Baked rye bread.
Went shopping.
Dinner was turkey pie.
Went to the Games Meetup. I played The Amazeing Labyrinth (twice) and Smallworld, where my races were berserk halflings and fortified tritons. Someone brought a game he'd created on his own, involving Marvel Comics superheroes and supervillains, but it was too complicated for me.
"Who are you?"
"I'm nobody..."
--The Jewel in the Crown
"We're fighting because you're a moron. That's why we're fighting!"--Curb Your Enthusiasm
Dreamed of the 1978 movie of Harold Robbins' potboiler The Betsy (which I haven't seen); visiting a museum with exhibits about the French Revolution.
Got my hair cut at the Hungarian place.
Went to the Sheppard Grande and bought tickets for six upcoming Metropolitan Opera cinemacasts.
Dinner was felafels.
Saw the DVD of the first episode of The Jewel in the Crown (for the third time). Unusually intelligent.
Then we saw the DVD of the first episodes of the latest season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. What an antihero!
Dreamed of having my own apartment in Halifax.
I was going to go to the CNE with the Aspergers Meetup, but they changed the meeting time from noon to 11:00, and that was too early for me.
Dinner was turkey.
Saw the DVD of Paul Cox' The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky, documenting his slide into insanity.
I've broken 50,000 a few times in the Train video game! [I also figured out how to put the train on a closed loop and get an infinite score...]
Dreamed of seeing a movie that combined Ghost with The Sixth Sense; a DVD with a menu so huge that I couldn't figure out where to start it.
Went to a Walking Meetup. We walked around the Music Garden and the Irish Memorial and saw some of the CNE air show.
Dinner was leftover fettucine and lasagna (which we'd had in the freezer!).
Dreamed of Marvin Gaye's "Ain't That Peculiar"; a letter to an advice columnist from a man whose ex had taken up with a bigot, who often did yard work at the bigot's place on weekends to be near his kids, and often heard abusive language; a non-existent scene in The Princess Bride with the man speaking while we only see the woman's tearful reaction, through a mirror.
Went to an Art Meetup at the Gladstone Hotel. We looked at an exhibit of art by the mentally ill then went to the restaurant, where I ate eggs benedict.
Dinner was curried scallops.
The cool weather has arrived!
Went to a Games Meetup (new group) at the Runnymede Starbuck's. I played Settles of Catan and Ticket to Ride.
Dreamed of Mendelsohn's "Spring Song."
Dinner was McDonald's.
Added over eighty historical documentary DVDs to our queue at zip.ca.
"He can peel a potato at fifty yards just by hating it!"--Kung Fu
Dreamed of being unable to figure out a textbook of really advanced biological mathematics.
Baked multigrain bread.
Dinner was pasta salad. (I wasn't hungry enough to find more to eat.)
I was going to attend a cello concert with the Classical Music Meetup group, but it rained.
Saw the DVD of the first episode of the Terry Jones history series Barbarians. I learned a lot of new stuff about the Celts.
"They say he's the new us, two or three years from now"--Thirtysomething
The internet was back in the morning.
Dinner was KFC.
Went to the Games Meetup. I played The Amazeing Labyrinth, Ticket to Ride (American), and Smallworld, where my races were heroic ghouls, swamp amazons and diplomatic trolls.
In the evening the internet went off again!
Went to another Lunch Meetup at the Mandarin. (My fortune said my hard work will soon be rewarded...)
Bart: "I am the creature from Uranus!"--The Simpsons
Dreamed of being a politician and delivering funny lines about the transparent hypocrisy of Republican Senator Orrin Hatch (who actually said "The death penalty is about the sanctity of human life"!)
The internet's been down for hours!
Went shopping.
Dinner was another lentil pie. (I usually supplement that with some fast food, but today I didn't feel like it, that's how hot it was!)
Saw the DVD of the first episode of Stephen Fry in America, where the title tells all. (He drove through all 50 states in a black London-style taxi.) Pretty amusing.
I also saw the DVD of "Blood of the Dragon," the last Kung Fu episode that I saw at the time. (Not that I disliked it so much.)
The internet connection came back in the evening, then conked out again!
"It's weird to be in a park without tear gas"--ibid.
Milhous (to himself): "If you do whatever she [Lisa] wants you to do, she's sure to respect you!"--The Simpsons
Ned: "I did everything that the Bible says, even the parts that contradict the other parts!"--ibid.
Dreamed that we were living in Bedford-Stuyvesand in New York City.
Went to the old Games Meetup at Snakes & Lattes near Bathurst Station. (That's a new coffee shop aimed at board gamers with hundreds of games available to customers. We went there in the daytime to honour its opening day. I played Agricola and Bohnanza.
Dinner was spaghetti.
Saw the DVD of the first episode of Thirtysomething (which I don't think I even watched back in the 1980s). Of its time.
Dreamed of visiting a non-existent New Brunswick community called Covent Garden; finding some of my comics collection in an office there, left on some stairs.
I lent out my Metropass and Katie went on her first subway journey.
The girls went home in the afternoon.
Dinner was McDonald's. (Lucky they accepted my $50 bill!)
Went to the new Games Meetup at the Fox & Fiddle near St. Clair station. I played Munchkin and The Amazeing Labyrinth. I was pretty unlucky at Munchkin: my steed got stolen, my hireling got killed, and after I got a "wandering monster" card and needed a monster to play it with, I kept getting useless race cards!
Dreamed of the World War I song "Hinky Dinky Parlee Voo"; seeing the face of the moon in closeup detail.
Went to another NDP Meetup. We went through Mount Pleasant Cemetery again, then had lunch at the Fox and Fiddle. (I had a lamb curry.)
The rest of the family were here for dinner, which was churrasco chicken.
Saw the Garbo documentary DVD.
Then I saw a couple of episodes from the DVD Treasures of the Twilight Zone. Pretty imaginative in a middlebrow way.
IKEA delivered us a new sofa for the sun room we've rebuilt.
Dreamed of being about to sing a soloist role in an opera of Oliver Twist, as a female character; the start of the bank-robbery movie Dog Day Afternoon; getting up the nerve to climb the side of a building and get into a rooftop position to observe the robbery.
The Garbo documentary DVD showed up after all! Now I'll have to unreport the problem somehow...
Katie came to Toronto to see Sarah's band camp in performance. She was here for dinner, which was pizza.
Went to see Puccini's opera Girl of the Golden West with the Classical Music Meetup group. It was a free open-air screening on the lawn in front of the Italian consulate. The La Scala production was good enough, but the opera was only so-so, and I left after the first act.
The Greta Garbo documentary zip.ca sent us on the 16th still hasn't arrived! I've reported it missing.
Dinner was KFC.
Went to the Games Meetup. (I found a cloth bag at Loblaw's that carries all of my games!) I played The Amazeing Labyrinth twice--the second time by the slower official rules--Kingsburg and Ticket to Ride.
Porky Pig: "Come back, you left a little bear behind!"--Polar Pals
Dreamed of the actual Bette Davis movie The Great Lie (which I saw almost 30 years ago and don't remember much about); actor Geoffrey Rush.
Saw the T.A.M.I. concert DVD two more times before returning it. Gerry and the Pacemakers' "It's Gonna Be Alright" and Lesley Gore's "Hey Now" are keepers. A twelve-year-old with Mick Jagger's expression is a twerp; a grownup with the same expression is a star!
I also dreamed of Smokey Robinson as an executive at a record company. (According to T.A.M.I. DVD commentary, he's actually a vice-president at Motown Records.)
Dinner was fettucine alfredo (which I cooked).
Dreamed of a non-existent movie with Groucho Marx as the patriarch of a marginal mining family (and Harpo and Chico as their sons).
Father and I vacuumed my room for the first time in a long while.
Dinner was macaroni.
Started the sports issue of Lapham's Quarterly.
Tried to attend another dance class at Mel Lastman Square, but when I got there it was raining. (The Meetup event was cancelled, but I was glad to get out of the house.)
Saw the last episode of Playing Shakespeare. Some brilliant actors in it!
Late in the evening my niece Sarah arrived here to spend a week at a circus camp!
Dreamed of the comedians Wayne and Shuster; travelling in the U.S.A.; being given the costume of a Greek army officer; the actual old-fashioned practice of ladies communicating with their fan (e.g. dropping your fan on the floor so a gentleman can pick it up and get to know you).
Saw the DVD of the T.A.M.I. pop concert (for the third or fourth time). Great fun, though Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas have not stood the test of time...
Dinner was pizza.
Went to a Games Meetup with a new group at the Starbuck's near Runnymede Station. (It's the same group that posted the wrong Starbuck's for the last event.) I played Monopoly, where I was the first to get busted, and The Amazeing Labyrinth.
Finished the first half of Little Dorrit. Awkward and uneven, but it's still Dickens!
Dreamed of crossing a foot bridge over the Bering Strait with Mother to visit Siberia; finding the place dirty and smelly; seeing smoke coming out of small volcanoes.
Dinner was tortellini.
"And as to that, they may live for ever. My dear, they are just the kind of people to do it"--Little Dorrit
"Now here's one of the advantages, or disadvantages, of knowing a disappointed man. You hear the truth"--ibid.
Dreamed of spending the night in a Korean home; actress Victoria Tennant (Steve Martin's ex-wife); a tourism ad that said
When New York was a village, London was a town
When New York was a town, London was a city
When New York was a city, London was a great city
(I could be a Mad man!)
Baked whole wheat bread.
Dinner was roast chicken.
Went to an Introvert Meetup. We met at the corner of Spadina and College and went to the Moonbean [sic] coffee house. I had a lemonade with honey instead of sugar (quite tart!).
Dinner was salmon.
Saw the cinemacast of the Metropolitan Opera production of Carmen at a Sheppard Grande rescreening. I met Mary and the Classical Music Meetup group, but sat at a different place. This production was well-staged, anc Elina Garanca is hot!
While I was there, I bought a ticket to the Proms cinemacast next month. It was my first purchase using the Scene card I got the other day.
There was a huge crowd in my neighbourhood around midnight.
Dreamed of inheriting a Spanish kingdom along the Persian Gulf from my brother and awaiting the effects of a nuclear explosion upriver; going to see a double bill at the cinema in my hometown Sackville, N.B., that included a Marx Brothers movie [when I was a kid I saw a Marx Brothers double bill there]; the Peary expedition that discovered the North Pole.
Dinner was a lentil pie Moira baked. (I sneaked out to McDonald's afterward.)
Went shopping in the evening for a change.
Moved my bed from the south wall of my room to the west. (I was going to wait for Father and John to finish rebuilding my window, but their work got interrupted.)
Dinner was the rest of the churrasco chicken.
Went to the Columbus Centre to see if there was a Coro Verdi meeting tonight, but it seemed to be the wrong time.
Read 45 pages of Little Dorrit.
Saw the documentary Babies at the Carlton. (It's the first time I went there since it reopened under Rainbow Cinemas.) Pretty cute.
"They rode to the top of Oxford Street, and there alighting, dived in among the great streets of melancholy stateliness, and the little streets that try to be as stately and succeed in being more melancholy, of which there is a labyrinth near Park Lane.... Everybody in these streets seemed... to be gone out to dinner, and nobody seemed to be giving the dinners they had gone to"--Little Dorrit
Dreamed of a non-existent Lenny Bruce sketch satirizing the United Nations; learning of a paint store supplying the foreign community in Chongqing [the subject of my Ph.D. thesis].
Went to a Games Meetup at the Ryerson Student Centre. (We were going to have it in High Park, but got rained out.) I played the dice game Ra and Agricola. We use a deck of cards to determine who'll go first, and for Agricola the card said it would go to the one with the loudest voice, which I got hands down--I also scared the whole place! I got my highest Agricola score ever at 26. (The occupation cards went my way.)
Donald came over for dinner, which was churrasco chicken.
"They believed that foreigners had no independent spirit, as never being escorted to the poll in droves by Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle, with colours flying and the tune of Rule Britannia playing"--Little Dorrit
Dreamed of reading a magazine describing upcoming movies.
Dinner was Indian food. (John and Kathrine weren't here, so we ordered lots of meat!)
Went to a Karaoke Meetup at Bar Plus. Toward the end, the neighbouring booths got really loud! Jonah said my rendition of Sid Vicious' "My Way" is quite scary.
"There are guys who say 'Stick 'em up!' who make even more!"
--A Letter to Three Wives
"It was Brad who gave me my first black eye and... and my first kiss"--ibid.
Dreamed of living in Halifax, unsure what to do next; a British drama about two guys murdering someone and pinning the crime on a third guy.
Saw the DVD of Joseph Mankiewicz' A Letter to Three Wives. Juicy.
Dreamed of being driven into Moncton to perform in a band concert only to realize I'd left my instrument behind; a non-existent comic novel by Evelyn Waugh about gambling.
Baked raisin bread.
Dinner was beef stroganoff.
Allen Barra (reviewing Andrew Morton's Angelina Jolie biography): "Much of Morton's research seems to have been done while standing in supermarket lines"--salon.com
Dreamed of someone leaving a burning building and diving into the nearby water in time to escape the force of the blast when the whole building exploded!
Went shopping.
Dinner was half the corn we bought yesterday.
Went to the Games Meetup. I played The Amazeing Labyrinth (introducing Sarah to it), Stone Age and Bang! We did two games of Bang, and in the first I was an outlaw and managed to kill the Sheriff.
I've subscribed to some new classic comic strips they're now offering online at Daily Ink [now Comics Kingdom], including The Heart of Juliet Jones and Mandrake the Magician.
Dreamed of the parents leaving me at a motel room for a few days; a famous actual photograph of the future Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret playing a piano in their childhood. (I think we had a print of it.)
We drove to Orchard Home Farm and picked some Gravenstein apples. But only a few were ripe enough. (We also bought some corn nearby.)
Dinner was curried scallops.
Saw Eric Rohmer's Chloe in the Afternoon at the Cinematheque. (It was the last Cinematheque movie I'll see at the Art Gallery of Ontario, before they move into their new building.) Tasty talk typical of Rohmer, though the story is something of a tease.
"Use your little noggin!"--Harry Brown
Dreamed of writing a facetious poem as a postscript in a letter:
The Erie Canal has pike and bluefin
If I don't get my fortune, prepare to move in!
Saw Grandpa's Treasure [sic] of Wonderful Stories, a DVD of animated fables from India. (One was about two friends called Goodie and Baddie!)
Dinner was spinach lasagna.
Saw Harry Brown at the Underground. (Fifteen years ago I saw the Chinese epic The Great Conqueror's Concubine there with Puitak, back when it was called the Golden Classics.) A familiar, unpleasant vigilante story, though Michael Caine was well cast. There were only four of us there, making the place look even bigger!
Went to an NDP Meetup. We walked through Mount Pleasant Cemetery.
Dinner was the rest of the corn.
Went to a Dancing Meetup at Mel Lastman Square. I participated in a free group class in chacha and jive but couldn't find the other Meetup members.
Saw the start of the first in a new video series of the original Popeye cartoons by Max Fleischer!
Dreamed of Will Geer, the actor who survived the McCarthyite blacklist and went on to play Grandpa on The Waltons; the TV series The White Shadow.
We went to Whittamore's Farm (this time in the afternoon) and picked some autumn strawberries. But most of them are still unripe.
Dinner was corn on the cob (which we got at Whittamore's Farm).
Went to a Karaoke Meetup at the Gladstone Hotel. (I'd forgotten how weak some of the Gladstone singers are.) The crowd was so big that I only stayed for one song: "Battle of New Orleans."
"He took it as it came, therefore; he tumbled into all kinds of difficulties, and tumbled out of them; and by tumbling through life, got himself considerably bruised"--Little Dorrit
Dinner was vegan stew and the rest of the pizza.
Went to a new Games Meetup at the Golden Griddle on Laird Avenue. It wasn't suited to me. Half of them played poker and other half played Taboo and Pictionary. I found just a few people to play Scrabble and The Amazeing Labyrinth with me.
Dreamed of visiting the cottage near our old home in Sackville, N.B.; seeing some signs the Taliban left on the lawn indicating that they'd come back and burn the place down; gathering some old books to save from their fire; playing a computer game involving using a shepherd's crook to gather a flock of sheep.
Went to see my shrink Dr. Hassan.
Dinner was pizza.
Dreamed of watching an old-fashioned TV set where you change the channels by fiddling with a knob; the movie Dog Day Afternoon.
Went shopping.
Dinner was spaghetti.
Mixed the ingredients tonight to bake bread tomorrow. (We'll see if it always turns out as well as last week.)
Professor Peabody: "Have you tried a knife?"
Jim Bowie: "No, I wouldn't take the coward's way out."
Dreamed of assembling a model of Daffy Duck breaking into the coffin of a vampire just coming to life.
Went to the Games Meetup. I played The Amazeing Labyrinth, Acquire (finished last), Tsuro and Ticket to Ride (the American version).
Dinner was steak.
Saw Kurosawa's last movie Madadayo at the Cinematheque. It's about a retired professor at the start of Japan's postwar era, still worshipped by his ex-students. Interesting character.
On a birth in a debtor's prison: "...and at length one little life, hardly stronger than theirs, appeared among the multitude of lesser deaths"--Little Dorrit
Dreamed of losing track of the time; going outdoors and seeing a clock showing that it was evening, when I thought it was mid-afternoon!
Went to a Games Meetup at the Ryerson Hub, but it turned out to be tomorrow!
My browser's upgrade to Safari 5.0 has been working erratically, but I made a change in the network preferences recommended online and upgraded to 5.0.1. That seems to have solved the problem.
John came over to work on changing my door to the ex-balcony into a window. He and Kathrine had vegan dinner with us, except that Moira got me KFC. (She's guessing what I think!)
"He had a certain air of being a handsome man--which he was not; and a certain air of being a well-bred man--which he was not. It was mere swagger and challenge; but in this particular, as in many others, blustering assertion goes for proof, half over the world"--Little Dorrit [Sound like President Trump?]
Dreamed of being in the movie Jaws; wanting to get out before it got unpleasant.
Finished Larry Gonick's Cartoon History series. Amazing!
Went to John Vince and got rye flour. Then I baked bread. (It came out even better than usual!)
Saw the DVD of a Schwetzingen Festival production of Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri. Pretty cute, though the dwarf in an ape suit was kinda disturbing.
Dinner was McDonald's.
Started reading Dickens' Little Dorrit. It has an unusual beginning, only gradually opening up the story. (I read over 50 pages!)
Went to another Games Meetup at the Starbucks west of High Park. This time, nobody else showed up at all! (Cheat me twice, shame on me...)
Dreamed of assembling a cardboard figure of a woman.
Wanted to bake rye bread, but it turned out Moira had used up the rye flour.
Dinner was shrimp curry.
Rocky (on being brought to Washington, D.C., with Bullwinkle): "Captain, why are we here?"
Peachfuzz: "Why are any of us here?"
Dreamed of coming out of a fallout shelter years after a nuclear apocalypse (our hold home in Sackville, N.B., had been Ground Zero); finding several British comic annuals I didn't know we had; reflecting that Pete Seeger's antiwar song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" is refreshingly angry.
Saw the DVD of the first episode of the last season of Mission: Impossible--the one where they rigged a pool table so Jim could be a pool shark. (I remember seeing that episode back in 1972.) That show had some pretty women.
Dinner was salmon.
Went to a Dance Meetup at Chalkers. Betty Colon gave us a salsa and merengue lesson. (We paid $10 each.) I was too tired to stay for the dance party afterward.
Finished the Arts & Literature issue of Lapham's Quarterly.
Narration: "Bullwinkle was 100% right, except that he was wrong."
Dreamed of Batman and Robin; a reunion of my whole family (and three guests) at our old house in Sackville, N.B.; reading in the weekend edition of The Moncton Times about a successful history publication by someone remembering what life was like in 1949 (with Rita Hayworth on the cover).
Dinner was KFC.
Went to the Games Meetup. I played a new game called Ingenious, along with Ticket to Ride and Blue Moon City. I finished last at Ingenious, but won Ticket to Ride by a street (147 points!) and managed a narrow win at Blue Moon City. Jeffrey brought Big City, but to my disappointment I didn't get to play it again.
Went shopping.
Dinner was spinach lasagna.
The Bear Family Records intro on the Town Hall Party DVD had the start of the Johnny Horton song "Ole Slew Foot," which I hadn't heard before (rockabilly version). It's pretty cool!
Started reading the second volume of Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Modern World (which we bought in St. Catherine's the other day). Great stuff!
Saw a DVD of the 1950s country music show Town Hall Party, with an appearance by the great Johnny Cash!
Dinner was scalloped potatoes and ham.
Bought a ticket online to see Carmen in the cinema in a few weeks. This time I had to get through the Verified by Visa process, which meant phoning the Visa people because my info didn't match theirs. But it got straightened out in the end. (I accidentally bought a second Aida ticket. Hope Moira will go with me!)
Dreamed of the movie Forrest Gump; seeing a picture of actress Suzanne Pleshette and thinking her name was Susan Pavlov.
Went to a Games Meetup at the Yellow Griffin. I played Agricola and Puerto Rico. (The Agricola cards were against me!)
Dinner was the rest of the fettucine.
Finished Don't Know Much About the Civil War.
Dreamed of writing a story about a guy who became a recluse after finishing school, then eventually became head of the fire department.
Today's Mother's 91st birthday. (But she doesn't believe in celebrating...)
Went to an Asperger's Meetup at Nipsa's apartment. (I can remember that her call tone is 211 because that's the year Roman emperor Septimus Severus died.) I brought my board game The Amazeing Labyrinth at her request, and we played it again.
Dinner was lobster rolls.
Went to a Classical Music Meetup. Allegria performed without Mary (whose arm is still injured), and Jonah did some guitar pieces.
Dreamed of getting a trivia question about the kind of shoe used in a non-existent scene involving Lee Grant in Shampoo; guessing it was a sneaker; finding out it was a stiletto-heeled shoe.
Baked whole wheat bread.
Dinner was fettucine alfredo (which I cooked).
Saw the start of a DVD of Warner Brothers cartoons directed by the great Bob Clampett!
Mother: "That's blasphemous. He will hear you!"
"Let him hear."
--Bluebeard
Dreamed of hearing that people were wading across the Northumberland Strait to P.E.I.; the quote [wrongly attributed to Gandhi] "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win"; the Moncton, N.B. public library back when it was on Highfield Street (before they built a new one in 1989).
Dinner was roast chicken.
Saw Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard at the Cinematheque. Pretty stylish.
Saw another Unseen Cinema DVD of early avant-garde films. (Stuff like silent films of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Fall of the House of Usher.")
Dreamed of travelling near Seattle and being about to drive south to San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Dinner was rice and beans.
Saw the first cartoons on a DVD of Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Animation.
Went to the Wednesday Games Meetup. I played Jeffrey's new Warhammer game Chaos in the Old World. We were all soil gods out to destroy the world. (I was the god of pestilence and finished last...)
Afterward I had a hamburger because the rice and beans wasn't enough for me.
"How terrible is knowledge when there is nothing to do with it!"--Oedipus Rex
Dreamed of the Brigadoon song "Go Home to Bonny Jean"; a man speaking with the voice of a computer, in discrete unstressed syllables; a non-existent scene in Mad Men involving someone in a devil costume (which would actually be inspired!).
Went shopping.
Dinner was the rest of the Indian food they ordered when I was out Sunday.
Saw Pasolini's Oedipus Rex. Pretty primal.
Saw the DVD of the first episodes of the silent serial Tarzan the Tiger.
Dreamed of Carmen, a brunette in my choir, as a blonde.
Dinner was tortellini.
Saw Kurosawa's Dodes'kaden, an episodic drama about a slum community that reminded m of the people needed in a park in Kurosawa's Ikiru. Oddly life-affirming, with a 1960s countercultural tone.
"In a mad world only the mad are truly sane"--ibid.
"Will you pull me from my grave?"--ibid.
Dreamed of an oil rig blowout in the Cumberland Basin near my hometown Sackville, N.B.; flying in as a human helicopter but having no place to land.
Saw Kurosawa's Ran at the Cinematheque (for the second time). Powerful, powerful. Some scenes are like silent film.
Started reading Don't Know Much About the Civil War, which we bought yesterday at the St. Catherines book warehouse. (I haven't finished my current Lapham's Quarterly, but that can wait.)
"Anna and I are above love"--The Cherry Orchard
"You've been expelled from university twice. Students are supposed to be clever, not smart"--ibid.
Dreamed of a non-existent Finnish war correspondent getting drunk on the radio while reporting on the Russo-Finnish War in a 1940 Tintin adventure; telling Frank DeJongh [whom I knew from my opera group] about it (he's Dutch-Canadian, not Finnish!); discussing the English people in India with experts.
This weekend is the noisy Salsa on St. Clair, so the parents and I went to see Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake. On the way there we stopped at a big book warehouse in St. Catherines and bought a few books.
It took a while to find the theatre, which was hidden behind the old courthouse. Wonderful play.
On the way back we had dinner at a huge Mandarin restaurant in St. Catherines.
"Speedman's a dying star. A white dwarf headed for a black hole. That's physics. It's inevitable"--ibid.
"I don't read the script. The script reads me"--ibid.
"Now I want you to take a step back--and literally fuck your own face!"--ibid.
Dreamed of Upstairs, Downstairs and the documentary series about silent Hollywood being on TV at the same time late Sunday night; planning to record both shows.
Went to see Dr. Ang. She's puzzled about my chronically low blood-iron level.
Dinner was chicken curry.
Rented the DVD of Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder (for the second time). Really funny!
Baked white bread.
Finished the corn we picked the other day for lunch. (And I burned my mouth!)
Dinner was pork steak.
Saw Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew at the Cinematheque (for maybe the third time). It's a masterpiece, the finest Bible movie.
There's a leak in our refrigerator connection that would explain why our icemaker hasn't been working.
At night I heard a mouse gnawing the wall near my room. (It kept me awake a little while.)
Dreamed of the movie director John Frankenheimer; playing the saxophone (which I briefly did in my youth); the song "The Age of Aquarius"; recalling that most of the Arabian Nights stories were originally Persian. [It's true.]
Dinner was corn on the cob (part of the corn we bought at Whittamore's Farm the other day).
Instead of going to the regular Wednesday Games Meetup I attended a new one at the Starbuck's just west of High Park. But only one other person showed up!
So I went to 401 Games after all, but only had time for one game. It was Blue Moon City, a game involving cards where you collect crystals and dragon scales.
Barbie to Ken: "Nice as-cot!"--ibid.
Dreamed of playing Gandhi in a Bollywood musical and "flying" on a wire like Peter Pan; another remake of Frankenstein; movie director Garry Marshall performing popular songs on an organ.
Dinner was scallops. (The peas we picked yesterday didn't last long!)
Saw Toy Story 3 at the Varsity. Another clever entry in a clever series.
