On Monday I anted to shave
but the last disposable razor I had was getting too dull. A few months before
I’d received from the food bank two boxes containing four each of Atoma razor
cartridges. In the late morning I decided to see if the razor was available
anywhere in the neighbourhood. I first went to Vina Pharmacy but they didn’t
have it. The guy behind the counter though told me they could look it up, order
it and have it by the next morning. I didn’t want to wait, so I went up the
street to Guardian Drugs where they had plenty of Atoma products but all of
them were disposable razors. It turns out that Atoma is actually the Guardian
line of products but the guy I asked had to look up the product to confirm that
it still existed and then he offered to order it. I said I didn’t want to order
it because I wanted to shave that day. I tried Shoppers Drug Mart but they
didn’t have it either, which I guess should have been obvious to me if it was a
Guardian product, but I wanted to make sure the guy wasn’t wrong. Shoppers’
product is Life brand. I ended up going to Dollarama and spending $1.40 for a
pack of four 3-blade razors. I’ll probably hold onto the Atoma cartridges but I
tend to boycott Guardian drugstores because they are owned by Rexall and I
boycott all Rexall drugstores because they passed me a fake $10 once and gave
me a big hassle about paying me back in real money before they finally gave in.
I complained to the company, saying that they should give me $20 for all my
trouble but when customer service told me that I should consider myself lucky
to even get the $10 back I decided the whole company was an asshole.
When I got inside my building I checked the mail and
found a letter from the Tor0nto Housing Allowance Program. It was not really a
letter in that it wasn’t signed by anyone. It was probably entirely computer
generated. It just confirmed that I would be getting the allowance and that it
would be $250 a month, that the payments would be made on or before the 28th
of every month until June of next year and that they may include retroactive
payments. When Cheryl called me a couple of weeks ago she didn’t know the
amount but said that my first deposit would be retroactive from July. That
means three months plus October, and so I should get $1000.
At 16:30 I was first in line for Bike Pirates. Alain
arrived about 15 minutes early and invited me and the two other guys that were
there to come in early. I told him that I might not need a stand and then I
detailed the events of Saturday evening when the locknut came off my left crank
arm. I explained that I’d replaced the nut and tightened it. He said it that it
just might be a matter of not having tightened it. He checked and saw that it
looked fine now. He said if problem occurs again then I should replace the
crank arm. I was relieved that I didn’t have to spend a greasy three hours in
the shop.
I noticed that it was still before 17:00 so I got ready
for a bike ride.
I had my phone in the right front pocket of my Docker
shorts, which was the only front one without a hole. I left my building, walked
a few steps and then suddenly my phone hit the sidewalk and fell apart. A guy
that had been passing sympathetically stopped to pick it up for me. I put it
back together and it seemed to restart fine. There was now a hole each in both
my front pockets, so I put my phone in my backpack.
There as surprisingly little bike traffic on the Danforth
for a weekday at rush hour. Maybe it was the heat that kept people from riding.
I had noticed there’d been a shitload of sirens all day long and had wondered if
it’d been because of people fainting.
I rode up Victoria Park and on the way to Dawes Road I
saw a couple of boxes on the curb that looked like they contained more than
garbage. In one of the boxes was a somewhat triangular hunk of what looked like
volcanic rock almost the size of my head. Jutting out of half of it were
several purple crystals that I think might be amethyst, some as big as my
thumb, that were especially clustered along one corner of the rock. It would be
nice to try to figure out how to separate the cluster from the rock. I happened
to have three cloth shopping bags in my backpack. I put the rock inside of all
three bags and put it in my backpack. It weighed about ten kilograms but it
wasn’t too bad getting it home. The sky above me as I rode west along the
Danforth looked like the skin of a pale blue tiger with white stripes suspended
above me. I went down Yonge Street and then home along Queen. The western
horizon was the colour of amethyst.
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