Scammed

            On Monday morning I finished posting “Seeking Samantha in the Bronx”, which is my translation of “You’re Under Arrest” by Serge Gainsbourg. I memorized the first two verses of his song “Five easy pisseuses” (Five Easy Pieces). My time will be limited tomorrow because I have to prepare for a pest control appointment but I might have this song nailed down by mid-week. 

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

            I weighed 85.9 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning in two weeks. 

            Since pest control is coming tomorrow I put my painting project on hold and swept all the floors. Then I cleaned the bathroom sink and toilet just in case Steve goes in there to get water. Last time he went in to get toilet paper to use to pick up a bedbug and I had no warning pest control was even coming that day and so my bathroom was a mess. 

            I weighed 85.7 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos at 17:15. I was caught up on my journal at 18:22.

            I reviewed my song practice performances of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” on August 6 and 7. On August 6 I played it on the acoustic guitar and the take at 21:30 was pretty good. The ending was not too bad. On August 7 I played it on the electric guitar and there was bad lighting and I didn’t always hit the right chords. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Megaphor”, I finished inserting the clips I’d made from the movie Ziegfeld Girl. I worked on synchronizing the concert video with the studio audio for my line, “That make stumbling look like dancing just like you and I”. I got them close and was about to play the song to check when suddenly the viewing screen for the app went black. I checked my other projects and they were fine but only this one had crashed. 

            I looked into downloading an updated version of Movie Maker and then tried to open my project in that but got a message that I needed to buy Movie Maker Pro for $30 to perform that function, so I did. Then I found out that what I bought was a fake Microsoft product. I got ripped off because it didn't even work and so I uninstalled it. I tried another product called Windows Movie Maker 2020 and I think it works but I want something to open my Movie Maker projects that are already started and this won’t so I uninstalled that as well. I re-downloaded the old version of Movie Maker I have in hopes that I just need an uncorrupted version. That didn’t work. I downloaded something called Movie Maker 10.1 and Windows Defender set off an alarm that there was a Trojan virus and so I removed it. 

            Rather than starting from scratch with a perhaps better but unfamiliar video editor I’ve decided to just start the project again in Movie Maker 6. I wouldn’t be beginning from scratch because I have all of the files I used already imported to Movie Maker. Although I can’t run my other “Megaphor” project it can still be opened and it shows what files were inserted and at what places. The only really tedious thing is that I have to re-synchronize the concert video with the audio but I have notes on when it was possible and when it wasn’t, so it might not take me that long to get caught up if the new project doesn’t crash. With the old project I did a lot of cutting of clips and moving them around and it might have worn down the memory or something. Now that I know what is going into the main video I don’t need to bother with all those little clips. The most frustrating thing is that the video was almost created when it crashed. 

            I had a potato with gravy and two chicken drumsticks while watching season 3, episodes 16 and 17 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Eb has sent a card telling Oliver and Lisa that he is returning from his honeymoon in a few days. But people keep telling them that they’ve already seen Eb in nearby towns. Then we see Eb pleading with Cynthia Appleby to pretend to be his wife for a little while since he’s too embarrassed to tell Oliver and Lisa that he was stood up at the alter and he went on his honeymoon by himself. She finally agrees and Eb introduces her as his bride but she has to leave. Eb says she hasn’t seen her mother since they left on their honeymoon. The next day Eb learns that Lisa is throwing a newlywed party for him and Cynthia and so he goes to try to get her to come but she says she has a date. Eb finally confesses to Oliver and Lisa that he’s not married because Gloria Fenton stood him up at the alter. It was a school night and her father wouldn’t let her out. 

            In the second story Sam discovers that the $300 he had in his safe is missing. A state trooper named Jack Webster comes to investigate. Then Eb shows up in a hot rod that he bought for $300. Webster asks where he got the $300 and Eb says a guy who owed it to him gave him the money but he can’t remember his name and doesn’t know where he lives. Webster asks where he got the money to lend him in the first place and Eb says that his Uncle Wallaby in Australia sent it to him. His uncle is rich because of a bottled sheep dip beverage business. Eb is booked on suspicion of robbery. The judge says he’s holding Eb over for trial and bail is set at $500. Lisa follows the bailiff who takes Eb to the cell but Lisa follows them to make sure that Eb gets a nice room. The bailiff has a hard time getting Lisa out of the cell. Finally Oliver pays the $500. Then Lisa discovers that the coffee she bought from Sam has ground up money inside. Sam had put the money in the coffee grinder instead of the safe. Then a treasury agent shows up investigation a still that Eb said Oliver has on his farm. The treasury agent was played by Damian O’Flynn, who played Judge Tobin in one season of The Legend of Wyatt Earp and Dr. Goodfellow in another.