Tripods!

            As usual on the day after I’ve done an essay-writing marathon, on Thursday I goofed off for the first part of the day. There were a few things that I had to do but I didn’t get around to doing them until the early afternoon. Because of the essay, I had put off taking my Yamaha receiver back to the Queenglad pawnshop to see if they could find a remote that works with it, but now with only five days left in the warranty, I figured I should get that done.

            As I was about ready to leave, I had just put my bike in the hall when my upstairs neighbour, David came downstairs to take his garbage out. He told me that he was finally cleaning up his place and he wanted to give me some camera tripods and an electric guitar. He went upstairs and brought me down four tripods. One was a Velbon D-450; another was a Sanwae Black Shadow 301D; the third was a vintage Davidson Star D all metal tripod for which the legs have no clamps but rather screw to tighten and unscrew to extend them; finally there was Slik 500G, for which some of the screw clamps don’t work for full extension of the legs. I needed something to replace my Bendon Centurion tripod, which also has a bad clamp that won’t allow me to fully extend one of the legs. The best of the four seems to be the Velbon and the Davidson, but only the Davidson has a screw that will fit all of the cameras I have. It’s also more solid and better looking, so I’ll keep the Davidson. Attached to one of the tripods was a little Sony DSC-W120 Super Steady Shot digital camera, though it has no memory card and no charger for the G type lithium ion NP-BG1 battery. Maybe David has it lying around somewhere.

            David said he doesn’t have any shelves in his place so I invited him in for the first time since I’ve known him and showed him the shelves that I’ve put up in the bathroom and in the bedroom. The ones I’ve found most useful are parallel vertical slotted straight brackets with adjustable shelf brackets fitted into the slots and with boards going across. I installed them all when I was raising my daughter and we were desperately in need of space.

            David said he’d bring me the guitar later.

            When I got to Queenglad there was a legless man in a wheelchair ahead of me. His way to the back was blocked by several big screen TVs that were lined up along the floor near the counter. The manager told him that he should have called to make an appointment so he could have had a clear path, then he smiled and said to me, “This is a guy that pops wheelies in his wheelchair!” I moved out of the way while the disabled man left and then told the manager that I was back about finding a remote for the receiver that I’d bought from them. He put the old guy (whose name I found out is “Lou” or maybe “Lu”) back on my case. It didn’t take him long to conclude that they didn’t have any remotes that would work with my receiver. He went online with his phone, found the one I needed and told me they would order one for me, free of charge. The manager asked how much I’d paid for the receiver, and when I told him $200 he agreed that they would order me one if they still make money off of the deal. I’m assuming that they bought the Yamaha from someone that brought it in for around $100. He didn’t seem to balk at a remote that was priced on Amazon at $35 but I think they will look for a better deal. He suggested they would order one that day and then call me when it arrived, but that it would probably take two weeks. I was pleasantly surprised that they were going to order me a remote. I had expected to be asking for $10 back from the price of my receiver because the remote didn’t work, but I was impressed with their fair business practice.

            This was the last day of my 14-day fruit fast. I don’t fast to lose weight, but how much weight I’ve lost is something I think about while I’m in it. It really wasn’t until this last day that I felt that I felt less fat. I wanted to pick up some food for breaking my diet and Freshco is right around the corner from Queenglad, but I decided to take the receiver home first and then to ride back to Gladstone with less weight to carry around. I bought lettuce, green onions, tomatoes, avocados, asparagus, cucumbers, radishes, bananas and blueberries. I also got two Renee’s dressings: balsamic vinaigrette and another with sweet onion and lime.

            When I got home I had lunch, then hooked my receiver back up and took a siesta for two hours.

            That night I watched The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. A voluptuous platinum blonde jazz singer named Nickie who works at a nightclub hooks up with a young doctor named Don, who is going to inherit a fortune from his lawyer father. The piano playing leader of the band, Bill, warns him not to get mixed up with her because it has ended badly for her three previous husbands and she always comes back to him. Don’s father hires a detective and uncovers that Nickie is indeed a gold digger, but Don doesn’t care. The father dies of a heart attack and then Nickie and Don get married. On their honeymoon cruise, Don catchers her cheating on him with and struggles with the man, accidentally knocking him overboard. A little over a month later, when they get back from their trip, Nickie is already bored with their relationship and plans to go to California. She cleans out Don’s bank account and puts all the money in a suitcase. This is the first time she left a husband and didn’t come back to Bill and so he confronts her about it. She pulls a gun on him. He knocks it away and begins hitting her, though she gets in a few good kicks. The struggle continues to the bedroom where he strangles her and then calls the police to tell them that he’d killed her. Don arrives to find the police there and they tell him his wife is upstairs. He goes to find her lying there but immediately goes to her suitcase to get his money back. But suddenly she grabs his arm and says, “Give me my money!” She comes after him and he strangles her, dead this time. He takes the money and goes downstairs. The cops take Bill away but then the sergeant asks how his wife is. Don had thought that they had thought that she was dead, but they had just let Bill believe that to get his confession. He was now going to go upstairs to get her statement.

            Nickie was played by British actress, Diana Dors, who lied her age at 16 and started playing adult roles. She became the British Marilyn Monroe and then tried to conquer Hollywood. She was a better singer than Monroe and a better actress, but Marilyn had a certain look, combined with seductive vulnerability that was hard to match. Dors became quite successful from her television appearances. She told her son that she had left him 2 million pounds in various banks throughout the world, but said he would have to find the secret code to finding the money in a piece of paper that she gave him. Her husband apparently knew the code but after she died he committed suicide and the money was never found.