I always feel like I need to introduce my delights posts in some way even though by this point it should be fairly obvious what I’m doing here. Some weeks I have stuff I want to say before I get into it. Some weeks I don’t. This week I don’t, but now I have an introduction. Let’s do it.

• The library I work at celebrated its 50th anniversary last week with a great little celebration. Even better that I was one of the few people that was not involved in any part of planning or executing it. I just got to enjoy it. I will take credit for being the one to point out last year that we would be celebrating 50 years this year. I started at the very end of our 30th anniversary year in 2003, so even though I missed any celebration they did back then I remember hearing about it when I started so the year 1973 stuck in my mind, and I remembered when no one else did. Granted there are only a couple of people who have been here longer than the almost 20 years (eep!) that I’ve been here at this point, and I don’t think we ever really talk about the specifics of the library’s history that much. So I would bet that at least 90% of people who work here didn’t even know what year the library was founded until this year.
• The Baltimore City Department of Transportation has a pretty great Twitter account. This past week they posted a picture of a passport issued in 1943. The twist? It was for Herman the Cat. Turns out that working cats who lived on ships to help deal with pests were issued passports until the mid-20th century. Everything about it is delightful. The fact that it’s filled out like a regular passport. Height 15 inches. Weight 11 pounds. Hair color grey. And it’s signed with a paw print!
• My husband gave me a sock of the month club subscription for Christmas 2021, so I got a new pair of socks every month last year. One of the pairs has vinyl records on it and it’s one of my most frequently worn pairs. Even though I’ve worn them dozens of times at this point, I just realized this week that for some reason that particular pair has an inscription sewn into the inside of the top band of the sock that says “In Socks We Stand”. I don’t know how I never noticed it until now.
• Most kids have lemonade stands, but I drove by some kids on my way home from work on Friday set up with a Pokemon stand. I was driving, so I only got a quick glimpse. I guess maybe they were set to sell or trade Pokemon cards with other passersby?
• I wrote about the show Grand Crew in one of my TV Diary posts last year, but I have to say that just really find this show to be so delightful. Sadly, I almost never hear anyone else talk about it and when they (thankfully) brought it back for a second season they relegated it to Friday nights at mid-season. I’m not super hopeful that there will be a third season. It certainly has its share of ridiculous, over-the-top sit-com zaniness, but I very much enjoy hanging out with these characters as part of their little gang each week. It’s also full of really funny and smart jokes, some of them fly by so fast you barely catch them. There were a couple of really great ones in this past week’s episode. There was one about one of the characters who is currently driving for a living claiming his car is his office that had a lot of the kinds of ribbing jokes friends make against each other that ended in just a chef’s kiss of a punchline. And there was one of the one’s that just went by so fast that you almost could have missed it that I won’t even try to explain. I was sold on this show from the beginning. I know a couple of people who tried it when it came out and didn’t think it was that great, but maybe give it another chance. So many comedies take a season or so to find themselves, so you might like it better now. Or not. I don’t know. As I said I always liked it.
• Our weather was kind of bonkers on Saturday. Chilly and rainy in the morning. Warmed up to be a sunny, gorgeous spring day for about 5 hours after lunch. Then around dinner time a cold front came through and produced crazy thunderstorms, hail, and even a small tornado about an hour north of us. Then on the back side of that there was about 6 hours worth of crazy winds gusting up to 70 miles an hour. Anyway, in the brief window where the weather was great, I went out for a walk. I happened to be walking down my friend’s street when I ran into her going out for a walk. So I extended my walk and joined her. We used to go on fairly regular Sunday afternoon walks before I screwed up my foot. I definitely pushed the limits walking with her on Saturday and paid for it later, but no regrets.
• I’m usually anti-April Fool’s Day jokes. Either they are not funny at all or I find them to be mean and trying to trick people. Like very rarely do they hit the sweet spot where they are just almost believable enough to be real, but if you think about it for half a second are clearly not. I saw several that I thought worked really well this year, which is a rarity. First there was the build your own Oreo with Funfetti frosting. I mean they would have to package the frosting differently than that, but why is this not a product? I suspect it won’t be too long before it actually is. UVA had a pretty great one claiming they were rebranding to UV because the A means nothing. I also got a big smile out of this one from Sesame Street. I saw the first tweet at some point in the morning, and didn’t think anything about it. I was like I guess Sesame Street creates fake forecasts for their universe and just kept scrolling. I did not make any connection to the lyrics of the theme songs “sunny days, sweeping the clouds away” or to April Fool’s Day at the time. Then hours later I saw the second tweet. That photo in and of itself delighted me, but when it all clicked in my brain it was a little jolt of joy. Plus Grover is without question the best Sesame Street Muppet.

Happy #AprilFoolsDay! pic.twitter.com/teqfQBNSMe

— Sesame Street (@sesamestreet) April 1, 2023

• And finally for my musical delight for the week, I present you the song “The Final Countdown”. We watched the Tetris move on AppleTV+ last night. When I saw the trailer for it a couple months ago, I was like this looks absolutely ridiculous. It was like trying to make Tetris the biggest espionage thriller of our modern times. I was very in. I was afraid that the movie would in no way live up to the promise of the trailer, but oh it did. I know it’s based on true events, but I suspect very, very loosely and that what happened in the movie was way more dramatic. It was a super fun movie though. It did not disappoint. Anyway, there was one scene in the movie where they were in a Russian club dancing to “The Final Countdown”, which just added to the whole sense of drama the movie was trying to create. It made me think that really you could put that song over just about anything and make it seem dramatic. I remember tweeting a million years ago back when Twitter was just silly and fun that doing the dishes while listening to “The Final Countdown” made it seem like a much more dramatic activity. I stand by the statement. If I was someone who TikToked, I think it would be a great TikTok series to do mundane tasks to that song to up the drama factor. I would not be surprised if this is something that already exists that I just don’t know about.