Best Before

            Friday was my second day in a row of having to work early at OCADU. The instructor, Nick Aoki usually engages with the students a bit at the beginning but he didn’t even say hello to anyone. His class also seemed a bit somber.

            I had my laptop with me and during short breaks I worked on my journal. At the halfway mark he gave a lecture while showing some slides and then let them take a 20-minute break, so I ended up with 40 minutes, during half an hour of which I took a nap. Later I commented, “Everybody’s so quiet!” He said he didn’t know what everyone else’s excuse was but he was tired as usual. At the end I heard him tell someone that he was going to go home and sleep for two days.

            On the way home I stopped at Freshco to pick up some of the items that hadn’t gotten on Thursday because I knew I’d be passing by again. I bought grapes, a mango, Italian sausages, bacon and yogourt.

            That night I made two patties from the ground chicken I’d bought a few days before and started grilling them. But the meat was one day past its best before date and it smelled off while cooking, so I took it out and threw it away. As an alternative I thought I might heat up some egg patties that I’d cooked from frozen a few days before, but they smelled a little sour, so I threw those away too. By this time I needed something quick so I put some frozen chicken wieners in the oven and had some of those with a couple of potatoes.

            There was a little snowstorm that started in the evening. The snowplows sounded like a giant iron barrel rolling quickly down the street.

            As usual, at about a half an hour before midnight, the young man with the beautiful singing voice walked west on the south side of Queen. I’ve never heard him singing the same song twice and this time it was a lovely, loud and clear rendering of Paul Simon’s “Sounds of Silence”.