Esther Dale

            On Thursday morning I worked out the chords for the third verse of “Les Araignées” (The Arachnids) by Boris Vian. 

            I worked out the chords for most of the third verse of “Flashback” by Serge Gainsbourg. It’s a very complicated verse. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and it went out of tune a lot but a couple of times made it through a song without it going out. 

            I weighed 89.4 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since September 15, 2024. 

            Around midday I walked over to Freedom Mobile to pay for my October phone plan. 

            I weighed 89.3 kilos before lunch. It’s been several months since it was that high in the early afternoon. 

            I took a siesta at 14:30 as usual but ended up sleeping for an extra 45 minutes. 

            It was too late for a bike ride downtown so I just rode to Freshco. The grapes were very cheap so I bought seven bags. My fellow customers were very talkative about the grapes. An old man who was sampling grapes told me to get the dark ones. A middle aged woman advised me to get the green ones. I bought the red ones. I also bought bananas, some New Zealand ground beef, a box of spoon sized shredded wheat, and two packs of Full City Dark coffee. 

            I weighed 89.45 kilos at 18:10. That’s the most I’ve tipped the scale in the evening in at least a year. It’s weird because I don’t feel like I’m eating more or exercising less. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:23. 

            I worked on the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Insisting On Angels”. The old video was behind the audio throughout the chorus but then the instrumental was shorter than the studio version and finished before the studio version. I figured out how much shorter and then cut a clip of that size from the video I shot of Parkdale from my bike. I pasted it at the beginning of the instrumental and then the video and audio were synchronized. I continued into the second verse where the video was behind again. 

            I compared the song practice video of my performance of “Je t’aime Moi non plus” on September 13, 2024 to that of September 7. September 13 looks and sounds better. There are five more to compare. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken leg while watching episode 33 of Checkmate. 

            Gloria and Philip Kenyon are about to skydive. She is an experienced thrill seeker and has jumped many times. Philip is a novice who seems to be trying to prove to Gloria that he’s not a coward although she doesn’t expect that of him. In his desperation to prove himself he jumps before the plane is high enough and his chute doesn’t have time to open. Philip’s mother Mrs. Kenyon blames Gloria for her son’s death and asks Checkmate to prove that she murdered him. Their mission is to prevent murders and besides that it is fairly obvious that Gloria is innocent and so they refuse. Mrs. Kenyon bluntly warns Gloria that she is going to kill her. Checkmate does not know about this threat but have judged from Mrs. Kenyon’s reaction to their turning her down that she might be bent on vengeance. Jed goes to see Gloria and ends up dating her (He does this with clients all the time but I’m pretty sure it’s not ethical). They go on a picnic at the bottom of a cliff and someone at the top uses his car to push a boulder down at them but they escape harm. That night she is asleep when a man breaks into her place and is about to strangle her when Jed calls to check if she’s okay and wakes her. She sees the man, screams and he runs away. Hyatt goes to see Mrs. Kenyon, who is bedridden but admits she threatened Gloria. She says she has nothing to lose because she is dying. She dies in front of him but assures him with her final breath that she has already arranged for Gloria to be killed. Gloria takes Jed skydiving. He has some experience because he jumped into Korea a few times during the police action but clearly didn’t enjoy it. Before going up, Jed calls Don because he’s worried that this would be an opportunity for the killer and so Don and Hyatt head out there. While they are jumping the same man who tried to kill Gloria before has positioned himself with a rifle below to shoot Gloria as she is falling. But Hyatt spots him and Don drives his car towards him as he fires at the car. They have a mild crash and the assassin escapes. Hyatt takes a mould of the man’s footprints and finds that one of his shoes is a different size and so they must have been made specially for him. They track it down to a shoemaker who gives them the name and address of a customer named Thorne. But they find Thorne dead. Jed calls to tell Gloria but finds she is not at her hotel and that she left to meet Mrs. Kenyon’s lawyer Tucker who called and asked her to meet him. Jed goes to Tucker’s office but he says he’s been waiting for Gloria but she didn’t arrive. Tucker says he wanted to see her because he found a new will that leaves everything to Gloria but in the event of her death the entire fortune goes to the Kenyon Foundation. He has no idea what that foundation is. The only other person Tucker told about the will was Neilson the butler because he’s one of the heirs. Jed and Hyatt suspect Neilsen intercepted Gloria before she went to meet Tucker. That is the case. We see Neilson at the Kenyon mansion with Gloria. He’s told her Tucker is meeting her there. He’s given her some sherry that is drugged. It turns out that he is a the Kenyon Foundation and plans to kill Gloria for the inheritance. He also killed Thorne. When Gloria loses consciousness he sets fire to the house. Jed arrives and saves her. Neilsen wants to die but Jed knocks him out and saves him as well. Gloria becomes a wealthy adventurer. 

            Mrs. Kenyon was played by Esther Dale in her final performance as she died two months after this episode aired. She studied music in Germany and had a successful career as a lieder singer performing with the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony before branching into summer stock theatre. Her film debut was in Crime Without Passion in 1934. She played Birdie Hicks in four Ma and Pa Kettle movies: The Egg and I, Ma and Pa Kettle, Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair, and Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki. She co-starred in Wild Money, Condemned Women, Prison Farm, Village Barn Dance, All American Co-Ed, You’re Asking Me, On Stage Everybody, Behind City Lights, and Betrayed Women. She was head of the vocal department of the Smith College for women.