Claudette Colbert

            On Thursday morning I re-teathered the phone but after a while Sankar’s network disappeared from that device as well and I had no wifi.

            I made the eighth video recording of my morning rehearsal. I won’t know for sure until I've uploaded the video but I think some of the songs came through okay. I still haven't watched all the footage from the previous morning. These .mov files are three gigabytes each and so I can only make a few more recordings before I run out of room on my computer. Then I can start sorting through the captured sessions and decide which songs to upload to YouTube.

            Later in the morning the café across the street turned their wifi on and I was connected again. I wonder what happened to Sankar's network. Maybe he lost or changed his account or maybe there's a glitch and it will pop back up later.

            About half an hour after writing the previous lines I lost the wifi from the café, even though I was still connected to their network.

            Around midday I set up a new bottom shelf in the bedroom with the pine board and the brackets that I’d bought a few days before. It's a bit more tidy in that area now. The next thing I'll do in that room is clean the dresser and the mirror. After that there are four shelves to wash on the other side of the room and then I have to think about painting the door that used to lead to the hall from the bedroom. It’s still stained with crushed bedbugs from five years ago.

            An hour into the afternoon and I still had no wifi. I might take my laptop, my tablet and my phone down to campus in the afternoon and try to do my posting. Now that the weather is warmer logging on outside won’t be as much of a trial. Unless of course it rains.

            Shankar’s network came back on at 13:30.

            I had a lettuce, cucumber and sunflower seed salad with ranch dressing for lunch.

            I tried to take a siesta but I couldn’t sleep and so I got up after half an hour.

            I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. This was a somewhat rehashed story. It was time for the annual lodge picnic, involves a boat trip to Hendrik Hudson Island. There is supposed to be $500 in the lodge safe to pay for the trip but Kingfish has been dipping into the money. By drawing from other funds and policies he manages to come up with $250. Instead of the usual boat he rents a cheap one from an old sea captain but it turns out that the ship has no engine and it has a hole in it. He also only buys two hot dogs and tells Andy to palm the hot dog each time and fill the buns with mustard and horse radish. When the boat begins to sink everyone gets safely to shore and Kingfish gives everyone their money back. Then he pretends to be an old sea captain and rents the boat to someone else for $250.

            I checked my bank account online and saw that I’d gotten the Ontario Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors. It was $166. I assume I will also be getting a federal GIS in a few days. I don’t really know how much my pension is going to be and I’m worried that it won’t be enough to live on. Then again it might turn out to be more than I got from Ontario Works. It’ll be a relief to know for sure what I can expect every month.

            I took a bike ride and on the way home I stopped at Freshco. I needed fruit but was afraid to withdraw too much money and so I only took $20.

            I uploaded the video I shot this morning but only had time to watch Tuesday’s recording and the beginning of Wednesday’s before dinner. I had a potato, my last chicken leg and gravy while watching, “The Last Town Car” online. This was the forty-second and last episode of the 1957-1958 Alfred Hitchcock produced series, “Suspicion".

            In 1958 Chicago a woman named Mrs Edith Miller goes to see a psychiatrist named Dr Thomas Michael. She says she's terrified of an antique taxi that has been picking her up. When she rides in the town car other passengers appear there with her but they are dressed like people from the 1920s and speak on subjects from that era. First there is a young man and his girlfriend returning from a speakeasy. On another ride the young man is arguing with his father. After the father gets out the young man continues in the cab to a bridge where he gets out and jumps off, committing suicide. None of these other passengers notice her although she is right beside them and tries to speak to them. Bailey the driver however, does notice her and looks at her with hatred. The doctor thinks Mrs Miller is hallucinating but he finds her personally interesting and is intrigued by the town car because he is also a vintage car buff. He finds the town car, borrows it from Bailey and thinks it would be therapeutic for Mrs Miller to take a ride in it with him. The ride is uneventful but when they bring it back to the garage and she meets Bailey, he claims that he has never seen her before. A few days later her doorman is trying to get Mrs Miller a cab when all he can flag down is the town car. She does not want to get in and Bailey does not want her in his cab, but the doorman insists and she is late for her appointment with friends and so she gets in. In the cab, the same father appears but this time his daughter Charlotte is there as well and they are arguing. The father resents the fact that his daughter is romantically involved with a foreigner and he says that he has used his influence to financially ruin him and force him out of Chicago. When the father gets out of the cab, Bailey gets out as well and pushed him under a passing car, thus killing him. When Mrs Miller calls Bailey a murderer he tells her that she is next. He tries to run her down but she escapes with only a few bruises. She goes to Dr Michael and he says that he has been doing research and he no longer thinks that Edith is having hallucinations. He says the young man really did jump off the bridge and the father really was hit by a car, thirty years ago. He reluctantly concludes that the only explanation is paranormal. He tells her that Bailey recently drove the taxi into a wall, killing himself and destroying the town car. Edith reads Mike's mind that he's going to ask her to dinner.

            Mrs Miller was overacted by Claudette Colbert, who was born in France in 1903 but her family moved to the United States when she was three. In the era in which she grew up people dreamed of being Broadway and not Hollywood stars. When the Great Depression shut down the theatres she turned to movies. The Lady Lies and Hole in the Wall in 1929 were her first successes. By 1933 she was a star when she did Tonight is Ours. She played Cleopatra and won the Best Actress Oscar for It Happened One Night in 1934. She was so sure that Bette Davis would win that year that she didn’t show up for the ceremony. She was nominated twice more in her career. She was the world’s highest paid star in 1942. She said that grandparents and grandchildren get along so well because they have a common enemy in the mother.

            Charlotte was played by Christine White, who was James Dean’s girlfriend when they both joined The Actor’s Studio.