Monday 28 May 2018

Here's Me At Sixty-Three



            On Saturday morning after yoga I did a somewhat different song practice than usual. This would have normally been a day of me singing mostly in French but I sang all but one song in English. I also didn’t do most of the songs that I’m fairy competent at performing unless they had difficult guitar parts or whistling. There are a few songs that I only sing every few days, only doing a verse and a chorus, just because if I did them every day it would take a lot of time. So this time I did them all the way through.
            I didn’t go to the food bank this time because I didn’t fancy standing around in a line-up and breathing second hand smoke on my birthday. Instead I did some writing, had a normal breakfast, took a shower and then headed out to shop.
            I went first to the Salvation Army thrift store in my neighbourhood. As I locked my bike I saw a woman in her car bouncing up and down to dub Reggae.
I swear there are pants and shirts on the racks at the Sally Ann that have been there for years. The only item that I bought there was a black faux furry cushion for my computer chair, with slightly elevated lines of fluff making them look like furrows. I took that home, took a pee and then rode up to Value Village. Thrift stores always have the same musty smell and I’m wondering what the common factor is. Is it the old clothes? I don’t think any thrift stores wash anything before they put it on the rack.



            The previous times I went to Value Village or any other second hand clothing stores I didn’t know my size and so it took forever to browse for clothing. It wasn’t until I carefully picked and bought new pants on Boxing Day that I finally came to understand that my pants size is 38 or 40 around the waist and 34 down the leg (It feels weird being bigger around than my legs are long, especially since I have long legs). So, because of knowing my size I was a lot quicker going up and down the aisles because Value Village marks the sizes on the racks. The only thing I found that was right for me in the store was a pair of extra large sweat pants. The ones that I bought new at the Dufferin Mall on Boxing Day are okay to wear while doing yoga but they don’t look very nice because they’re 100% polyester and after a wash or two ended up with pilling all over. I’ve never had a piece of clothing that got those little thread-knots in the fabric before. The ones I bought this time are only half polyester and half cotton, so I’ll be surprised if they pill. I’d better turn them inside out when I wash them from now on though, just to be sure.




            I rode to the Salvation Army thrift store on Bloor just east of Lansdowne but the only thing out got out of that visit was a picture I took while locking my bike of an interesting old round stained glass window set into the brick wall of a building across the street.



            I continued on to Brock and then south to the back of the Dufferin Mall. After using the washroom, since I was in the neighbourhood I went to Winners, but found nothing there. At Walmart I got ten pairs of light socks to replace all the ones that now have holes and six pairs of briefs. As I was there already, I grabbed two pairs of heavy duty Kodiak socks in preparation for next winter.
            My main reason to be out shopping that day was to find shorts because every pair I had was ripped in some crucial place, but I was also interested in getting another pair of trousers because the pair I’d bought on Boxing Day have a tiny rip in the leg now. I’d found that the best place to shop for pants was Marks Work Warehouse and so I headed there, fairly confidant that I’d find what I needed.
            On walking in I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had a door crasher sale on cargo shorts for $21. I also found a pair of cargo pants for almost $40. I took a size 38 of the shorts and 38-34 of the pants into the dressing room. The cargo trousers fit fine but the shorts were tight in the legs, so I went back to get size 40 of those, but they were also small around the thighs. Cargo pants are also tighter on the legs because of the pockets they put there, but that the kind of snugness that goes all the way down the leg looks better than it does with shorts. I looked around some more and saw that they had chino shorts as well. I tried both sizes 38 and 40 of those and although these were looser in the leg, both sizes were tight in the crotch and size 40 was floppy around the waist. I gave up on getting shorts at Marks, but they have a good selection of socks so I had a look at them. They had some very light wool socks that were three pairs for $15 but they didn’t have a third pair, so I only bought the cargo pants and walked a few doors down to The Gap to see if they had any. Their casual shorts were on sale for $20.00. I tried on both size 38 and size 40 and found size 38 to be a good fit with a pretty nice cut, so I bought two pairs. I don’t know how long they’ll last though because they’re 55% linen and 45% cotton and they feel so light and thin that I wonder how much bike riding they can handle before they wear holes in the ass.



            After that I was tired, hungry and done with shopping. I rode home to drop off my goodies and to hang my bike up, then I went up the street to Ali’s to buy a spicy potato roti. I was surprised to see a Tibetan woman working behind the counter, since for the last 30 years everybody that’s worked there has been from the West Indies. She had two very cute kids with her, a girl and a boy that looked like they might be half Tibetan and half Indian.
            I planned on making a quick flatbread pizza that night for dinner and so I went into the Lucky Supermarket next door to Ali’s but they had a very limited bread selection and no flatbread other than the kind one has to deep fry. I walked west and across the street to the Queen Supermarket, but their bread was pretty much the same. Finally I went back towards my place and went to Fullworth, where they had packages of soft tortilla bread, which I figured would probably work as a thin crust for pizza.
            My last stop before going home was the liquor store, where I bought three cans of Creemore. I had one beer with my roti for a very tardy lunch in the late afternoon. There were other things I planned to do but by the time I finished eating I really needed to sleep for a while, so I took a siesta.
After I got up at around 19:30 I took the amethyst clustered rock that I found last year in a box on the curb of Victoria Park, out onto the deck with a hammer and chisel to try and knock the clusters free of the rock. That didn’t work because the little bit I hammered off from what I thought was a long way from where the amethyst is, also had amethyst that I ended up breaking. I decided to give up on that plan and find an alternative.






I made pizza on a soft tortilla with marinara sauce and extra old cheddar cheese. I used a little too much cheese because it was like a cheese pond on top after it had been in the oven for a while but once it cooled down it was manageable and very tasty. I had it with a beer and watched the Justice League movie. It had its moments, like the beginning with the flying bug men that feed on fear; the idea that the flash is always hungry; the moment when Aquaman just starts spewing everything that’s on his mind when he accidentally sits on Wonder Woman’s rope of truth; and when Batman says that his super power is the fact that he’s rich. I liked the Superman vs. Batman prequel of this story with the death of Superman, but DC seems unable to put together a good super hero team movie in the way that Marvel does. They tried so hard to make Aquaman a lot cooler and more powerful than the comic book version that he came out closer to Marvel’s Submariner in terms of strength. Cyborg was a horrible character from the start when he was in the Teen Titans comics. I guess the film version of The Flash is supposed to be DC’s wet behind the ears version of Spiderman, but they didn’t find any clever lines for him. I still hate this idea of Batman having guns when he’s supposed to be agile and smart with tools to swing on and things to throw. They should have brought Superman back to life more gradually and mysteriously like they did in the comics and done it over several movies. I liked Wonder Woman better in her solo movie and even in Superman VS Batman. Steppenwolf is an uninteresting villain since he’s only a strong god with an axe. He’s one of the least unique of the New Gods villains. I think Granny Goodness would have been a much better bad guy for this movie. I assume they are building up for a battle with Darkseid because I guess in this world he has to be brought back to life by uniting the Mother Boxes but that didn’t happen. So who teleported Steppenwolf and the bug men away with the Boom Tube in the end? They should have at least given some kind of hint as to the other forces behind the scenes. DC just does not know how to make a team movie.
Afterwards I went online until after 1:00 and looked up ways of etching rocks to reveal crystals underneath. There are a lot of videos of people using muriatic acid, which does the trick in a matter of an hour or so, but that seems scary and dangerous and it’s not recommended for amateurs. From what I can tell, the cheapest vinegar will do the same thing but in about a week or so rather than an hour. I think the slower process is more my speed.




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