Minta Durfee

            On Thursday morning I ran through singing and playing “Physique est sans issue” (The Physical is without Issue) by Serge Gainsbourg and my translation: “Bodies Never Come to Love”. I uploaded them to my Christian’s Translations blog and started preparing them for publication. I should have it posted on Friday. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the first session of four.

            I weighed 86 kilos before breakfast. 

            I tried to reach the number of the PC Shop where I bought my HP Pavilion a year and a half ago but the number didn’t seem to work anymore. The Queen Street shop closed quite a while ago and that whole building is empty. I found the PC Shop website and called their store at 590 Keele. The guy said that Tom Liu who I bought my PC from is no longer with the store. I told him my problem and he said that if the issue is only the CPU fan then he could fix it when I got there but if it was something more I’d have to leave the computer over. 

           So I packed my computer in three bags and added a bit of bubble wrap and I rode up to 590 Keele. I took Dundas from Lansdowne all the way to Keele and then went north to St Clair where Keele ends temporarily. I backtracked a bit because I couldn’t see the addresses. I went into a plaza and was walking towards Marks Work Warehouse where I was going to ask the address when I saw that the PC Shop was right there. Bill the technician found out fairly quickly that the problem was indeed my CPU fan. He said he could either put in a second hand HP fan or a new Intel fan. I assumed that a new one would be better but since the HP CPU fans are designed specifically for HP computers he had to make some changes to the inside of my PC so the Intel fan could be installed. It took about an hour and a half and cost me almost $75 after tax but it was worth it to get a quiet computer back and to stop worrying about it crashing. 

            Bill told me that there was a fire in the building where the Queen Street shop had been. It was due to faulty wiring and the building is still deemed unsafe and so no tenants are allowed there. The landlord wouldn’t answer his phone because he was under investigation. 

            I weighed 85.2 kilos at 14:30. 

            I took a late siesta at 15:30. I got up at 17:00 and went out on the deck to chisel black quartz from a piece of the rock that I found six years ago. When I was finished I suddenly realized that I’d forgotten to make my Thursday trip to Freshco. Since I’d ridden to 590 Keele it was the western equivalent of my usual bike ride downtown. On Thursday’s I always stop at Freshco on my way back from downtown, but this time it had slipped my mind. So upon that realization I got dressed and rode to Freshco where I bought two bags of grapes, a pack of strawberries, a pack of blackberries, a pack of raspberries, bananas, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a box of Cheez-it crackers, Full City Dark coffee, and three bags of milk. They had ground turkey on sale for $5 but they also had ground sirloin on sale for $2 more and I figured it was worth it because ground turkey is kind of bland. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos at 18:30. 

            I was caught up on my journal just before dinner and so I didn’t have a chance to review any videos tonight or work on any other projects. It was a satisfying day anyway because I got my PC fixed.

            I put the rest of the smoked ham in the big stainless steel cooking pot that I found last year and added two litres of vegetable broth. I cooked it for a while to start making a soup or stew. I’ll add beans and spices later. 

            I had a potato with gravy and three pork ribs while watching season 1, episodes 14 and 15 of Green Acres. I didn’t finish writing my review of these stories until the next day because I dozed off. 

            In the first story Lisa wants to go to the beauty parlour but learns that there is no beauty parlour in the valley. She brings it up with the Every Other Wednesday Discussion Group and convinces them that they need a beauty parlour. Lisa calls her mother in law and asks her to send a stylist. Eunice convinces Claude to go because she has something over on him. All she has to do is mention Scranton and he reluctantly agrees. But now Lisa needs a place for the beauty parlour. Sam Drucker won’t let them use the back room of his store but Lisa convinces Floyd Smoot to let them use the baggage car of the Cannonball. The women all get very high bouffant hairdos but then an angry mob of farmers comes to complain to Oliver that their wives are refusing to do any work because they don’t want to muss up their hair. Lisa gives them all a lecture on being nice to their wives and they decide to give it a try. We never do find out what the scandal was that happened to Claude in Scranton. 

            One of the uncredited women was played by Minta Durfee, who grew up in a red light district and her mother was a tailor for sex workers. She started as a chorus girl in musical revues at the age of 17 in 1908, the same year she married Fatty Arbuckle. They both started acting in films together in 1914 and she was often his leading lady. She co-starred with Charlie Chaplin in his first starring picture, Making a Living. She hung suspended from a bridge by a piano wire in Love, Speed and Thrills in 1915. She was a close friend of silent film star Mabel Normand. When she came to the courthouse to defend her husband in his trial over the death of Virginia Rappe, the crowd threw rocks at her. In later years she gave lectures on silent films. 

           

            In the second story Lisa becomes fed up with having a bedroom that is so small that there is only room for the bed. She gives Oliver an ultimatum of either or. Either he expands the bedroom or she goes back to New York. He calls the Monroe Brothers carpentry business and asks them to come and give him an estimate. They arrive and it turns out that they are a brother and sister team of Alf and Ralph. Oliver asks what other work they have done. They say they spent two months renovating the Ziffle place so Oliver goes to check it out. It turns out that they spent two months making Fred Ziffle’s door swing the other way. When he gets home Oliver finds that Alf and Ralph have already begun work without his approval. They’ve moved the bedroom wall quite a few meters away from the house on the other side of the telephone pole with no extension of the roof. Lisa says she gave her approval. Oliver asks them for an estimate but Alf says they won’t know how much it costs until they are done. Oliver protests but Lisa reminds him of her ultimatum. He says okay and then Lisa says they can’t work without a building permit and so he goes to Sam to get one. When he returns the building inspector Mr. Wilkins is there. Except for glasses, a moustache and different clothing, Wilkins is identical to Mr. Haney because he’s his cousin. He also the father of Ophelia, who Eb is dating. Eb has asked to borrow Oliver’s car so he can take Ophelia to the drive-in but Oliver has refused. Wilkins’s approval of the building is dependent on Oliver lending his car to Eb. Oliver refuses but Lisa insists again with the threat of New York, and so he is forced to comply. But then since Alf and Ralph are only qualified to build chicken coops and doors, when Wilkins learns the building permit is for a bedroom for people, he disapproves it again. While this was going on someone moved the telephone pole to Ben Miller’s farm because they thought Oliver didn’t want it and Ben was next in line. Then Oliver takes Lisa on a date on his backfiring tractor.