Dorothy Collins

           

            On Saturday after I posted a journal entry about how I planned to purchase a piece of technology for turning old hard drives into external hard drives, Nick Cushing posted a comment that he had a hard drive dock that he could lend me. That was very good news, since I figured he’d probably be in town before I had the money to buy the equipment and I really wanted to have the power to recover certain data as soon as possible. A little later Nick called me to say he was coming into Toronto that afternoon to attend the Frequency Zed concert at Penney’s, and as is the case with Nick’s trips to Toronto, he always tries to kill at least three birds with one stone, so he told me he’d be bringing the hard drive dock and his field recorder with a microphone so we could make another attempt to record a reading of some lines of my character, Todd Lehr, for his animated film, “Exile In Steeltown”.

            I packed up a large collection of bottles and cans to return to the Beer Store for the deposit. Once I got there though I was told that twelve of the Bud Light bottles that my upstairs neighbour had thrown out were from the States and so they couldn’t be cashed in here. This is the second time that’s happened, so I’ve got to remember to read the bottles more carefully. I bought a couple of cans of Creemore while I was there. 

            When I got home, I would normally have taken a siesta, but since Nick was coming along with Bruce March, I figured I’d better clean up my place a bit, because I felt a little embarrassed about it the last time Nick was here. Since I no longer have the bedbugs to let me off the hook of having visitors, I vacuumed the couch and then cleaned the toilet and the bathroom floor. I was just finishing up the latter when Nick called from downstairs.

            Nick took the hard drive out of my old computer. I still had an even older computer sitting around because I’d been contemplating whether it would be worthwhile to salvage the Soundblaster audio card that I’d paid extra to have installed several years ago. Since Nick was already on a roll with my screwdriver in his hand, he turned to the old system and extracted the Soundblaster for me.

            We then went to my new computer where Nick plugged in his hard drive dock, which looked like a rectangular bathtub with my old hard drive standing in it. At first, nothing happened, and I began to worry that somehow my hard drive had gotten wiped. Nick restarted it and we started to see it loading, but it took several minutes before the files started to show up. They were all there though, which was a relief.

            Nick and I then made another recording of my voice for his animated project. He was pretty sure it worked this time.

            Nick and Bruce had to head out to Penney’s because Nick wanted to set up to record Frequency Zed’s show and of course; Bruce needed to be there because he is one third of Frequency Zed.

            I told Nick that he’d saved my life, which sounds like an exaggeration but not if you add the word “style” on the end. Nick sometimes seems like an all year round electronic Santa Clause with a bottomless sack of technology.

            After they left, I set about to transfer my files from the old hard drive to my new computer. In trying to do it quickly I mixed up a lot of data into the wrong folders, but the plan was to sort through it all later. My system has been disorganized for a few years, since the last time I had a crash and needed my files transferred. I had, for example two folders with the name “Downloads”. I mad a promise to myself this time though that I’d get it organized.

            I watched an episode of “Make Room for Daddy”, which had a weird commercial for Speidel watchbands. It opened with a guy just talking to the camera: “Hello, I’m Donald Woods. My father used to say, ‘Son, don’t ever tell a woman anything. Let her think she thought it up herself.” The statement doesn’t make a lot of sense. If you didn’t tell a woman “it” then unless someone else told her, she really did think “it” up for herself.

            There was also a commercial for Lucky Strike cigarettes featuring Canadian singer Dorothy Collins who became known as the “sweetheart of Lucky Strike”. She was a good singer but there was something missing in her phrasing. She didn’t have a captivating vocal style and there was no oomph in her delivery even though she had the range.

            The actual episode wasn’t all that interesting except for the joke told by the kid who played Danny’s son Rusty: “Did you hear about the kid that murdered both his parents? He pleaded to the court for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.”