school. I watched Mickey Mouse Clubhouse while the laundry was in the washer. Mickey and the gang spoofed fairy tales today. Poor Donald accidentally drinks a potion made by Professor Ludwig Von Drake that turns him into a frog. In order to change him back, they have to take him to Princess Daisy, who is being held in a tall tower by Big Pete. I especially loved how they had to talk Daisy into kissing Donald at the end. (She wouldn't kiss a frog! Eeewww!)

After I tossed the laundry in the dryer, I switched over to Nickelodeon for The Backyardigans. Turned out to be one of the new episodes, "Blazing Paddles." The show's third or fourth (I believe) Western-themed episode is a parody of Lone Ranger-style oaters. Sheriff Uniqua is the law in peaceful Ping Pong Mesa, where everyone, including bartender Tyrone, dance hall hostess Miss Tasha, and bar patron Austin the Kid are crazy about ping-pong. No one can out-play the Sheriff...until Pablo the Ping Pong Bandit rides into town with his crazy Bandit SlamIt move! The kids all lose their paddles to Pablo. Even Uniqua can't get past it, and she finds herself stripped of her paddle and out of a job. She vows to find a way to practice until she's can come up with a move of her own that will defeat Pablo and teach him that no Backyardigan is an island...and it's no fun playing ping-pong alone.

I finally made it to the bank after The Backyardigans ended. I'd been meaning to get to the bank all weekend, but I never had the chance. The weather had warmed up a little, maybe slightly too much so for this time of year but not that bad. The neighborhood was really beautiful. The trees are amazing this year, bursting into every shade of fall color imaginable, from soft gold to blazing orange-red. The clouds subsided at one point, but they came back a bit later, and it's been cloudy ever since.

I got back in time for the first half of The Wonder Pets. Everyone's favorite trio of animal rescuers headed for the Swiss Alps to save a group of sheep from going off a cliff. There was some fun with the setting, including lederhosen for everyone and a cute reference to The Sound of Music. (And let's just say seeing a hamster, a turtle, and a very excitable chick in lederhosen was...interesting.)

It didn't take very long to get ready for work after I finished off the laundry, brought it home, and put it away. I just had to throw together celery and a ham and spinach sandwich for dinner and change into my uniform, then it was off to the Acme. Work was, other than some mildly annoying beginning-of-the-month people, not a problem, and I was in and out without a fuss.

So, Where Is It?

Darn it, where's that thunderstorm we were supposed to get tonight?

It was supposed to rain in the afternoon. It looked like it all day, cloudy, humid, and warm for this time of year. I spent the morning doing laundry at Uncle Ken's. I watched The Wonder Pets save a Bald Eagle egg in Canada and a Flamingo in a coloring book (the uncle of the latter had a "Jamaican" accent, and even had dreadlocks and a bright knit cap!), then enjoyed a rather goofy superhero-themed Blue's Clues before Dad came home and wanted to watch The Weather Channel.

The Weather Channel said we were supposed to get severe thunderstorms starting late in the afternoon...when I work, of course. I finally asked Dad for a ride. I don't really care about the thunder, but I didn't want to be caught in a deluge. (I've done that enough.)

Work was pretty much the same as yesterday customer-wise - busy until dinner, steady-to-dead thereafter, with a lot of obnoxious beginning-of-the-month customers. (The worst was a very annoying woman who kept fussing that she wanted to buy her huge order before her elderly mother tried to pay for it, then complained when Mom showed up with more and claimed she was embarrassing her. Frankly, she was acting a LOT more embarrassing than her mom was!)

Actually, our biggest problem today was with the help. One of the teenage baggers went outside to do carts...and never came back. Half the store must have searched for him for at least 20 minutes before his car was discovered to be gone and he was assumed to have gone AWOL.

On the other hand, I saw a gaggle of new cashiers being trained this evening. Their arrival is a mixed blessing. On one hand, they were mostly teenagers and college students, and that should take care of a lot of late shifts. On the other hand...I've been getting really GOOD hours for this time of year in the last few weeks or so. We'll see what king of impact they have.

Dinosaur Disco Quest

I did not awaken to a terribly attractive day. It was gloomy and dark, and the rain came down in sheets. Though the rain was gone by the time I got up, got dressed, and made banana pancakes for breakfast, it was still incredibly windy. It was so windy, both of my plastic deck chairs blew halfway across the porch before I managed to grab them and stack them.

I did make it over to Uncle Ken's to do the laundry. Uncle Ken and his girlfriend Dolores were working on cleaning the big picture windows in the kitchen and living room area. I had to wait a little while to do my small pile of laundry due to the heavy, dirty curtains they already had in the washer and drier, but I did get to enjoy some shows in the interim.

Caught the tail end of The Wonder Pets first. They learned about levers and pulleys as they helped a baby elephant in Kenya get it's trunk out of the mud. (Baby Elephant's mama had a pretty Kenyan accent.) Blue's Clues was an early Steve episode dealing with musical instruments; cute, but not all that exciting, though I didn't figure the game out until the third clue.

Switched over to TV Land and encountered one of the most famous of the many beloved I Love Lucy episodes. After begging Ricky to stay in Hollywood just a little longer, a souvenir-happy Lucy and Ethel go after the ultimate take-home trinket at the Chinese Theater - John Wayne's footprints in cement! Needless to say, nothing works out the way Lucy wants it to. She spends a lot of time stomping around in buckets of cement, and we get to learn some more naughty Spanish words from her not-pleased hubby.

I got a bit of a surprise on my return to Nick - Go Diego Go! was early today. I found out why when Diego, Alicia, and Baby Jaguar were joined by Dora the Explorer as they browsed through a dinosaur museum. Yes, dinosaurs were the theme of this double-length Go Diego Go!/Dora the Explorer crossover. Our intrepid Hispanic trio (and their cub buddy) go back in time to help an adolescent Maiasaura get back to her family. Maiasauras were new when I was about Diego's age, and it was fascinating to learn about a lesser-known dinosaur. It was also nice to see how the formats of Diego's show (learn about animal traits and habitats) and Dora's (let's go from this obstacle to this one) were combined. (We did see a little too much Map for my taste, though...)

The Backyardigans were also on a quest today. In "Quest For the Flying Rock," Uniqua, Tyrone, Tasha, and Pablo go on a race to see who can get to the Flying Rock on top of the Steep Step Hill first, the girls going through the jungle and the boys trooping across the desert. Needless to say, everyone winds up learning a lesson in teamwork and cooperation, to the tune of disco and 70s pop.

Much to my annoyance, the wind continued into the afternoon. Despite the sunshine and 45-degree temperatures, I ended up asking Dolores for a ride to work. The last time I rode to work in gale-force winds, I almost ended up being blown into Peter Creek. Work was steady-to-dead, with some obnoxious customers and a lack of help (that kid who kept not appearing last week finally quit).

Running the Gamut From A Drive to E Drive

My detachable A drive has been giving me trouble for the last week. It keeps saying certain files are write-protected when they aren't or just plain not opening, even files it never had any trouble opening before! My stepfather gave me the A drive when I bought my current computer in early September 2005. Apparently, he'd had it but never used it. I still had a lot of empty floppy discs at that point, and all of my files were on floppies.

I'm giving up on that darn A drive. Instead of spending twenty to forty bucks to get another one, I'm just going to do what I should have done all along - transfer my files to CD. It'll take a while, but I'm sick of this "write protected" stuff.

Spent most of the morning doing laundry, doing pilates, and watching Nick and TCM. In addition to The Adventures of Mark Twain on TCM ("artists and writers" being the biopic sub-theme of the day), I caught a couple of cute Nick Jr. episodes. Wonder Pets was the favorite this time around. The globe (and storybook)-trotting school pet trio Linny, Tuck, and Ming-Ming headed for the woods to help a baby bee gain enough confidence to fly and make honey, and to Coney (not "corny," Tuck!) Island to help a baby squirrel find it's way to the only tree on the boardwalk. The latter reminded me of why this show has been growing on me - it can be pretty weird sometimes, but incredibly imaginative, too. And someone did their homework - the baby squirrel's mother actually had the appropriate Russian/Brooklyn accent. (She sounded like a fuzzy Gertrude Berg.) (I also wonder if that tree growing in a Brooklyn boardwalk was intended as an in-joke...)

I also saw Blue's Room for the first time on an actual episode. Blue's Room is a puppet/live action segment of Blue's Clues where Blue talks to the audience (as opposed to the puppy sounds she makes in the actual show) and interacts with her "toys," various puppet dolls and furniture. Not unlike Elmo's World on Sesame Street, I think it's cute, but takes away from the actual show - finding clues with Joe.

I also enjoyed the Dora the Explorer episode today, because it revolves around one of my favorite past-times - storytelling. Dora reads "The Three Little Pigs" to Boots, who keeps asking what happens next, even after the story ends. To appease her monkey buddy, Dora concocts a sort-of sequal that somehow involves her and Boots helping the goofy king of the land find his mother by the end of the rainbow and turns into a trip through several familiar fairy tales. This was one of the better stories from Dora's "Catch the Explorer Stars" arc. King Juan El Bobo and his mommy proved so popular, they both turned up in several later stories.

The Acme was a bit of a pain today. We were still short on help, and there weren't even any call-outs this time. We just didn't have enough people scheduled.

Small Pleasures and Huge Frustrations

Most of today went well. I got the laundry done and did pilates while watching two Dora The Explorer episodes, a Joe Blues Clues, and a new episode of the rather odd-but-cute The Wonder Pets. The last-named involves a trio of bold and daring elementary school animals - Ming Ming the Chick, Tuck the Turtle, and a hamster whose name I can't remember - who dress in little costumes and go out on various adventures to save a baby animal in distress. Today, they helped their first fictional animal, a unicorn whose horn was stuck in a tree in a storybook. They also lent paws, wings, and flippers to one of the most popular animals of recent years - a baby penguin who looked like he'd just stepped out of Happy Feet

Dora's two episodes were as straightforward as can be - in the first, she and Boots traveled to the Monkey Bars so she could find out if she can climb them all the way. In the second, Dora and Boots are joined by Diego, as all three help a baby brontosaurus get back to his mother, and learn about other dinosaurs and their mommies.

Though the dinosaur episode was very cute (especially that baby bronto giving his mother the flower at the end!), I found myself preferring the earlier adventure. I can relate all too well to Dora's determination to cross the Monkey Bars. Even now, I have difficulty on monkey bars and am still a little afraid to cross very high ones. I could barely get past the second or third rung at Dora's age. I applaud her effort and determination!

(And a side note on the dinosaur episode - Diego seems to be a lot older in Dora the Explorer than he is in his own show. In Go Diego Go! he appears to be a year or two older than six-ish Dora; in the dinosaur show, he seemed more like eleven or twelve, complete with a much deeper voice.)

I did try TCM, but no interesting biographies today. One looked like one of those very old George Arliss vehicles from the early 30s, either Alexander Hamilton or Diserali; the other seemed to be about Christopher Columbus and, from what little I saw, was a poorly-scripted snore. (No good movie has EVER been made about Christopher Columbus.)

I did catch an old favorite on TV Land, though. I always got a kick out of The Munsters as a kid. How many TV shows can pull off being macabre and sorta sweet at the same time? Everyone freaks when they see Herman, but he's really the biggest doll around; he just happens to be a Frankenstein monster with the world's largest stitched-in heart. As with the Addams Family, it's the details that matter here - Grandpa sleeping upside-down, their kid being a vampire who sleeps with a wolfman doll and has what looks like a pet dragon who lives under the stairs, Herman working in a funeral home. To be honest, the show was, far more than the genuinely weird Addams Family, a sitcom with gently ghoulish trappings. Today's story almost seemed to come from the 50s - Lilly gets mad at Herman when he comes home late from an office party, and Gramps, the kid, and niece Marlyn have to get them back together.

I didn't work until 4PM, so I decided to use the extra time to bring out my winter clothes and sort things to donate to the thrift shop. A few of my drawstring and elastic waistband pants would be genuinely too big for me now. I could live with the rest. I also got rid of two sweaters with horizontal stripes (makes me look bigger) and a spring dress with too-busy print. Everything else but two heavy sweaters it is genuinely too early for were either put in the containers in the back room or in my dresser. I also got some story work in.

A few annoying customers at work, but I was only there for a few hours and it was mildly steady, nothing like last night.

I had problems with Netscape again tonight; that's why this post is so late. I'm working on downloading NetZero as I type this. Forget this messing around. If Netscape is going to give me trouble (this is the second time I had to cut a chat with Lauren short because they were being a pain), forget it. I can't even remember my darn screen name!