Jeanne Bal

            On Sunday morning I finished working out the chords for “Les Araignées” (The Arachnids) by Boris Vian and ran through singing it in French. I’ll start revising my translation tomorrow. 

            I worked out the chords for the fourth verse and the first two lines of the fifth verse of “Flashback” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice and the B string went out of tune a lot but there were a couple of times when it stayed in tune for more than one song. 

            I weighed 88.75 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I applied the third and probably final coat of primer to the top of my bathroom lazy Susan. I'll apply one more coat to the bottom on Wednesday. I applied the first coat of primer to the underside of the metal rack that I keep in the bathroom. I don’t think it needs much more but I made the mistake of painting it on my sheet of Masonite again and some of the Masonite stuck to parts of the top of the rack. I’ll sand those parts and prime them again and might not need any more until I apply coloured paint. 

            My Duralex tumblers arrived via Purolator but they are the same size as the ones Nick Cushing bought me to replace the larger one that he accidentally broke a few years ago. He couldn’t find anything larger at the time than 473 ml. I ordered 521 ml but got 473 ml. I’ll return them at Staples tomorrow. I’m done with Amazon. That’s the second time they got one of my orders wrong. I think I can order the glasses directly from Duralex. 

            I weighed 88.8 kilos before lunch at 14:14. 

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

            I weighed 88.4 kilos at 18:13. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:13. 

            I worked on the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “Insisting On Angels”. Near the end of the final chorus the old video I’m synching with the audio jumps ahead of the audio and so I added a few clips of the trapeze artist wearing angel wings from the film Wings of Desire to push the video back. I’ve made it up to the final “da da dahs” and at first the video and audio are in sync for those but they disalign later. I’ll figure out what to do with them tomorrow. 

            I reviewed the song practice video of my electric performance of “I Love You. Neither Do I” on September 2, 2024. I didn’t have time to compare it with another of the seven later performances. I’ll look at those on Monday. 

            I made two burger patties from the pack of New Zealand ground beef and had one between two halves of a toasted slice of multigrain sandwich bread with ketchup, Dijon, horseradish, and a sliced gherkin. I had it with a beer while watching the first season finale of Checkmate. 

            Sarah Rutledge is a resident of a seniors home. She calls Checkmate because she believes that a series of life threatening accidents that have befallen Anne Elliot are really murder attempts. That very night she has another one. A guardrail gives way at Lookout Point and she falls down the cliff, cracking a rib. Don interviews Dr. Atwell, who is evasive. He says Anne is accident prone and suggests that a psychiatrist might help. Don talks with Ann and she agrees that she’s accident prone. The previous time she was cleaning a gun and didn’t know it was loaded. Before that she took too many sleeping pills. Anne’s husband is Dr. Elliot, who runs the hospital. He doesn’t believe anyone wants to kill his wife but hires Don to make sure. Don and Hyatt meet Anne’s brother Phil who is a talented pianist supported entirely by his sister. She’s been doing that ever since their father died. Before that their father threw Phil out to force him to make it on his own. While investigating Lookout Point, Don falls down the cliff himself and ends up in the same hospital. Hyatt goes to visit him and Don tells him he found evidence that the guard rail had been tampered with. He had put a piece of wood in his pocket before he fell. But now it can’t be found. Anne is released from the hospital and tells her husband they should keep Checkmate employed to humour Mrs. Rutledge. Anne has suggested they sell the hospital and travel together. The hospital is part of her estate and so she has the power to sell it. The head nurse asks Dr. Elliot if he’s going to let her do it. That night Anne’s car is in an accident but it was Phil behind the wheel. One of his hands is permanently injured and now he can no longer play piano. Don finds that someone drained the brake fluid. Don interviews Head Nurse Yvonne Lurie and asks if she is romantically involved with Dr. Elliot. She denies it but cries when she does so suggesting that she would like to be. Don asks Dr. Elliot and he also denies a triste with Yvonne. Don says the guests say they’ve observed otherwise. Dr. Elliot fires Checkmate. Phil blames Anne for making him weak and now he believes his father was right to cut him off. It suddenly dawns on Hyatt that the accidents may have been arranged by Anne herself to get attention from her husband. Then they learn that Anne’s car is running in the garage. Anne is in the car and tries to get out but collapses as the fumes overwhelm her. Don breaks in and saves her. 

            Yvonne was played by Jeanne Bal, who started as a fashion model. She made her stage debut in Gypsy Lady. She was in the original Broadway production of The Gay Life and introduced the song “Why Go Anywhere At All”. She was a regular cast member on Sid Caesar Invites You. She co-starred in the short-lived sitcom Love and Marriage. She guest starred in “The Man Trap”, which was the first episode of Star Trek after the pilot. She was a regular on the first season of Mr. Novak.