John Lormer

            On Saturday morning after yoga I discovered that the online repair of Microsoft Office did not fix Word from being frozen. I decided to delete Office and then went to the Microsoft Store and since I’d already paid for it six months ago, I downloaded it again. But that didn’t change a damn thing. I tried various forums and discovered that if I started in Safe Mode my toolbars came back and I could actually edit documents. I later found that if I renamed the Normal Microsoft template as “Normalold.dot” then I would get an editable template with toolbars. I thought then that the only solution was to painstakingly copy each document by highlighting and scrolling and then copying and pasting them into the old template then I could have everything the way it was before last night. I was even able to use the Tab key in this document, which hasn’t worked here for a couple of weeks, even though it has in all the others. I copied this journal, my Year 7 and my Year 8 journals, and my 1995 Diary. All of my efforts to get Word back to normal took from 6:00 to a little after 8:00. I wasn’t able to do any of my Vian or Gainsbourg memorizations and I probably would have finished the Gainsbourg today. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio electric guitar during song practice and it went out of tune quite a bit more than it did last week but not to the chronic degree that my Martin acoustic has been going off. 

            After song practice, I tried to post my Thirty-Year diary and learned that my efforts to copy it into the old template didn’t save in the editable format. It seems that the only thing that works well is to start Word every day in Safe Mode. Apparently, I can’t permanently get all my documents to stay in the old template. 

            This ate up two hours from my day and I didn’t get away to go to No Frills until around 14:30. They had a great deal on grapes but most of the good ones were gone so I only got two bags. I bought a pack of raspberries, bananas, five-year-old cheddar, olive oil, a jug of strong vinegar, a jug of low sugar iced tea, a jug of orange juice, two small containers of skyr, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s applewood smoked chips. After dragging my trailer up the stairs, before getting my bike I walked over to Full Worth where I bought all six of their CR2032 batteries because I need them for my guitar tuner.

            I weighed 86.2 kilos before lunch. I had whole wheat saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of iced tea. 

            I took a late siesta at 16:45 and got up at 18:15. 

            I weighed 87.2 kilos at 18:30. I worked on getting caught up on my journal. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with basil marinara sauce (much better than the Classico Bolognese), oven fries, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 3, episode 9 of Batman. 

            This is only a continuing story from the previous episode in the sense that it features the same villains, Egghead and Olga Queen of Cossacks, and it follows the previous events chronologically. Egghead and Olga go to the Gotham Radium Centre where they steal a kilogram of radium. Commissioner Gordon hears about it and calls Batman. Batman and Robin head for Gordon’s office. Batman says a kilo of radium is not enough to construct a weapon or to do much of anything with. Meanwhile at the Gotham Library, Barbara Gordon is preparing to leave with a rare book on paleontology to lend to Professor Dactyl at the Gotham City Museum of Natural History. She brings him the book and they discuss a giant neosaurus fossil egg that is on display. She asks if he isn’t afraid that Egghead will steal it. Dactyl doesn’t know why he would want to. He offers to show her a sabre tooth’s thigh bone and so they leave the dinosaur room. But then coming out of hiding are Egghead and Olga, and they do indeed steal the egg. Gordon hears of it from Barbara while Batman and Robin are still in his office. As with the reasons behind the stealing of the radium, the theft of the egg is also a mystery. But Batman is sure there is a connection between the two crimes. He and Robin head for the Bat Computer to consult it, but it’s not much help. Batman remembers a Professor Willis Grimes who was working on a new technique of irradiation. He published an article on the topic in the Southeastern Regional Journal of Applied Radiology. Batman calls Alfred upstairs in Wayne Manor to ask him to look for the periodical. At the same time Barbara has the same idea as Batman and calls Alfred to ask about the article. As Alfred is both the only person who knows the secret identities of Batman and Robin, and of Batgirl, he talks to each of them at the same time on two phones while being careful not to reveal to one party that he is talking with the other. He tells them that the title of the article is “Revitalizing Fossil Forms by the Use of High Energy Radioactive Sources”. So, Egghead plans to irradiate the Neosaurus egg so as to bring it back to life. He tells Olga that with their very own dinosaur they can control Gotham. He says the neosaurus has 2562 teeth not counting wisdom teeth. He plans to feed it Batman, Robin, Batgirl, Gordon and Chief O’Hara. Meanwhile Egghead begins zapping the egg with radiation. Batman and Robin head out with a Geiger counter on the Batmobile to track down the radium while Batgirl does the same thing on her Batgirl Cycle. The Batmobile and the Batgirl Cycle meet downtown at the same time and find the source of the radiation. Egghead has zapped the egg several times and thinks he heard something inside so he continues with the blasts. Robin and Batgirl arrive and have a big fight with Olga’s Cossacks. The Cossacks capture Batgirl, which distracts Robin enough for him to get knocked out. When Robin recovers, Egghead has him and Batgirl watch as he gives the final zaps to the egg. The egg begins to break open and out breaks what looks like a green, scaly humanoid with a lizard’s head. As the thing advances, Egghead, Olga and the Cossacks run out of the warehouse and directly into the back of a paddy wagon. Robin and Batgirl are alone with the hatchling and considering how to subdue it. But the monster removes its head to reveal that it is Batman in disguise. There is no explanation as to how he got inside the egg and no justification for breaking a 40-million-year-old museum piece. Batgirl sneaks away as usual. Later Gordon, O’Hara, Bruce, and Dick are attending Barbara’s birthday party when her phone rings. It’s her friend Skip Parker who’s inviting her to go surfing. But at the beach we see that heartless Hodad the Joker who says he plans to soon be king of the surf. So the Joker following a surfing theme will be in the next episode. 

            Professor Dactyl was played by John Lormer, who made his New York stage debut in 1936. His TV debut was on the anthology series Studio One in Hollywood in 1950. He played the postman Silas Huff in the 1953-54 season of Lassie. His film debut was in Girls On the Loose in 1958. He played Judge Chester on Peyton Place. He played Dr. Theodore Hoskins in "The Cage", the unaired pilot of Star Trek. He co-starred in the movie The Boogens. He became a drama teacher and directed plays for the American Theatre Wing. I was caught up in my journal at midnight.