Skye Aubrey

            On Monday morning I finished posting “Others Wrote it Many Times”, my translation of “Tout a été dit cent fois” by Boris Vian, on my Boris Vian and my personal Facebook pages. On Tuesday I’ll start learning his song “La vie grise” (The Grey Life). 

            I finished working out the chords for “Gloomy Sunday” by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through singing and playing it in French. Tomorrow I’ll try out my translation and probably make some adjustments. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the last of four sessions. 

            I weighed 86.4 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning in three weeks. 

            I knew pest control would be coming today between 9:00 and 13:30 but since it was only for an inspection rather than a treatment I didn’t bother to go through any major preparation. Steve from Orkin arrived at around 10:00 and the landlord was also in the hall. Steve inspected all the other units on my floor before mine and told me that unit 5, two doors away from mine, is seriously infested. In that room he found several bedbug nests and some fat live bedbugs. When the landlord was talking to him it sounded like he might be finally taking the situation seriously and will arrange for another treatment early next month. Steve only found one dried up dead bedbug in my place and no nests. He says they seem to just visit my apartment rather than live here. He suggested that I paint over the bedbugs that I’ve killed on the bedroom walls so it will be easier for him to tell what’s new and what’s old. I have a little bit of white gloss left over from painting the Masonite on the kitchen floor so I’ll use that on the bedroom. I put my laundry in the wash, then went home, then on my way back to put it in the dryer I mailed the package of candy that I’d packed yesterday for my daughter. My laundry was finished just after I would normally have lunch. 

            I weighed 85.8 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon it was raining again and so I skipped taking a bike ride and shaved and showered instead. Then I used up the rest of the white gloss to paint over the places where I’ve crushed bedbugs on and around the old exit door in my bedroom. There wasn’t enough to cover everything but I got most of the spots. Maybe I’ll get a small container of white paint to do the rest. It isn’t worth it to buy a whole liter because then I’d have too much left over. I plan on painting the bathroom but not for a few months and paint tends to dry up in the can, at least in my place. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos at 17:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:10. 

            I started a Movie Maker project for my September 6 song practice and imported the videos and the audio for that session. The audio recording always starts earlier and so I started deleting the beginning of the audio timeline. It’s a little over thirty seconds away from being synchronized with the video, and I should have that done tomorrow. 

            I continued to search for a clip of a woman standing and reading to fit with the line “you stood to read your poem” from my song “Angeline”. I decided that since the first clip I used in the video is of Greta Garbo it would be cool if I could find all clips of Garbo and have her play Angeline in my video. So far all I could find was a clip of Garbo standing and speaking in the movie Queen Christina. 

            I scanned seventeen slides from the third box of the last eight boxes. Most of them were shots of sculptures that I modeled for in various poses. The rest were street shots. There are sixteen slides left in that box.

            I grilled three pork chops in the oven and steamed another three on top of the stove. I had one of the grilled ones with a potato and gravy while watching season 5, episodes 24 and 25 of Green Acres. 

            In the first story Lisa’s Uncle Fedor comes to visit. He behaves as if he is living a plot from Mission Impossible. He claims that he is running from the Hungarian secret police and that he escaped by skiing down the Alps to Paris, then caught the first submarine to North America. He says he is being pursued by a scar faced man and another man named Earoff with a missing ear; and spends most of his time hiding under Oliver and Lisa’s bed. Then a scar faced man comes to the door and shows identification to prove that he’s from the New York City District Attorney’s office. He has a bench warrant for Fedor’s arrest because of not making his alimony payments. Lisa says that proves he’s a real Hungarian. Oliver tries to take the man to Fedor but Fedor is gone. He has left a note saying he’s gone to another country to sell the secret formula and that the note will self destruct in five seconds. It bursts into flames. 

            In the second story Eb has joined a lonely hearts club but has lied in his profile and said that he is filthy rich. He gets a big sack of letters from women who want to connect with him. One of them is a woman with five children who wants him to pay for her divorce so she can marry him. He puts that letter in the rejection pile. But he begins corresponding with a woman named Celia whose return address is a penthouse in New York. She writes about her boring life spending weekends on her father’s yacht while Eb continues to fabricate more and more grandly his life of wealth. Finally he gets a telegram from Celia telling him she’s coming to visit. Eb wants Oliver and Lisa to pose as his servants but Oliver refuses. He does however successfully persuade Haney with $7 and a slowly increasing IOU to pose as his chauffeur. They pick Celia up in Oliver’s car and drive for several kilometers while Eb points out all the land he owns. They finally arrive at the Douglas house and Celia is surprised at how run down it is. Eb explains that it's the sharecropper’s shack and that his own mansion burned down a few weeks ago. Then a limousine arrives and the chauffeur calls for Celia, saying her father is looking for her. Celia kisses Eb goodbye and gets into the car. Back in New York we learn that the chauffeur is Celia’s father and that she is the maid for the people who live in the penthouse. Meanwhile the woman with five kids shows up looking for Eb. Eb points at Oliver and tells her he’s Eb, then he escapes while the children swamp Oliver and call him “Daddy”. 

            Celia was played by Skye Aubrey who was the daughter of the great actor Phyllis Thaxter. She studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Her first professional acting job was as Toni in the original production of Cactus Flower. Her first TV appearance was on an episode of Batman and later she returned in another episode as Princess Primrose, who is kidnapped by Louis the Lilac. She co-starred in the made for TV movie The Phantom of Hollywood. She was married to Ilya Salkind who was the producer of the Christopher Reeves starring Superman films and cast his mother in law Thaxter to play Martha Kent in the first of those.