April 21, 2004

Dreamed of being so excited that I said to Father, "I don't really get excited, but now I am!"; the comic book Asterix; the Physics & Engineering Building on the Mount Allison campus where Father had his office; accompanying Father on a visit to a Sybilline prophet in the forest and getting stung by two wasps; imagining a romantic comedy about guy with a French girlfriend who says things like "True French people hate Paris." (Why can't I think of things like that when I'm awake?)

Vacuumed my room and the attic. (It gave me a headache.)

Got a new pair of pants at Zeller's.

Dinner was roast beef.

Went to a public meeting hosted by SCRIPT, an organization that supports giving the St. Clair streetcar a dedicated lane. (I missed parts of it because of diarrhea.) I volunteered to do some stuff like entering data for them.

April 20, 2004

Dreamed of going to a singer's conference and meeting someone who wouldn't leave me alone; driving from Halifax to Sackville in the early hours of Sunday morning the movie version of Starsky and Hutch.

Got up after noon.

Dinner was pork chops.

I was going to see Polanski's Chinatown at the Cinematheque, but didn't feel like it.

Instead we went through our 30 videocassettes to decide which ones had stuff worth saving.

Baked rye bread overnight.

April 19, 2004

Dreamed of being on a ship; trying to finish getting my luggage together in a Toronto airport before going home.

Went shopping.  We picked up some post-Easter reduced chocolate.

The warm weather has finally arrived!  We're opening windows now.

End-of-cold headache.

Dinner was roast chicken.

At the choir rehearsal we sang new stuff like the Humming Chorus, the Hallelujah Chorus and the Serenade from Don Pasquale.

April 18, 2004

Didn't get out of bed till after 13:00!

Dreamed of The Dresser (a British movie about a Shakespearian actor with Albert Finny and Tom Courtenay).

Saw Edward Zwick's The Last Samurai at the Revue.  Romantic new-age twaddle.  Ken Watanabe blew Tom Cruise away.

Went straight from the movie to the Queen of Sheba.  We ate Ethiopian food with Donald, John and crews. [Unfortunately, the food was ordered before I arrived so I got the same vegetarian order as the others.]

Headache.

Copied my November diary entries into Appleworks and managed to print them out!

April 17, 2004

Dreamed of North Korea; a computer game where you ascend to the top of a spire, go down a chimney until you've braked your descent, then rise again but not so quickly that you'll keep going beyond the roof.

Saw Peter Weir's Master and Commander at the Bloor with Moira.  It's a terrific movie, exciting and intelligent and believable.  Lots of "How did they film that?" shots.

Dinner was Burger King.

I also saw Olivier Assaya's Demonlover at the Cinematheque.  Couldn't sit through it. (Vaguely sleazy.)

Just after I left the Cinematheque, I almost got mugged by three guys, but someone confronted them and they messed him up instead.  I ran to the nearby police station and they got arrested.  After waiting a couple of hours, I made a statement and identified one of them. (The victim didn't stick around for this.) Seems they'd just mugged someone else in a park.  I may be testifying months from now. [I didn't.]

April 16, 2004

Dreamed of living in our cottage near Sackville; visiting the Sackville post office with our postal box; telling the family about the Sopranos episode where Tony tried to force his son into military school.

Got another nine tapes from Captain Video.  The woman who works there says I have a good eye for choosing the best movies!

Dinner was McDonald's.

Saw Howard Hawks' Sergeant York, for at least the fourth time. (It was one of the videos I bought.) Entertaining cornpone, though I found the moral hard to take:  it's wrong to kill people who cheat you out of your bottom land, and wrong to kill government agents who are hunting you, but right to kill Germans. (He killed twenty Germans, but their machine guns were killing thousands, see?) This movie was made in 1941, when the U.S.A. was about to make its belated entry into World War II, and people were already looking for moral justifications.  Hawks, one of the great directors, was working with a perfectly cast Gary Cooper.

April 15, 2004

Took it easy because of my cold.

Baked whole wheat bread.

Dinner was fish in batter.

Saw Victor Sjostrom's silent The Phantom Carriage, a starkly moral story about a man undone by Demon Drink.

Stayed for Roman Polanski's The Tenant (which I saw for the second time), about a man who moves into a very strange Paris apartment and ends up going crazy.  Funny but very creepy. (Remind me not to move to Paris!)