Diana Lynn

            Late Monday morning I had my bi-annual meeting with my social worker. I’ve had the same worker for the last couple of years and she’ll be the last worker I have with Ontario Works because she handles all of the clients that are in their sixties until they start collecting their pensions. It used to be that workers changed every few months so it’s nice now to get to know one person.
             The meeting didn’t last long. We discussed when I should apply for my pension and she said she didn’t know for sure but some apply year before their 65th birthday and others give it six months. I said that I’d call them around the time of my 64th birthday.
            I just checked out the government info site and it looks like applying a year before I want to receive my pension is the earliest I can apply and I will indicate on the application the date when I want to start receiving my pension. It’s probably a good idea then to do it around my 64th birthday just in case there are screw-ups in the year leading up to when I turn 65.
            After my meeting I stopped at the big No Frills at Lansdowne and Dundas where I bought grapes, a tomato, yogourt, ground beef, a small package of sliced corned beef and another of sliced turkey, roasted seaweed, spoon size shredded wheat, Miss Vicky’s chips, hot salsa, and toothpaste.
            When I got home I put my groceries away and rode down to the Parkdale Community Health Centre. I found out there that the dental care they offer is only that which is covered by Ontario Works and so if I also have Green Shield I should go someplace else. She recommended the Parkdale-Queen West Community Health Centre at Bathurst and Queen. I rode down there and while I was locking my bike there was a woman cleaning the street in front of the centre. At one point a woman with rubber gloves and a pair of barbecue tongs came out from the centre to pick up a syringe that the other woman had found and to carefully take it inside.
            The dental office is on the second floor but I was told by the receptionist next to that desk that the entire dental office staff had gone for lunch and wouldn’t be back until between 13:30 and 14:00. At that point it was only 12:20 and so I just went home and decided to call them later.
            I had a can of tuna with salsa and a few potato chips for lunch.
            I called the PQWCHC dental office at 14:10 but had to leave a message. No one got back to me that day.
            I went through my song “Instructions for Electroshock Therapy” a couple of times.
            I looked at the recordings of my song practice from July 24, 2017. It must have been cloudy that morning because there was an odd light as if I were being filmed underwater. This session was in French and I think only one of the songs may be uploadable for public listening.
            I weighed 89.6 kilos before dinner.
            I boiled a purple carrot and a potato, heated a chicken leg and some gravy and watched the latest episode of the Big Bang Theory.
            Spoiler alert!
            In this story it is pointed out to Leonard that he is a people pleaser and so he tries to break the pattern by proposing to the president of the university a plasma physics study that he would head. Penny is worried because he tells her that if he is turned down he will quit. He is turned down but doesn’t quit and instead is offered to co-lead a different study.
            Meanwhile Raj is being teased by his colleagues because he has suggested that some signals he has recorded with his telescope may be evidence of extraterrestrial life.
            I watched the first half of the premier story of the show Playhouse 90, which featured original movie length stories for television cast with Hollywood film stars. This story, “Forbidden Area” was adapted by Rod Serling from a novel and it stars Charlton Heston, Vincent Price and Tab Hunter.
            The story begins in a bar where a sombre bartender is grilling two customers on baseball statistics. No one is smiling and so right away it does not seem like a normal bar scene. Smith gets all of his answers right but the other stumbles. The bartender receives a call and then tells Smith they are ready for him. Next we see Smith being grilled by a group of official sounding unseen men with accents. After answering all of the questions he is told about his mission. It turns out that Smith is a Russian agent being trained to pass as a US citizen so he can become a mole in the US military. He is sent with one other man by submarine to California. They come ashore with scuba gear.
            Meanwhile we see a meeting between members of the forbidden area of the strategic air command. This is a think tank that meets to second guess the Russians. A year later Smith is already a sergeant and working as a cook at the Strategic Air Command.
            I stopped watching for the night just after a B-99 bomber disappears from the sky.
            The secretary of the forbidden area group, Catherine Hume was played by Diana Lynn, who had been a child prodigy at the piano. Her first roles as an adult were as pianists in movies.