The Primer Directive

            On Monday morning I worked out the chords for the seventh verse of "C'était une pauv' gosse des rues" (She Was a Poor Child of the Street) by Boris Vian and for the first verse, the chorus, and half of the second verse of “Your Under Arrest” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the second session of four. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I put a third coat of primer onto the front of the doors and drawers of my kitchen counter. The dark brown fake wood veneer that I painted over is still showing through in some areas as faint streaks of grey. I was expecting it to be thoroughly white by now but I’ve still got about a quarter of a can of primer so I might as well just keep painting until it’s done. I want the purple to look even when I put it on top and so I might as well do it right. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon when I got up from my siesta it was raining but I decided to get ready for a bike ride anyway. It actually had pretty much stopped when I ventured out but started coming down in big drops by the time I rode up Brock Avenue to Dundas, so I turned around and headed home. On the way I found a Frisbee and a softball in a box, so I took them. I was wet when I got home but not soaked. 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos at 16:25, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening in a week. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:20. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my September 3 song practice session I managed to get the audio and video almost synchronized to the point of a slight echo. I just need to find out whether it’s a small slice of the audio timeline or of the video timeline that I need to remove to get them lined up. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Megaphor” I continued to remove small bits of the clip from the movie “Ziegfeld Girl”. I got it down from 47 seconds to 42 seconds but I only need 4 seconds to insert into the main video. 

            I scanned about six uncut strips of colour negatives. Five of them had some shots of my ex-girlfriend Brenda in each, so they were probably from 1987. One set had some shots of my daughter’s mother Nancy and so I probably took them in 1990. There are 36 uncut strips, seven individual negatives, and eight boxes of slides left to scan. I’ll probably have them all done by Christmas so I’d better buy myself an external hard drive for a present. When I’ve finished the scanning I’ll focus on digitizing all the cassette tapes that have my performances on them. 

            I had a potato with gravy and two slices of roast beef while watching season 3, episodes 2 and 3 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story the Douglases are out of jam but Sam’s store doesn’t sell it because everybody in the valley makes their own. Oliver encourages Lisa to try that but she is reluctant. Finally she tells him she will do it because in 1924 the Hungarian parliament passed a law saying that all women had to do whatever their husbands wanted them to do no matter how dumb it was. It was called “The Big Dumb Law of 1924”. Eb picks three bushels of peaches for Lisa to use for jam and Hank Kimball gives her a pamphlet on jam making. It says to add one quarter of a cup of water for each peach and so Lisa starts breaking cups to get a quarter of one. Lisa has so much trouble following the instructions that Oliver suggests that she get some help from Doris Ziffel who is known to make the best jam in the valley. She does so and Doris gives her the secret recipe. The next day the cupboard is filled with jars of peach jam and Oliver says it’s the best he’s ever tasted. But then he notices that the three baskets of peaches are still in the kitchen. Lisa confesses that Doris’s secret is that she goes to Pixley and buys jam at the supermarket, then transfers it to empty jam jars with home made labels. 

            In the second story Arnold Ziffel the pig is in love with Cynthia the basset hound. Fred Ziffel forbids the relationship because Cynthia is Mr. Haney’s dog. Fred has Arnold stay with Oliver and Lisa so Cynthia can’t find him but she does. Oliver is so annoyed by the howling and squealing that he lets Arnold out to go to Cynthia. Cynthia is scheduled to defend her champion status in a hunting dog contest the next day but comes in last. Haney wants to sue Oliver for $1 million.