Angela Greene

            On Friday morning when I got up there was snow on the streets again. It wasn’t a major snow shower but if it didn’t clear up by the afternoon, I’d be back to frustrating bike riding. 

            Bit Torrent wouldn’t shut down and so I had to manually turn my computer off. When I started back up all my torrents were gone again. I think this will happen more and more often while this computer is on its last legs. It was easier to get them back this time because I knew how, and I was able to look at them by date. One of them I had to go back to Pirate Bay and download again. Another I couldn’t find but it’s not that important. 

            I memorized the second verse of “Laide jolie laide” (Ugly Pretty Ugly” by Serge Gainsbourg. There’s just the chorus to learn now.

            I weighed 87.9 kilos before breakfast. 

            My computer was dragging so much that I had to restart three times in the morning, and it took me three hours longer than normal to do all my usual stuff. While the computer was restarting for the third time, I decided to try my laptop, but Google Chrome wanted to update and then said it couldn’t so I would have to reinstall Chrome, and so I did that. But after the third restart my computer started behaving closer to normal and I didn’t need my laptop. 

            Just before lunch I tend to need to switch off the thermostat in the hall for a while because the heat gets unbearable. But today the radiators weren’t hot, and it felt as if the furnace was cooling down. Since it was cold outside it wouldn’t have shut itself off. I went outside in the hall and saw that the thermostat was totally off. I told Benji but he said he didn’t want to mess with the furnace. I tried to call the landlord but there was no answer. He was apparently out of town but Benji got through to him and he said he would send is repair man over. 

            I weighed 87.4 kilos before lunch. 

            After lunch it had cooled down so much that I didn’t strip naked for my siesta. 

            In the afternoon I got ready for a bike ride and took my bike out, but the back wheel wouldn’t pedal. The pedal moved backwards but not forward. I couldn’t figure out what was stopping it. I walked it over to Metro Cycle, but they are closed on Fridays. What a strange day of the week to close a business! I went upstairs and turned my bike upside down. I turned the pedal back and something clicked, then I moved it forward and it worked. I have no idea how I fixed the problem since I didn’t do anything different than I did on the street other than turning the bike upside down. 

            Since my bike was working again, I rode to Bloor and Ossington. It was rough going on O’Hara and Maple Grove, but Brock was okay and the Bloor bike lane and Ossington were snowy but passable.

            I weighed 86.5 kilos at 17:15. 

            At around 17:30 the guy came to look at the furnace and it turned out that the thermostat just needed a new AAA battery. He went down to check the furnace to make sure it was working. I ran the tap for my afternoon glass of water. I went out in the hall to mop up the melted snow from my bike and I chatted with Benji. I went back in the kitchen and the sinks were plugged. I saw water running from under the sink. I opened it and the pipe was severely leaking. I desperately started clearing the stuff out from under the sink and began to mop up the water as it kept flowing. I put a bucket underneath the leak and finally got most of the water mopped up. Then the repairman who’d come to fix the furnace knocked on my door and asked if the heat was back on. I touched the radiator and confirmed that it was starting to get warm. He noticed the water and told me the people in Popeyes were mopping downstairs. It was lucky he was here because he also does plumbing for Raja and he went to get a snake and other plumbing tools. He was here for about half an hour snaking the drain and tightening the pipes. 

            At one point he stood up, looked very sad and commented that it was a horrible thing that was happening to the people in the Ukraine. I agreed but said it really didn’t understand what was going on. He asked rhetorically, “Why can’t people just talk things out? Why do they have to kill each other?” 

            He got my drain fixed and then he asked if I put oil down the drain. I said I don’t pour oil down the drain, but I do wash greasy pans in the sink. He told me one is not supposed to do that because it accumulates along the pipes and eventually plugs them. He said one is supposed to wipe the grease off the pans with a cloth or paper towel before washing them. All the years I’ve lived on this planet, and I never knew that one is not supposed to wash greasy pans in the sink! I felt like a dummy! 

            I asked his name and he said it’s Yogi. I told him I’m a yogi too. He said he doesn’t do yoga, but I told him there are lots of different kinds of yoga. Him helping to clear my drain could be a type of yoga if he did it for free. 

            What a day this was for things going wrong! First the computer, then the thermostat, then my bike and then the pipes leaking. It may be one for my personal record books. 

            I had a potato with gravy and some pork ribs while watching an episode of Adam-12. 

            This and the previous episode were the first times in this series when there were not several situations throughout a given night of Malloy’s and Reed’s patrol. 

            They get called to a hospital where a 15-year-old boy has suffered a drug overdose. The boy is not conscious and so they can’t interview him. They talk to the boy’s father who has a jacket belonging to his son’s friend Larry. Inside the jacket is a bag of pills. Malloy and Reed go to question Larry at his parents’ home, but Larry shoots a bullet through the upper part of his bedroom door and warns that he will shoot himself if they try to come in. Larry’s mother is very confused and surprised by her son’s behaviour. The father comes home and threatens Larry with physical discipline but of course that makes things worse because now Larry promises that he will kill himself in ten minutes. Malloy and Reed learn from Larry’s parents that Larry has just been dumped by his girlfriend Annie who lives downstairs. Reed and Larry’s mother go to get Annie and Annie tries to talk to Larry through the door, but it doesn’t help. Finally, the cops bust down the door and find that Larry is not holding the gun. They arrest him. 

            The nurse in the hospital reception area was played by Dublin born, Irish actor Angela Greene, who started out as a model. She was adopted by her uncle at the age of six and moved to New York. She played Tess Trueheart in the Dick Tracy TV series. She co-starred in the film “Night of the Blood Beast.” 

            

            Larry’s mother was played by Mary Gregory, who played Dr. Melik in Woody Allen’s “Sleeper.”

            Annie was played by Maria Grimm, who later wrote the screenplay for the movie Bad Blood. She co-starred in the film “Lost on Paradise Island.”