Neanderthal Girlfriend

            I dreamed that I had a girlfriend who was a Neanderthal. I was a scientist-explorer working with a team in some dystopian future or other world. Her face was more like a comical caricature of a Neanderthal woman and yet her body seemed more like that of a human. In the jungle I discovered a man-made rectangular modern looking white building. I forced the door open and discovered that inside was a vertical freezer with glass doors. On one of the freezer shelves was the head of a female scientist that had gone missing. She was an attractive woman with medium length wavy dark hair. I realized that her head belonged on the body of my Neanderthal girlfriend but someone had removed it and replaced it with that of a Neanderthal woman.

On Thursday morning I spent about an hour editing my translation blog. I’d pasted the lyrics, chords and my translation of "King Kong" by Serge Gainsbourg but for some reason the text was invisible. When I switched to look into the HTML skeleton of the post it was all there. I assume that some piece of the language made the text white on a white background or something like that but I didn’t want to spend time digging around and looking for the problem. Instead I just deleted the whole thing and then repasted the document directly into HTML. The downside to doing that is that it eliminates all of the breaks, indents, chord positionings and italicizations that had been in the original document and so when I switched to "Compose" I had to put all of that stuff in bit by bit. In the hour I’d given myself I only managed to get the first verse and all of the repetitions of the chorus done.

That morning I got a return email from Albert Moritz. I had inquired the day before about when I should pick up my course manuscript with his comments, since I could see online that he'd given me a mark. He answered that because of impossible time pressures he was forced mark the term papers of three courses without leaving comments. When things ease up he wants to go back and re-read the manuscripts so he can comment but he doesn't expect that to happen until June at the earliest.

A little after 9:30 I called the Parkdale-Queen West Community Health Centre and punched the extension for the dental office but the message said they didn't open until 10:00. I called back at 10:30 but there was still no answer. I was starting to conclude that they don’t answer their phone or even return calls. I got dressed and rode down there.

As I was locking my bike I read a sign about the prevention of overdoses. I think that there is a safe injection site at that location. The sign said “We grieve thousands” but the word “grieve” didn't seem right to me. I thought they'd spelled it wrong but I'm embarrassed to admit that I had it wrong and they spelled it right. I even pointed out what I thought was a mistake to the downstairs reception and she was willing to accept that I was right. I’m generally a pretty good speller but I have made some big boo-boos in my life. Up until my thirties I spelled “people” as “peaple”. It's a good thing there is spell check nowadays.

I went to the second floor and was worried no one was at reception again but she sits fairly low against a divider almost as if she’s hiding. She was pretty nice but I was surprised that I couldn’t get an appointment until June 5, more than a month from now. I took it.

On the way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought grapes, blueberries, Earl Grey tea, Bavarian sandwich bread and a six pack of paper towels.

I took my items home and then I headed up the street to the Salvation Army thrift store to see if they had any tools but they had none.

A week or so ago my daughter had mentioned that the freewheel on her bike is stuck and while living in Montreal she has been missing access to tools at Bike Pirates in Toronto. I was thinking with her birthday coming up that I’d try to get her the tools she needs to fix her bike. I asked Astrid on Facebook and she said that she basically needs a table vice. She said she already has the freewheel removal tool that slips into the middle of the freewheel. If one has access to a vice, after putting the tool in one just clamps the other side, turns the wheel of the bike counter clockwise and the freewheel unscrews. I thought about buying her a vice but considering how often one has to remove one’s freewheel it seemed like a gift that would not get used often enough to justify the cost. Since it was Thursday and Bike Pirates opened at noon I went over there and talked with Dawn to pick her brain about alternatives to the vice.

Dawn said, “If your daughter's eyes are as blue as yours she could just go to any bike shop, bat them at the manager and they'd remove her freewheel for her without any charge.” I think Dawn was flirting with me!

She said that I could buy a vice at Home Hardware and just have the nearest Home Hardware to Astrid in Montreal deliver one from their store.

She said the non-vice alternative would be just to use an adjustable wrench and use a pipe on the handle for extra torque along with help from friends holding the wheel and helping to yank the wrench. I went back on Facebook and related that to Astrid but she said she didn’t think her adjustable wrench could handle that much torque. I asked for the exact size of her freewheel removal tool and she said it is one inch across. I went to Home Hardware and bought a solid one-inch wrench.

I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t paid my rent and I also remembered that I had an appointment with Parkdale Community Legal Services at 15:00. I paid the rent online, with the increase and then went to my appointment. My meeting was with two student lawyers this time, when it’s usually with one. One of them seemed quite a bit older than the other so I think he was probably just finishing law school while she was earlier on. I found out that my rent increase this time is legal so my new rent is $619.70.

            I immediately rode to the post office to buy a bubble envelope for mailing the wrench to Astrid. The tree near the bike post in front of the Guardian Drugstore is sprouting new branches all the way down to the sidewalk in the exact same places where they’ve been trimmed before. I took a few pictures of the sprouts and then went in to get the envelope.

I took it home and addressed it and then put the wrench inside and took it back to the post office to mail it to Astrid. I chose regular mail this time because express was three times as much. I recall that when I’m sending boxes to Astrid the express isn’t much more expensive than regular mail, so it must be different for packages than it is for envelopes. Hopefully the wrench will work so Astrid can get back to riding her bike again.

Because it had been such a busy day, that night I was an hour late starting to cut up a chicken, sprinkling it with paprika and roasting it so I could have a piece for dinner. I ended up having to eat my potato and carrot with gravy first while the chicken was still in the oven. I only ate the two smallest pieces, which would have cooked sooner.

I watched the first two episodes of  “Sea Hunt”. I remember it from when I was a kid. It seems that the show has an odd name since it only took Lloyd Bridges a few minutes to find the sea. Perhaps it’s a show about a scuba diver with short-term memory loss and so he has to hunt for the sea again in every episode because he keeps forgetting where it is.

Lloyd Bridges’s character is Mike Nelson, a diving expert employed by Marineland but who is called out to help with emergencies outside of his usual job of acquiring new exotic sea life for his regular employer.

In the first story a jet being tested crashes in the ocean and Nelson is hired to find it and put a marker above it for retrieval. But when he finds the plane he discovers that the pilot is still alive with fifteen minutes of air left. The problem is that if the cockpit is opened the pressure would kill the pilot and so Nelson’s first idea is to have the retrieval boat lift the jet to the surface, but the cable breaks. Nelson tries to break the cockpit glass with an axe but he can’t get enough swing. Next he tries a blowtorch but the pilot signals to him that he can’t simply open the cockpit from the top with the torch because the air bubbles inside the cockpit will cause a fire. He has to make a hole under the cockpit big enough to reach inside and pull the latch to open the cockpit. He gives the pilot the extra tank that he’d brought and he is hoisted to the surface just in time with only one broken eardrum.

In the second story Nelson is hired to dive into a flooded mine to assess the damage. But when he is deep in the mine he finds two miners that are still alive in an air pocket where the oxygen is almost depleted. Nelson says he’s going to rescue them but can only take one man at the time because they will be sharing the mouthpiece back and forth along the way. He picks two stones and says whoever picks the smallest stone gets to come back with him. There is a chance that by the time he gets back to rescue the other man he will be dead from asphyxiation. But the miner that won the draw begins to panic in the water, refuses to give back the mouthpiece and even steals Nelson’s knife to try to stab him. Nelson easily overpowers him, brings him back to the air pocket and leaves him there while he takes the other miner instead, who gives him no trouble. At the other end, rather than spending precious time going up the shaft to get an extra tank, he jerry rigs an acetylene tank to serve as a scuba tank. The other miner is still alive when he reaches him and this time he behaves himself.

It’s a relief for a change to watch a show in which there’s suspense and adventure and yet no one gets shot or beaten up.