Friday, 14 July 2017

Visions of Nostrils Damn Us



            There was a strong chance of rain all day on Thursday that was supposed to be a little lower in the late morning so I thought I’d take that window in which to ride downtown. I had to return my French grammar exercise books to the OISE library and then renew them if I could. I felt my first drop as I was riding up O’Hara and a few more on Brock. It was officially raining on Bloor but not enough to soak me.
            I renewed the books and headed back along Bloor, stopping at the Bank of Montreal in Koreatown along the way to take out my last $10. As I was waiting in line I thought I heard the teller tell a customer that their ATM machines would now give out denominations of $10 and $5, so I stepped out of line and went to the machine, but when I asked for $10 the response was that the request was invalid. I went back to line-up and had only lost one place in line, but then the manager apologized that the system was a “a little down”. It only took a couple of minutes before it was a little up and the manager served me. I asked her why the machines were giving fifties and fives but no tens. She said that may change later on but I could always get two fives. “Do you mean a five two times?” She answered that I could ask for $10 and get two fives. I told her I’d just tried but she explained that the machine inside the bank hadn’t been set up for that yet but I could get fives from the ones outside on the street.
            I stopped at Freshco on the way home. They’d knocked down their cherries to $3.68 a kilogram so I had to take advantage of that and I also got some bananas. They were out of the cheap zero fat and 1% fat yogourt, so I had to settle for 2%.
            Earlier I’d gotten an email from a guy named Dion who wanted to buy the point and shoot Olympus Trip 35 camera that I was selling for $40 on Kijiji. He’d wanted to come at 13:00 but I told him that was too tight and offered him 14:00 instead. I got home at 13:10 and there was a return email confirming that he’d be here at 14:00. It turned out though that he was on the U of T campus and so if I’d known that I could have met him there. Dion called me a little before 14:00 to let me know he was downstairs, so I let him in.
            He looked about twenty and a bit uncomfortable for whatever reasons. He told him that I was an English major at U of T and asked what he was studying. He told me he was in physics but he was currently taking a History of Music course for his breadth requirement. He bought the camera and on his way out I told him to say “Hi” if he sees me on campus. He told me that he was really bad with faces so he probably wouldn’t recognize me. I guess all Caucasian people look alike.
            I took the ad for the Olympus down and put one up for the Canon Sure Shot for $40.
            I finally uploaded the video that I’d shot with Nick Cushing’s Nikon on Saturday July 8. I had elevated the camera and tripod on top of three dictionaries and an atlas so I could stand closer in the hope that it would pick up the sound better and wouldn’t chop the top of my head off. It did seem to pick up the guitar better but the volume of my voice was a little too low and the traffic sounds were very loud. Also the camera was looking up my nose, which is not a good perspective, so I’ll have to find something higher to mount it on. The next time I’m going to try recording my voice with the Shure microphone and the Voice Recorder on my computer and then see if linking the audio and video in Movie Maker will work.
            I watched an episode of Maverick in which Bret was quoting as he often does one of the sayings of his pappy: “Marriage is the only game of chance in which all the players can lose.”

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