Abyssinia

            On Monday at around noon I had to go out to the Dollarama to buy shampoo and conditioner. After that I shaved and showered. The day before that I’d cleaned my tub for the first time in several months. I got all the black dirt off and next time I might get all the brown. It was nice to stand in the shower and not almost slip on the slime.

            I took a bike ride in the afternoon. I passed several people on the Bloor Viaduct, calling out “Passing!” each time. One old lady called back to me, “Ring your bell!” and then rang her bell to demonstrate. If she heard me say, “Passing” then why does she need to hear a bell?

            I rode up to Victoria Park and Edgepark, which I followed around the edge of a park but the park is called Edge Park, so Edge Avenue edges along the edge of Edge Park. Clairlea seems like a distinctly unedgy neighbourhood other than the edge it acquires from me riding through it which possibly makes the neighbours feel a smidge on edge. I took Edgepark Avenue to Pharmacy and headed down. Pharmacy is smooth as a skating rink from Knightsbridge down to St Clair and then there are a few bumps and flaws in the asphalt. A little south of St Clair the street dips down into a ravine and so if the green light at the bottom doesn’t change to red it’s a nice rush coasting down and there’s pretty good momentum for starting the climb up the other side.

            I stopped at the good Starbucks to pee but there was a sign on the door saying that it was closed for their implicit bias training day, although they didn’t use those words. There was something about Starbucks being a “third place” between work and home and they would be working on making it even more welcoming.

            I still needed to pee and the nearest place was The Abyssinia Restaurant. I still remembered the time a few weeks ago when I was refused the washroom at the West Indian restaurant next to the other Starbucks further west and so I was prepared to be turned away. I approached a woman that was clearly from Africa and who looked like she might be in charge, but she frowned and pointed behind me, saying, “You’ll have to ask her.” The woman behind me was of East Indian and probably Pakistani descent. She thought for a second when I asked if I could use the washroom, but then smiled sweetly and said I could. She smiled at me again on the way out. Maybe she liked me. I looked at the menu online and it looks like pretty good Ethiopian fare and the fact that they let me use the washroom shows that it’s welcoming so it’s definitely at the top of my list if I ever find myself looking for a place to eat on the Danforth.

            On the surface it may seem strange that a person of Pakistani descent would run an Ethiopian restaurant but I understand that Pakistanis are all over Africa. An Ethiopian guy I met once complained about them but Wikipedia says there are only 290 in his country.

            That night I heated up a chicken leg, boiled a potato and made some gravy. The leg needed to go back in the oven for a while though because there was red next to the bones. The potato didn’t behave like most potatoes I’ve boiled. It seemed to have gotten pulverized by the boiling water so perhaps it was dried out inside in the first place. I had to quickly heat up some super fries instead.

            I watched two episodes of Dobie Gillis but this show is generally not as good in the second season as the first.

            In the first, Zelda helps Dobie build a hot rod so he can win a race but when she find his motivation is a speed crazy girl, Zelda removes the engine that she’d salvaged for him and dumps it back in the lake.

The second is a Christmas episode with a spin on Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carole. Zelda wants Dobie to go to Chatsworth Osborn’s Christmas Eve party because if he doesn’t make rich contacts he’ll be a loser his whole life, but Maynard is also throwing a party the same night. The night before the party Dobie has a dream that he is visited by a spirit that looks like an old bearded Maynard. The spirit plays the role of all the ghosts that Scrooge encountered. Dobie goes to Chatsworth’s party but he feels miserable. Meanwhile Maynard is all alone waiting for someone to arrive in the garage, which is the only place his parents would let him have a bash. Dobie finally makes an announcement at Chatsworth’s party that he’s going to leave and be with his friend. Zelda comes with him and so do Dobie’s parents but a few minutes later everyone from Chatsworth’s party comes to party with Maynard.