Rochester

            On Thursday morning I memorized the first verse of "On n'est pas là pour se faire engueuler" (We Didn’t Come Here to be Shouted At) by Boris Vian.  I finished memorizing “Nazi Rock” by Serge Gainsbourg and looked for the chords. The only chords posted say that the verses are all in C and the chorus is in F. I’m sure it’s more complicated than that.

            I worked on updating my journal.

            In the late morning the hot water had been off for 24 hours. I went downstairs to find out what was going on. The door to what used to be a Coffeetime was unlocked and I walked in. Everything was gone and there was just one guy with a push broom sweeping up. He said, “We’re closed!” I said, "I know you're closed!" and then I told him that the hot water was still off. He was surprised and called his boss who was working back in what used to be the kitchen. He was surprised as well that we had no hot water upstairs. He asked where the water heater was and I said it was probably in the basement. He said he’d have the hot water back on in twenty minutes. I thanked him and he was true to his word. If I weren’t around to complain no one in my building would have anything.

            I took a shower and the water was hotter than it’s been in a long time.

            I tidied up in the kitchen and put some stuff away that had been cluttering the kitchen table for a month.

            I rode down to Freshco where I bought two bags, of grapes, two bags of cherries, a pint of blueberries, a bag of naan, two containers of Greek yogourt, a jug of orange juice and a pack of old cheddar.

            I had a chicken drumstick and some Greek yogourt for lunch.

            In the afternoon the plug in my toilet tank became undone again. In trying to reattach the chain I realized that the plug could be easily removed. I had thought it was attached by a hinge but it just has holes in the rubber that fit over the middle. It was easier to reattach the chain by removing the plug rather than struggling with something I can barely see in ice-cold water. Now that I know I can remove the plug maybe I can replace it, since it doesn’t always fully close and so I often hear water trickling.

I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. This story guest starred Eddie Anderson as Rochester Van Jones and his boss Jack Benny. Kingfish and Andy have started a loan company with Andy’s $450. Their first customer is Rochester. They tell him they’ll lend him $400 and in two weeks he has to pay back $900. He takes the deal but in two weeks he tells them that he doesn’t have the money because he lost it on a horse named Rosebud. They look to see if they can get back the money from Rochester’s employer but through a credit check they find out that Benny is so cheap it would be impossible. But Floressa Jackson tells them that Rosebud actually won the race. Rochester tells them that his bookie told him the horse lost. He brings his bookie to talk with them and his bookie is Jack Benny. Kingfish argues that the racing form says Rosebud won by a photo finish. Benny simply says that cameras can be wrong and as an example tells them that he made “The Horn Blows at Midnight”. This was a movie that Benny starred in 1945 that failed miserably at the box office. Benny used the fact that it was a flop as a running gag for twenty years.

            I finished updating my journal.

I did some reading of the executive report of the class action suit against Indigenous day schools.

            For dinner I had a potato and my last two chicken drumsticks with gravy while watching Zorro.

            In this story Cesar Romero’s Esteban continues to court Margareta while Zorro continues to discourage it. Zorro’s tactic is to sneak in unnoticed by Esteban and leaving the letter “Z” in different places, including on his forehead. Finally Esteban tells Diego that he has given up and he is going back to Spain. He declares however that he is truly in love with Margareta. Diego is almost beginning to believe him. Suddenly Esteban and Margareta have gone missing and Zorro realizes that Esteban tried to trick him. Esteban and Margareta are on their way to the church when Zorro intercepts them and stops the carriage. Zorro and Esteban duel and Zorro wins, Zorro then rides away with Margareta in the wagon to have a talk with her. When their talk is finished Zorro tells Margareta that the decision to marry Esteban or not is up to her and he rides away. When Esteban catches up Margareta asks him if he is after her for her money. He swears that he is not. She says that is good because she has learned that her father is not legally allowed to pass land down to his daughter unless she is married to a Californian and so they will not be rich if they marry. Esteban suddenly tells her that there is a war going on in Spain and he must return to fight for his king. As he rides away Margareta says, “What a magnificent rogue!”

            Later, although I was connected to the wifi network across the street, the signal wasn’t strong enough to connect to Gmail or any websites. On top of that my computer crashed and restarted. I don’t know if the two problems were related but I couldn’t post anything on my blog or Facebook. Earlier I’d noted how much easier it had been to connect on Thursday than it had been on Wednesday. Despite me not being able to connect to sites, my torrents continued to upload.

            At midnight I went to bed with my computer still trying to open Facebook. I woke up to pee at 1:37 and it had arrived. I logged onto my blog and went back to bed for another eight minutes while it loaded. Everything uploaded except the picture. I went back and forth between bed and my computer and finally uploaded the picture at 2:35. After that it took a while to get to sleep again.