Gates McFadden

            On Thursday morning I dreamed that I was riding the subway and while I was sitting there I realized that I'd forgotten to wear any clothing. It was obvious that other people noticed but they tried not to react. Although I found it embarrassing I tried my best to own it and didn't make any attempt to cover myself. Later I was on the bus, still naked and the last person on the vehicle when it pulled into the garage. I snuck out the back and hid in a TTC truck while the driver was looking back at me. 

            I finished posting "Lemon In Zest" my translation of "Lemon Incest" by Serge Gainsbourg. I memorized the first two verses of his song "Amour Consolation". 

            I weighed 84.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I took an early bike ride because I wanted to stop at Steve's Music on the way home and check out the guitars. On the Bloor bike lane at around Dovercourt someone had knocked a mailbox over and it was halfway blocking the lane. I decided to stop and try to lift it off. Just then two women stopped and tried but decided it was too heavy. I said, "Not even with the three of us?" One of the women helped and we lifted it back up together. 

            At Steve's they have a much better selection than Long and McQuade. There was a nice looking black Yamaha for $1000. It was light as a feather so it couldn't possibly be made of wood. I found the sound a little twangy. There was an Ibanez for $899 that didn't sound too bad. In the back room I found a Martin with a dark wood finish that had a great sound, but it was being sold for $1200. I'm going to check out five more places and if nothing turns up that impresses me as much in my $1000 price range, I might splurge on that Martin. It made me feel good to play it. 

            I weighed 83.8 kilos before lunch at 14:30. 

            I took a late siesta from 15:00 to 16:30. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos at 16:45. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 17:30. In Movie Maker I synchronized the video recording of my July 7, 2022 song practice with the microphone recording. Then I saved a copy of the project as "Joanna" and cut everything out but that song. I rendered it into a movie and tomorrow I'll probably have time to upload it to YouTube. 

            I had to shut down Movie Maker in the Task manager before I could reopen it to work on the video for my song "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy". At the end of the timeline in the video of the finale of the silent film "Way Down East" I edited out everything but clips of Lillian Gish on the ice floe and of the waterfall it's approaching. I've cut the video down from ten minutes to one, but I only need about seven seconds. Hopefully I'll have time to edit it some more tomorrow. 

            I cleaned a negative on both sides with alcohol and cotton swabs and it took quite a while. I was about to scan it when I realized that it was two black and white negatives stuck together, so I had to clean the sides that had been stuck. It's funny though that only one of those was dirty. I scanned both of them and they seem to be mostly shots of geese in front of a domed building, probably on the Exhibition grounds. There are lots more dirty black and whites to clean. 

            I had a potato with gravy and three pork ribs while watching season 3, episode 4 of Star Trek Picard. 

            This story takes place entirely on the Titan and for the first time there is nothing of the side story involving Worf and Raffi as they try to track down the super weapon. I assume extra time will be spent on that in the next episode. 

            We left off with the Titan disabled and sinking into the gravity well of the nebula. Seven is trying to track down the Changeling saboteur. Riker tells her to keep it quiet. As acting captain he could reinstate her but it could be advantageous for her to be moving outside the role of an officer on the ship. Since the deeper the ship goes into the nebula the more of its power is lost, they could all die soon and so Picard spends some time with his son Jack Crusher. He tells him that he and Jack's father, Jack Crusher senior were the best of friends and tells a story of how they made it home together while flying blind in a shuttle with its sensors down. Seven has never encountered a Changeling and so she asks Captain Smith for advice even though she hates his guts. He tells her if she finds the pot that it rests in when it liquifies, it will come to her. Seven finds the pot and is carrying it to the lab when she is attacked by the Changeling. She fires at it and it escapes into the wall. 

            On the Shrike, Vadic cuts off her own hand and it liquifies, turning into a floating skull like head. It asks her to report and then tells her to pursue Jack Crusher into the nebula. She says she can't because it would be suicide. The head says do it and she obeys. The head liquifies again and reforms as her hand. 

            Smith hears Picard telling Jack about his father and decides to tell him that Picard is also Locutas of Borg and is responsible for the deaths of 11,000 when he was in command of a Borg Cube.

            Beverly tells Picard and Jack that the nebula is giving birth. She's been monitoring the contractions. Jack says there is a power surge with every contraction. If they could channel them they could ride them out of the nebula. But they have to be at full power and in motion when the wave hits in order to ride it. They have to talk Riker into it but he finally says that it could work if they manually open the covers to the warp core and let the energy in there. Picard and Seven go to Smith to ask him to open the covers, since he started out as a mechanic on ships like the Titan and nobody else knows how to do it. 

            Since Picard is the only one with experience flying blind Riker gives him the command chair. Picard directs Commander La Forge, Geordie's daughter, as they move forward through the asteroid field. Jack calls out which asteroids are coming up and their distance. 

            But meanwhile Commander LaForge shows up to assist Smith. Seven puts a phaser to LaForge's head. LaForge tells her, "Commander it's me!" Seven asks, "Commander what?" LaForge says, "Commander Hansen" and Seven fires, killing the Changeling. LaForge always called her Commander Seven out of respect unlike Smith. 

            They've gotten through the asteroid field but they need thrusters at 100% to ride the wave. Riker orders all life support shut down. When the wave comes they are able to ride it out and get their power back. On their way out they are confronted again by the Shrike. Riker has the tractor beam grab an asteroid and swings it into the Shrike. The Shrike is disabled. The nebula gives birth to thousands of space jellyfish. The Titan goes to warp. In the end Jack has a flashback or vision of fiery red and a door through it. A voice says, "Find me." 

            Beverly Crusher is played by Gates McFadden, who taught theatre and dance in the 1970s and formed a theatre company with a touring troupe of female clowns. She was a Muppeteer for Jim Henson before she was cast in Star Trek in 1987. She worked on "The Muppets Take Manhattan". She choreographed the ballroom scene in "Labyrinth". She teaches at the University of Southern California. She is renovating a theatre in Southern France. 

            

            I've made it to 48 days without finding a bedbug.