On Saturday morning I woke up at about 3:30 and laid in bed for a while before getting up half an hour early. I made use of the extra time to flush the wax out of my ears before starting yoga.
I finished working out the chords for “La poupée qui fait pipi" (The Poppet that makes Peepee) by Serge Gainsbourg and started posting it on my Christian’s Translations blog.
My computer froze at around 8:30 and so I shut down and started again. When I looked at my torrent list everything had disappeared. Some of those files have been there for a year. I looked at some forums and there’s no quick fix. It seems to happen sometimes after crashes, although it’s never happened to me. Anyway all the files are in my downloads and it looks like Bit Torrent recognizes them so it won’t try to download whole files all over from scratch. It makes it difficult to seed files though because I can’t tell right away if I’ve seeded as much as I’ve downloaded so I can feel like I’ve been fair when I remove a file from the list. For instance, the second season of Zorro is about nine gigs but it only shows after re-downloading as four megs. Some incompletely downloaded files with unrecognizable names that couldn’t be searched on Pirate Bay just had to be deleted, but chances are they wouldn’t have fully downloaded anyway.
I worked on my writing project, “My Blood in a Bug”.
At 9:30 I started getting ready to go to the food bank for the first time in two months. Back in the summer and early fall it was a simple affair to get dressed for the line-up since I usually only needed a single layer of clothes and I could be there by 9:45. Now I had to put on four layers on top, two layers of scarves, three layers of socks, two layers of pants, plus my winter gloves and my Kodiaks and it took me an extra ten minutes.
Food bank clients were still lined up from west to east as they started being instructed to do the last time I was there. Veronica was all bundled up with a heavy winter coat with the hood up and with the addition of the surgical mask she wears to filter out the cigarette smoke she looked like a Canadian Egyptian mummy from Jamaica.
She exclaimed, “Oh my god!” when she first saw me and told me that she'd thought she was hallucinating. I explained that I couldn’t come from the beginning of October on because I had five essays to write and only just handed the last one in on Monday. I said that there would be a pretty heavy assignment workload in the New Year as well and so after the holidays I probably wouldn't be coming much to the food bank until April.
She updated me by saying nothing has changed at all. As an example she pointed and said, “She’s still angry all the time!” I looked and saw she was indicating Valdene, the food bank manager who was just arriving behind the wheel of the food bank van with a cigarette clamped between her lips while she jerked the van into its parking spot in front of the food bank. I agreed that she did look angry.
I saw that Robbie was there as usual, and his rollator was a few places ahead of us but Veronica informed me that he'd had a fall a few weeks ago and has been in physiotherapy.
I asked about Graham and was surprised to hear that he’d been there last week. Apparently he’d only just gotten his job back as it took several weeks for the mistaken identity issue that had come up after the criminal check to be cleared up. He’d had to start all over again with the first paycheque having been held back again for two weeks. Hopefully now everything will be fine for him.
Veronica told me she wants to start an “Overcomers Group”. She explained that her mother, who died last January, had been an overcomer when she came here from Jamaica and faced all of the obstacles that stood in her way when she settled in Canada. Veronica wants to gather people who make things into a group so they can sell their crafts together.
Suddenly Veronica told me that I was going to write up the proposal. I insisted that I really don’t have time for something like that. She assured me that it would only take ten or fifteen minutes but I knew that if I got involved it would be much more time consuming than that. She argued that I have lots of time now that school is over until January but I guaranteed her that I still have lots to occupy my time. It was only after telling her that I don’t want to start things that I can’t excel in that she understood.
Veronica said she’s at a loss to find people that will help her. Everybody just says, “That’s a great idea! Good luck with that!” but no one wants to help her. I'd recalled hearing that she'd worked at a computer before taking medical leave and so I was surprised to find out she’s not computer savvy enough to set up a Facebook page. She said that she’d only worked with Word and Excel to do her job but she isn’t a techie at all.
I suggested that she talk with a counsellor at a community centre like PARC or the West Neighbourhood House and see if they can advise her on how to approach it.
A short, late middle aged woman with white hair showing through under her hood walked down the line carrying a stainless steel beverage canister. Veronica called out to her, “Where’s our coffee?” The woman held up her canister and said, “This is for asthma!” "Coffee for asthma? What do you think of that Dr. Christian?” The woman insisted that for some types of asthma coffee is medicine. I said I’d have to look that up.
It turns out that she’s sort of right. The caffeine in coffee or black and green tea works in a similar way to the asthma medication theophylline in its ability to open up the airways and improve breathing. The only problem is that to match the effect of a dose of theophylline one would have to drink 150 cups of coffee a day.
Veronica asked the woman how she’s doing and she said that she tries to keep a positive attitude despite the people that want to kill her. She said that she’s been threatened with death by four different people over her life and the first was her sister who wanted to kill the entire family. But really, I would say that any kid that doesn’t want to kill their family or at least one of their parents at some point in their childhood is dangerously abnormal. When asked why her sister wanted to kill her she said that her sibling was possessed by demons. Four of them to be exact and she saw them because she has that ability.
I suggested that very few people believe in demonic possession any more but she said that in the Orthodox Church in which she was raised a lot of people still believe. I’ve read that in the Catholic Church every diocese has to have one priest that is trained in performing exorcisms but the "possessed" person is required to first undergo thorough medical examination to find out that the person’s behaviour is really a manifestation of mental illness. In the Roman Church the last major case of supposed demonic possession occurred in the mid-70s when a German woman underwent sixty-seven exorcisms. Several years later the German bishops retracted the claim that she was possessed.
In the Eastern Orthodox Churches, which includes the Greek Orthodox Church demons are still associated with disease and there is an exorcism ritual included in every baptism.
At 10:30 we all took our places in line but nothing happened. We were still standing out in the cold at 11:00.
I did some reading about the history of the Inuit people from my Indigenous Studies textbook. There were several displacements of communities by the Canadian government over the years. The feds set up a $10 million compensation fun in 1996 and apologized in 2010. Nunavut makes up 20% of Canada’s land mass.
There was an eastern European and perhaps Romani couple there but the woman was standing in line with the cart while the man was in the entryway with their two children to keep them warm. Marlena the doorkeeper had the impression that the couple were attempting to shop separately so as to get extra food. She kept on telling the man to go to the back of the line. Later Valdene came up and was also acting like the couple were doing something wrong.
It was almost 11:30 by the time I got downstairs. Valdene came storming up to the receptionist and wanted him to check the names of the couple waiting on the street and to make sure that they shop as a couple and not separately as she said they’ve done before. She made a comment about, “People trying to steal from us!”
As Veronica and I were waiting in line for the reception desk she pointed out the shelves to me and said, “You see? There’s nothing there!” Maybe I had the advantage of having not been there for two months and remembering just how bare the shelves had been at the beginning of October. Back then the soup shelves had been almost empty and below that I’d barely seen a can of tuna all summer. Now there were a large variety of soups on two shelves and several stacks of tinned tuna and other kinds of fish underneath.
The receptionist asked me if I wanted the Christmas turkey or the ham in two weeks when they give them out. I chose the turkey and he gave me a ticket.
There were very few volunteers working, which helped to explain why the line had moved so slowly. A couple of volunteers were discussing Larissa, the older volunteer who usually helps people shop the shelves. They said that she’s probably on a beach right now so I guess she took a holiday. Marlena the doorkeeper doubled up her duties to serve me at the shelves.
From the top of the first set of shelves I took a small bag of Peruvian coffee that is a product of Canada but distributed by a US company. And people say the nations aren’t getting along! The name brand of the coffee is Rykoff Sexton and the package doesn’t look twenty years old but according to Wikipedia, Rykoff Sexton stopped using that label in 1998 when it became US Foodservice.
I got a can of jellied cranberry sauce with the label upside down. I hope the sauce isn’t upside down as well because then I would have to put the turkey on top of the sauce.
Marlena said she really likes the Kashi Joi chocolate banana energy bars with almond butter and so I took two of those. Kashi was formed in 1984 by a young married couple named the Taubers and they got the name from a combination of “kashruth” (meaning kosher) and the name of macrobiotics guru Michio Kushi. They sold the company to Kellogg’s in 2000. Early in the 2010s they got sued for using the word "natural" on their products when some of the ingredients were artificial and others genetically modified. I notice that these bars are not labelled the words “natural" or “organic” but I don’t see any chemicals in the ingredients list.
Marlena also gave me three little bags of chips, one ketchup flavoured, one all-dressed and one bag of nacho Doritos.
As I was walking away from that set of shelves Marlena asked if I didn’t want some cereal. I’d forgotten about it probably because they don’t normally have any cereal I like. I looked and saw that they had spoon size shredded wheat, which is my favourite. When I grabbed a carton I saw that it was dark chocolate flavoured. I’m not big on sweetened cereals but I shrugged and took it anyway.
There were a wide variety of canned beans and I grabbed a tin of fava beans. I didn’t notice until I got home that the brand name was Arz and I’d sworn I wouldn’t pick that product again because I got food poisoning once. But I guess one time doesn’t make a trend and so I’ll give them another chance. Arz started out as a Middle Eastern bakery and grocery store in Toronto and it was bought by Loblaws in 2009.
I picked a can of Ocean’s albacore tuna. Ocean is owned by Canadian billionaire Jim Pattison. He also owns, after paying $4.8 million, the dress that Marilyn Monroe wore when she sang happy birthday to JFK. He’s 91 now and still works full time. He says the secret to a happy marriage is to marry someone from Saskatchewan.
From the soup section I took a carton of golden butternut squash soup.
As I finally ran out of pasta in November I selected a box of Barilla rotini. Barilla has been run by the Barilla family since 1877. In 2013 after Guido Barilla spoke out against gay couples adopting children and refused to use gay people in advertising, a boycott was threatened. A year or so later the company apologized and became an LGBTQ advocate.
There was a young woman minding the cool section and Veronica had told me that Angie has been sick lately. I didn’t take any milk or yogourt but I accepted a container of tabouli salad, three eggs and a bag of frozen burgers. The burgers were beige coloured so they couldn’t be beef. Hopefully they aren’t vegan.
Flash forward briefly to lunch the next day when I was looking forward to that tabouli salad. I noticed that the plastic lid was ballooning out from inside, which suggested that the wrong kinds of gasses were having a party in the tabouli. When I opened it up one little taste told me that the tabouli had gone kablooey and I had to throw it out.
Sylvia gave me a 2.27-kilo bag of red and yellow mini potatoes and four apples. She said for me to help myself to the stuff by the door and so I got a bag of six tomatoes and a bunch of baby spinach.
In the hallway between the food bank and the Tool Library there was a table set up. Veronica was sitting there and she called me over to encourage me to take the survey that a young man and woman were doing to help improve the food bank service. I picked up the form but the when the guy said it would take ten or fifteen minutes I put it back down again. I wasn’t going to waste any more time after spending one and a half hours in the cold. They should have invited people an hour before to come in and warm up while taking a fifteen-minute survey.
It was almost noon by the time I got home. I put my food away and then headed back out to No Frills. I bought two bags of red grapes and a half pint of organic blueberries. I picked up an apple pie and a large wedge of two year old cheddar. I was pretty sure that the cheddar was $10 but I got charged $13. I got a little jar of basil pesto, some mouthwash and some Murphy’s Oil Soap.
I had a ham, cheese and tomato sandwich for lunch. I worked on my journal.
In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. This story begins with Sapphire arguing with Kingfish about how she needs new accessories. He says they can’t afford it. Later while Sapphire is out he finds an alligator bag in their home and thinking that Sapphire has spent their money on something extravagant he takes it. Wanting to teach her a lesson he sells it to Andy for $5. He tells him that he’s an importer of alligator handbags from Egypt and that alligators have pouches like kangaroos and so one just cuts them off and has a handbag. Later however he finds out that a delivery man had brought the bag for their upstairs neighbour for their upstairs neighbour and since she wasn’t home he left the alligator handbag with Sapphire. Kingfish tries to get the handbag back from Andy by telling him that the handbag was smuggled and that he'll go to jail unless he sells it back to him. Just then Amos drops by, sees the bag and comments that it’s probably worth $50. Andy realizes Kingfish had been trying to scam him. Andy takes the bag and offers it as a gift to the mother of his girlfriend Carolina as a way of getting in good with her. She accepts the gift and he asks her if she’ll mention to Carolina that he’s not such a bad guy. She says she will. He asks her also to mention to Carolina that he’s thoughtful. She says of course she will. He asks when she’ll tell her. She answers, “As soon as she comes back from her honeymoon. She was married last night!” She won't give back the handbag. Andy and Kingfish go to Laguardia the lawyer and find him with a client. He says to her, "You say you want the marriage annulled?” "Yes it’s been a horrible mistake and it took me ten years to find out!" “With me on the case it’ll be a cinch! Meet me in court tomorrow morning at 9:00." "Thank you very much! Goodbye!" She leaves and Andy asks Laguardia who it was. He says, “My wife!” About the handbag Laguardia suggests that he go to Carolina's mother posing as a secret service agent and then arrest Andy in front of her. He goes there and when she asks for identification he shows her a blank card because secret service agents keep their identity a secret. He hides when Andy comes to the door and then arrests him. He slaps on the handcuffs but accidentally put them on himself. Fortunately Andy has the key in his pocket. Mrs Adams is convinced to sell back the handbag for $40 and Kingfish returns it to Sapphire. It turns out though that the handbag was actually a gift for Sapphire from the Women’s Auxiliary for all her hard work.
I worked some more on my journal.
I had an egg, toast and a beer for dinner while watching Zorro.
In this story, convinced that Sgt. Garcia’s life is still in danger, Diego tries to subliminally warn him about Raquel and Quintana without revealing he is Zorro. He goes to Garcia and tells his fortune with cards. He says that they show his life is threatened by the dark lady, the ten of cups and the single cup or death card. He explains to him that the ten of cups could represent someone that keeps a lot of cups, like an innkeeper. He tells him not to go anywhere alone. The next day Raquel asks him to go somewhere alone but on his way he sees a single cup and rides back to the fort. When Raquel asks why he has returned he says he knows all about the dark lady and the keeper of the cups, Raquel suddenly thinks he is onto them. She goes to pack her things. When Quintana confronts her about it she says she wants out but he forces her to stay. He takes her to a winery where several other Eagle agents tell her that the Eagle had always planned on killing her husband because he is an officer in the king’s army. She had joined them because she thought that it would be a path to her husband’s greatness. Now they plan on killing her. Zorro arrives at the winery and sends his horse with a message for Bernardo. He goes in the winery alone. He fights the men and Raquel helps him. They escape and lock themselves in the storage room but there is no way out. As they are trying to break down the door Zorro reminds them that they are in the room where the gunpowder is being stored he lights a fuse and tells them they have just a few seconds to leave. As they leave the building Zorro stomps out the fuse and the soldiers arrive to arrest the men. Because she has seen the error of her ways Zorro does not expose Raquel.
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