Hester Prynn

            On Friday morning after midnight I went straight to bed without checking for bedbugs for the first time in a few months. It was very relaxing to just get into bed and sleep. I'm considering the infestation to be over but of course in this neighbourhood one never knows if they'll return. My next door neighbour told me yesterday that pest control found one bedbug in his place but it didn't seem to be healthy. The technician spread some of the bedbug killing dust in his place so hopefully that will take care of them and there will be no spread of bugs. 

            I translated the second verse of "Arthur, où t'as mis le corps?" (Arthur, Where'd You Put the Corpse?) by Boris Vian: "We passed on Arthur the chore / to dispose of the corpse / He went off with a spade / but in a few hours course / came back looking dismayed / said the body had been lost." 

            I posted my translation of "U.S.S.R. / U.S.A." by Serge Gainsbourg and listened a couple of times to his "On n'est pas des grenouille" (We Are Not Amphibians). It seems like a children's song and it's sung in a kind of upbeat Calypso style. 

            During song practice I watched a squirrel cross over Queen towards my place on the wire with a big bun in its mouth. It paused at the intersection with the east west wires to eat some of it, I assume storing it in its cheeks. It was still pretty large when it carried it back across to the south side and then headed east towards the Dollarama. But then it came back still carrying it. It seemed to be looking for a hiding place. It climbed the street light pole across the street from my window and went on top of the cylindrical electrical box that controls the light, but that still wasn't good enough. It climbed back down the pole almost to the street but then went back up and then climbed on the arm that holds the walk signal. It must have found a hiding spot there because it came away without the bun. 

            I weighed 89.4 kilos before breakfast.

            Around midday I did another session of scraping the grease from the inside of my fryer basket. On Sunday I'll do the outside one more time and consider it done even though every bit of grease won't be gone. After that I'll wash the storage tray under the oven so I can put all the pots and pans that I cleaned out of the way. Then I won't do any more cleaning projects and I'll take more time for study and essay writing until after the school term is over. 

            I weighed 89.3 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride. On Brock Avenue there was an enormous raccoon dead by the curb and someone had put flowers on top of it. I rode to Yonge and Bloor. I weighed 89 kilos when I got home. 

            I read Scene 1 of Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 1. War is imminent and the king has a son he's ashamed of and the son of another man is one he wishes was his. 

            I started reading the pdf I'd downloaded of The Scarlet Letter when I noticed it's only 49 pages long. This is supposed to be a novel so that didn't make sense. I looked it up and found the Gutenberg version, which is four times that size. So I copied and pasted the Gutenberg Scarlet Letter into a document and started reading that. There's a long introduction by Hawthorne in which he describes his home town of Salem, Massachusetts. He spends a lot of time talking about the Customs House that he was in charge of and all the old sailors who worked for him. He tells of finding the real scarlet letter belonging to Hester Prynn in the customs house in a storage room of old documents. I still hadn't finished the intro before dinner but it turns out Hester Prynn is fictional and so I guess the intro is part of the novel. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken leg while watching an episode of Gomer Pyle. 

            In this story Lou Ann's father comes to visit her and he is immediately disappointed in Gomer. He doesn't follow what Mr Poovee considers to be manly pursuits. He's not athletic, has never been to college and has no ambition to do anything more than work in a filling station when he leaves the Marines. Mr. Poovee secretly calls Lou Ann's ex-fiancé Monroe and tells him to come out to California and reclaim Lou Ann because he has no competition whatsoever. Monroe arrives and Mr Poovie invites Gomer over so Lou Ann can see both men together and realize that Monroe is the better man. Lou Ann is still not impressed with Monroe and she takes her father aside to tell him to stop because because she has chosen Gomer. But Mr Poovie points out that Gomer may not have chosen her since he hasn't put up any resistance to Monroe. Suddenly Lou Ann has her doubts about Gomer and he makes it worse when he thinks it's appropriate for her to go out with Monroe since he's an old friend whom she hasn't seen in a while. Lou Ann begins to treat Gomer coldly because she doesn't think he cares. Then she announces she is going back to North Carolina with her father and Monroe. Gomer comes to see her as she's about to leave and says he doesn't want her to go. That was all Lou Ann wanted to hear. Gomer faces Mr Poovie and informs him he loves his daughter, which is also something Lou Ann has never heard Gomer say. Mr Poovie says he should have asserted himself sooner because it would have saved him a lot of trouble. He leaves with Monroe in tow, who doesn't know what's going on. After Gomer is alone with Lou Ann he picks up her suitcase to put it back in her room for her. It flies open and it's empty because Lou Ann hadn't really had any intention of leaving.