John Baer

            On Thursday morning I blog-published "I've No Regrets", my translation of "J'ai pas d'regret" by Boris Vian. I still need to post it on Facebook before moving on to his next song on my list. 

            I finished working out the chords for "Le mal intérieur" (The Ache Inside) by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through singing and playing the song in French. Tomorrow I'll go through my English adaptation and then upload it to Christian's Translations. 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I went up to David's place and I'm pretty sure his rosemary is dead. He texted me from Ethiopia yesterday and said not to worry about it. 

            I re-read most of the mirror moments from Jane Eyre and there are just ten pages left. Then I can start writing my essay, which is due on February 14. 

            I weighed 84.3 kilos before lunch. 

            I took a bike ride in the afternoon. I had expected to only ride to Freshco and back but when I started pedaling it didn't bother my knee and so I rode up to Bloor and headed east. It started to bother me just before Ossington so I headed south there and stopped at Freshco on the way home. I bought seven bags of cherries, some lychee nuts, two packs of blueberries, two packs of raspberries, bananas, a pack of chicken drumsticks, a jar of salsa, a bag of kettle chips, a box of spoon size shredded wheat, three bags of milk, and some petroleum jelly. 

            I weighed 83.8 kilos at 17:45, which is the lightest I've been at that time in two weeks. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:39. 

            I finished re-reading the sections of Jane Eyre that I needed to look at for my essay. I wrote a couple of hand-written pages of thoughts on mirror moments in the novel. I created a document for my essay and started transcribing my notes into it. 

            I had a potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching season 4, episode 20 of The Beverly Hillbillies. 

            Granny is trying to grow prize tomatoes for the county fair. She doesn't mention where there would be a county fair in Los Angeles but there really is a Los Angeles County Fair in Pomona, California and it's been an annual event since 1922. Mrs. Drysdale has the green grocer deliver a giant tomato to her and shows it to Granny to discourage her from gardening. It serves to make Granny very competitive and she concocts a special tonic to water her tomatoes with. 

            Meanwhile Mr. Drysdale goes to work to be photographed with a model for a Commerce Bank ad campaign but the model turns out to be an ostrich and the ad man, whose name is Nelson reveals that Drysdale is the owner. Drysdale has it placed in his garage until he can sell it but it gets out and wanders over to the Clampett home where it eats most of Granny's tomatoes. When Granny sees the ostrich she thinks that one of Elly May's chickens became gigantic because of her growth tonic. She tries to brew a shrinking tonic but it doesn't work. Finally we see Granny riding the ostrich and planning to win first prize for her giant chicken at the county fair. 

            Nelson was played by John Baer, who starred as Terry Lee in the short lived TV series Terry and the Pirates. He co-starred in Night of the Blood Beast. He gave up acting in the mid-seventies and pursued a career in real estate as so many former Hollywood actors seem to do. 

            It's now been nine days since I've found a bedbug. But that's still not a record for this infestation. Last June I went twelve days without seeing one.