Prizefighters, brownie procrastination and avoiding Maria Ouspenskaya.

Saturday was lazy and wonderful around here. Following a nice lunch at Denny’s I took two mega-naps, almost baked brownies and watched a middleweight fight on HBO, the FDR biopic Sunrise at Campobello with Greer Garson and Ralph Bellamy, and The Rains Came with Myrna Loy, Tyrone Power and Maria Ouspenskaya, who’s four feet tall and ugly enough as a maharajah’s wife to scare the crap out of just about ANYBODY. I actually slept through most of The Rains Came, but that’s okay because I watch it every time it’s on TCM and could recite most of the dialog by heart. This movie has some incredible special effects for 1939. Trust me, you’ll start looking for water wings.

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, a thoroughly meaningless event for Sam and me since we have no vested interest whatsoever in who’s playing or who wins. Our day will be filled instead with other worthwhile activities, such as dim sum for lunch at Hong Kong Royal, baking the sugar-free brownies I put off yesterday and trying to figure out whatever happened to winter in Texas. The grass is turning green, our lawn service already started their spring weed treatments, outdoor bugs are emerging and we haven’t had daytime temperatures below 53° since the second week of December. As a matter of fact, temperatures in January and February (so far) have been more like March and April. If you think I’m making this up, take a look at our forecast.

As long as I’m rambling about weather you may be pleased to know that the drought is over for Dallas/Fort Worth. We received triple our normal rainfall in December and January, which helped our reservoirs and lakes rise more than five feet. (Lake Lavon actually rose TEN feet, which is excellent news if you live in Plano.) Most local municipalities will continue to enforce stage three water restrictions for the next few months, but that’s no big deal since it’s still winter and we’ve already had more than enough rain for our trees and lawns. Incidentally, I should mention that the rest of the state is still under an “exceptional drought” warning. This is crappy news for crops and cattle, and we Texans LOVE our crops and cattle although I have to admit that I wouldn’t recognize an actual crop if it jumped up and slapped me in the face.

I should probably go to bed now so I won’t oversleep and be late for dim sum. Thank you for reading this!