Turn Me On

            On Thursday morning I woke up at around 3:30 because I had to pee as usual. When I came back from the washroom, before going back to bed I turned on the light to look for bedbugs. Unlike the last two mornings there were none crawling on the wall or on my pillow. I searched under the pillow and bent back the edges of my bed all around. Then I grabbed my trusty skewer stick and began a thorough search of the west and south borders of my bed, poking the sharp end into any cracks and gaps in the baseboards and the wall above. I found none until I got back up to the northwest corner and shoved my little spear into a small cave about ten centimetres above the baseboard and disturbed one bedbug that came out only to be stabbed and to spill my blood for three centimetres down the wall. It was probably in there laying eggs and so I'm going to try to steam the area later and then cover it up. I'm discouraged that I found another bedbug but encouraged that there was only one and that I had to track it down. When the previous infestation began seven years ago I was finding twenty every time I looked but since July 27 I've found five. I'm thinking that washing the pillow yesterday might have killed most of the ones I have. Speaking of the pillow it still isn't dry and it's raining so I can't put it out in the sun. 

            I weighed 89.7 kilos before breakfast. 

            I worked out the chords to the instrumental intro and the first two lines of "Manu Manuréva" by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            In the late morning I tried an experiment by filling the kettle and bringing it to a boil. I quickly brought it into the bedroom and used my hand held hairdryer at its hottest to blow the steam into the hole where I found the bedbug this morning in hopes that the steam would kill any eggs the bug might have laid. It's hard to know if it worked because when I'm blowing the steam I can't see it. I also tried just putting the hairdryer up close to the holes in the wall and baseboards. The wall got pretty hot and bedbugs aren't supposed to like heat so hopefully it did something. I looked it up and one website says that a blowdryer will draw bugs out of holes but it won't kill them because it doesn't get hot enough. Apparently 93 degrees are required. 

            I looked through my storage drawers for any pieces of flloorboard that I might have kept because there are two small areas in corners of the bedroom where there is some floorboard missing. I found one piece that is just big enough to be cut into one larger piece and one smaller to fill both holes. I measured it off to saw tomorrow and I cleaned both holes with a tooth brush so the wood glue will stick better. 

            I weighed 88.8 kilos before lunch. I had kettle chips, salsa and yogourt with a glass of orange juice.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor and on the way home I stopped at Freshco. I bought six bags of grapes, a pack of ground pork, some four year old Canadian cheddar, a bag of kettle chips, Greek yogourt, skyr, salsa, Sunlight detergent and a pack of Sponge Towels. I weighed 88.2 kilos when I got back. 

            I worked on my poem series "My Blood In A Bug." 

            I inserted the video of my shock machine into the main video I'm making for my song "Instructions For Electroshock Therapy." I put it in just after I sing "Why don't we wait now to warm up the machine" and then I cut out the concert video of me singing "up the machine" because that's where it goes out of sync with the studio recording. Then I cut out all but the two seconds of the "shock machine" video so that it shows only while I'm singing "up the machine." I have the next line where I sing "We're wearing white and we're feeling clean" almost in sync and I'll try to fine tune it tomorrow. 

            I colourized two more damage spots in my photo of the skateboarder. 

            I had a potato with gravy and two small steaks while watching two episodes of Mayberry RFD.

            In the first story there wasn't much of a story. Alice's harp instructor Professor Radetsky begins to see a lot more of Alice other than giving her lessons. To some degree it seems he's just freeloading for meals. He stays for lunch and dinner and then invites her on a picnic for which she is expected to prepare the food. He invites her out to dinner but makes it a double date with Sam and Millie for which Sam ends up picking up the tab. Alice admits that she feels romantic towards Wolfgang and says, "He turns me on." Sam gets a call that Wolfgang wants to have a private conversation with Sam and Alice expects that he's going to ask for permission to marry her. Alice tells Sam she doesn't want to marry Wolfgang and asks him to let the professor down easy. When they meet Wolfgang says he doesn't want to marry Alice and to let her down easy. It ends with Alice playing the harp and singing "Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms" with Sam. 

            In the second story Pamela Bennington's car breaks down in Mayberry and so Howard gives her a lift back to Mount Pilot. He sees that she lives in a singles apartment complex with a shared pool and that there is a temporary vacancy because a resident is going on a two month holiday. After Pamela kisses Howard on the cheek to thank him he decides to rent the place. There are a lot of attractive young women there but there is one resident named Jane who is very friendly towards Howard, although he doesn't seem to find her attractive, nor does anyone else. Howard decides to throw a housewarming party and is going to invite Pamela to be his date, but it turns out tht she already has a boyfriend. Howard strikes out with several other women there because he's a clumsy nerd. Finally he reluctantly asks Jane and she enthusiastically accepts. But at the same time Pamela has just had a fight with her boyfriend and begins to flirt with Howard and so he asks her to be his date as well. He invites Goober to come because he wants to push Jane off on him but Goober is late and so at the party Howard tries to find ways to avoid Jane so he can spend time with Pamela. When Goober arrives Howard takes Jane to meet him but then he realizes that he has to do the right thing and be with the girl he invited first. He asks Goober and Pamela to be one another's dates and they enthusiastically agree. Howard spends the rest of the party with Jane. Pamela and Goober have a great time but when he walks her home he runs into her boyfriend and ends up with a black eye. 

            Jane was played by Judith Cassmore, who played Vicki in "Foxy Brown" and had supporting roles on several TV shows and a few on Broadway.