Life On Mercury

            On Thursday morning I didn’t feel the effects of pollen as much as I had for the last couple of days, but I felt kind of run down. It made me wonder if I actually have picked up a virus. 

            I tried to memorize the second verse of “Oh Soliman” by Serge Gainsbourg but I kept dozing off. 

            Before song practice, I realized that I’d forgotten to change my high E string that broke on Wednesday morning. There was no time to change it and so I just played all the songs with five strings. Since it was the E string that was missing I could still play all of the chords. They just didn’t sound very full. 

            I had to shorten song practice because I had an appointment to have my teeth cleaned at 8:30. For most of the songs I just played one verse and one chorus. I finished at 7:45 and got ready to leave. There was no time for coffee or breakfast. I left my place at 8:15 and rode down the street to the Toronto West End Community Health Centre. When I got to the bike posts, nearby under the overhang was a homeless guy sitting on his sleeping bag with his pants down. Before I’d finished locking my bike he informed me that the centre was closed because there’d been a fire on the roof. I wasn’t sure if he knew what he was talking about but when I came to the door a guy opened it to tell me that the centre was closed until further notice because of a fire. I would have to reschedule my appointment. 

            I had brought my Kodiaks and my sandals along in a bag because I had intended on going to Sole Survivor to get them fixed. I rode the whole curving length of Noble Street but couldn’t find any place called “Sole Survivor”. I went home and checked the address and the store hours and found out that it wouldn’t be open until 10:00 anyway. 

            I decided that the morning wouldn’t be a total; waste if I were to ride to the main post office and pick up my mail. I started heading east but when I got to Ossington it began to rain, so I turned around and headed back, stopping at Freshco on the way home. I bought some red grapes, some black grapes, and a bag of cherries. I also got three bags of milk, a small container of skyr, a jug of orange juice, a small jug of raspberry lemonade, and another of lemon iced tea; two bags of kettle chips, and some shampoo-conditioner. 

            After I’d put my food away it was after 10:00 and so I headed over to 46 Noble Street. At that address there was no sign saying, “Sole Survivor” but there was one saying, “Shoe and Leather Repair.” But there was also another sign saying, “By appointment only.” That seemed weird but I went home and called them. It was even stranger when I talked to the person. I was told that I needed to make an appointment just to drop off some footwear for repair and on top of that, I couldn’t get an appointment until June 6. In all my life I have never run across a repair business where one is required to make an appointment just to bring something in to be fixed. Maybe this is just a covid thing and their customer service will become normal when the pandemic is over. 

            I weighed 85 kilos before a late breakfast at 10:30. At 11:00 I felt tired and so I took a siesta until 12:30. But when I got up I still felt sleepy and went back to bed until 1:45. 

            I weighed 84.4 kilos before a slightly late lunch at 14:00. 

            After lunch, the weather had cleared up and so I decided to ride down to Leslie and Commissioners to get my mail. It was a long trip and I’d forgotten just how far east Leslie is. If one thinks of the east side of Yonge as the beginning of the east end, Leslie is more than halfway to the Beaches. I rode south and I could almost see the entrance to the Leslie Spit by the time I got to Commissioners Street. The postal station was right on the corner. The front door was locked and I pushed a buzzer until I read a sign directing those picking up mail to the west side of the building and around the corner. I found the customer's entrance, went inside, and pushed the loud, red buzzer that sounded more like an alarm. Someone finally came to the window and I showed him something with my address and also my health card. It took him about ten minutes but he came back with about seven pieces of mail. Two of them were junk but the rest were important. One of them was the form I’d been waiting for from the Ministry of Housing and another was my voting card for the Ontario election. 

            As is usually the case, the trip home felt faster than the journey out. When I got home I noticed that it looked like the landlord had finally gotten the electronic lock fixed so the mail carriers could get in. 

            I weighed 84.5 kilos at 17:30. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast beef while watching two episodes of Astro Boy. 

            In the first story, Astro Girl finds a large, beautiful, and strange egg on one of the Mystery Islands. Astro Boy takes it to Dr. Elefun, who experiments on it and finds its shell to be harder than metal. He has the top scientists of the world come to offer their views on the nature of the egg and they begin to argue so passionately that Astro Girl is able to take the egg away without them noticing. She drops it and it keeps rolling away from her while she engages in a comical chase down several flights of stairs until it rolls into an elevator and goes up, so she has to run up the stairs, but then it goes down and she has to run back down. 

            Meanwhile, Astro Boy has decided to return to the island to see if it holds a clue as to the nature of the egg. He discovers a family of Phoenix Birds consisting of a mother, a father, and a son. Astro Boy can hear them speak to one another and although the sounds of their language are not human, he can understand them through telepathy. But when he tries to speak to them they do not understand. An Earthquake causes the mother to become trapped under a large boulder and after Astro Boy rescues her the Phoenixes can now understand his speech because they communicate heart to heart. 

            Now that Astro Boy understands that the egg is their child and they want it back, he returns to the Science Institute. He rescues Astro Girl who is about to be crushed by the elevator and then they return the egg to the room where the scientists are still arguing. Just then the egg cracks open and a baby Phoenix emerges. Astro Boy accompanies it back to its parents and they are grateful. 

            In the second story, Dr. Elefun excavates a meteor impact crater and discovers a spiked bullet-shaped object about half the size of an adult human. He determines that it’s a heat bomb and somehow figures out that it came from the planet Mercury. 

            Astro Boy along with two other robots, Hector and Victor, are sent to investigate Mercury. Hector is an extremely arrogant robot who thinks he is better than everyone else while Victor is humble but appears to be very lazy. On the way, their ship is damaged by space dust and so Astro Boy and Victor go outside to repair it. They both need to wear special glasses to protect their electronic lenses from the sun, but a loose spring knocks Astro Boy’s glasses off and the ultraviolet rays make him blind. Victor says there’s an extra pair of lenses in the cabin and asks Hector to get them but Hector decides that if Astro Boy is blind then he will be in charge and so he hides the lenses. 

           They land in the twilight zone between the cold and hot sides of the planet. They first encounter men from the cold side, which they call the Land of Shivers. They welcome the Earthlings but Hector thinks they are enemies and attacks them, and so they shoot him with a freezing gun. They tell Astro Boy and Victor that Hector will thaw in a minute and meanwhile they invite them to meet their queen. They ski to the palace of Queen Bridget where she tells them that the Shivers’ enemy are the Sizzlers, who sent the heat bomb to Earth. They also sent one to every other planet in the solar system. The Sizzlers attack and destroy the palace. 

            Astro Boy is determined to destroy the factory where the heat bombs are made. They go back to the ship to get heat suits and Victor discovers that Hector stole Astro Boy’s lenses. Astro Boy’s vision is restored. Hector begs forgiveness and asks to go on the mission. Astro Boy says they should forgive him. 

            In Sizzler territory they find a dome but Astro Boy can’t smash through. Hector is able to break it open but doesn’t mention that he’s been damaged. They find a room full of heat bombs protected by the Sizzlers. Hector attacks and defeats them and tells Astro Boy and Victor to leave so he can destroy the bombs. He says that his wound has been affected by the great heat and he will explode soon. Astro Boy and Victor leave as the dome explodes. They are attacked by Sizzler ships but Astro Boy lures them to the cold side and into the icy water where they are destroyed. On the way back to Earth, Astro Boy learns that Victor is only a remote-controlled robot and that he was operated the whole time by Dr. Elefun. 

            I went to bed about half an hour early without updating my journal.