I played my Martin acoustic guitar while recording song practice. I think I did better than usual with all the songs and I broke this years record of how many I got through before the battery timed out. I didn't get cut off until the second verse of "Like a Boomerang". Twenty more days left in this year's recording project and then I'll just relax and practice the songs without any pressure until next June. Hopefully from among all these recordings there'll be at least a few takes good enough that after I upload them I'll feel like I can start practicing new songs.
I weighed 84.8 kilos before breakfast.
Around midday I used a hammer and screwdriver to rip up another kitchen tile. There's just one more in front of the stove but there are four more under the stove. I was going to leave those alone but two of them show a bit at the side and so I might as well pull the stove out and remove the rest.
Many years ago the landlord installed a thermostat in the hallway outside my door but what has bugged me about it is that the temperature has been set at Fahrenheit for all this time. Today I finally decided to do something about it and looked up how to change a Honeywell thermostat to Celsius. I had to find instructions for this really old model because the more modern thermostats have a Menu button. I found out that one has to press both the up and down arrows at the same time, then number 1 is displayed, then again and number 5, then again and number 13, then finally again and 14 shows up. On the lower right from the 14 is a 0 indicating Fahrenheit. I had to then push the up button to change it to 1, and then push the "Run" button. Then the temperature changed to Celsius just in time for Canada Day next week.
I weighed 85 kilos before lunch. I had Triscuits with labneh and a glass of limeade.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. The Gay Pride parade was going down Yonge and though I walked my bike along with it last year and found it interesting, I also found it time consuming. This time I went down St Nicholas and then went to Bay and then south. Then I saw that Dundas was blocked off for the parade and was surprised at first until I remembered that there's construction at Yonge and Queen for the new subway. I went over to University and then south to Queen and headed west for home.
I chiseled some more of the smallest amethyst rock. A lot of crystals broke off. Some of the outer ones are discoloured with yellow. I don't know if they were like that before or if it was the vinegar that did it.
I weighed 84.1 kilos at 17:30.
I was caught up on my journal at 18:16.
I reviewed the video I shot of song practice this morning and it was really one of my best sets ever. I think I played a pretty good take of Megaphor. Only one chord in Sixteen Tons of Dogma was slightly off and most of the other songs that made it onto the memory card turned out not bad as well.
In my "Annie C's Aniseed Suckers" Movie Maker project I deleted everything before the beginning of the song and everything after, then I published it. But when I watched the final product I saw that I'd also published a false start along with the full song. So I went back and deleted the first attempt at the song and tried to publish the successful one under the same name. But unlike most files Movie Maker doesn't give the option of overriding a title and wants one to use a different name. I didn't want to do that and so I had to go and delete the first movie in order to be able to give the second one the same name. By that time it was too late to upload it to YouTube. I'll do that tomorrow.
In my "Instructions for Electroshock Therapy" Movie Maker project I added three more video clips of the MRI of a pulsing brain, each one corresponding to a heart-like drumbeat near the end of the song; and flanking each pulse with lightning flashes. But the last of the three didn't pulse on the beat, so I removed the flash before it and added a longer one. That brought the pulse in time with the beat and I put the lightning flash that I'd removed at the end of that pulse. I have one more pulse to add with a flash on each side of it, then the plan is to have a lightning flash be the last image in the video. I might have the whole two-year-long video project finished tomorrow. It's been so long that it hardly seems possible that it will be completed.
I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 2, episodes 2 and 3 of Petticoat Junction.
In the first story, Elsie is coming to stay at the Shady Rest while her husband Henry is on a three day trip. This was arranged because Elsie is pregnant and due in a couple of weeks and Henry wants someone to take care of her while he's away. Just in case the baby comes early, and since the hotel has no telephone to call the doctor, Joe sets up an elaborate signalling system. He gives Elsie a little bell to ring that will wake him. He will then go outside with his shotgun and fire it into the air twice. Ben Miller at the next farm will hear it and fire his shotgun twice. Fred Ziffel's wife will hear it and wake Fred, then he'll fire his shotgun. Knut will hear that and fire his shotgun which will alert Sam Drucker who will wake up Floyd and Charlie. Floyd will start the Cannonball while Charlie goes to get the doctor. It sounds like a great plan but Joe decides to do a test run in the middle of the night without telling anyone. Needless to say the doctor is very angry when he gets there. Then Ben Miller has to go away and leave his grandfather in charge, who is hard of hearing. Joe says he'll start a signal fire to alert him but again he does a test run in the wee hours without warning and once again the doctor rushes there for nothing. The next night Elsie really does ring her bell but all of Joe's wood is wet so he can't start a signal fire. Betty Joe takes the hand car along the tracks to Miller's farm, gets Ben's shotgun and fires. But when word gets to Charlie and Floyd they don't believe it's not another test run and so Sam has to wake the doctor. By the time they get there Kate has delivered the baby and Joe has fainted.
In the second story Kate organizes turning the baggage car of the Cannonball into a library and the attractive Phillis Marsh is hired to be the librarian. Joe is immediately smitten with the much younger woman and goes to see her any chance he gets. He takes her fishing after he tries to dye his grey hair with black shoe polish but it runs all over his face in the heat. Phillis agrees to meet Joe for a soda but then her fiancé Hal arrives unexpectedly and she has to explain the situation to him. She feels the need to be kind to Joe because he's been nice to her and he built all the bookshelves for her library. Hal agrees to wait as she meets Joe for a soda. The next day Kate meets Phillis at Sam's store and they discuss the Joe problem. Kate comes up with a plan involving Hal. They pretend to be lovers and Joe finds them doing the twist together in the hotel lobby. Hal comes to take Kate for a walk in the moonlight but Joe is worried about her being with a younger man and so he doesn't go to meet Phillis and stays to watch Kate. The next day Joe introduces Hal to Phillis and they hit it off right away, kissing each other before he'd finished the introduction.
Phillis was played by Canadian actor Dianne Foster, who showed promise in high school theatre and majored in drama at the University of Alberta. After college she worked in Toronto as a model and as a radio and stage actor. She was already a radio star in Canada when she played Bianca in Orson Welles's production of Othello. After supporting parts as bad girls in British B movies she went to Hollywood where her first role was as a British character in an episode of Four Star Playhouse. This won her a contract with Columbia Pictures. Her first US movie was a co-starring role in the film noir "Bad for Each Other". She then co-starred in "Three Hours to Kill", "The Violent Men", "The Brothers Rico", "The Deep Six", "Gideon of Scotland Yard", "The Last Hurrah", "Drive a Crooked Road", "The Kentuckian", and "The Big Bankroll". In the mid-sixties she was offered the role of Fred MacMurray's new wife on the sitcom "My Three Sons" but turned it down and retired from acting to raise her family and to paint.
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