Yard work

Saturday morning John came over and rooted out all the bricks in our back yard patio. (He's going to put it back together so that weeds won't grow in it, not that I care about weeds.) That meant work for Moira and I, too:  she brushed the dust off the bricks and I hosed them down.

The catch is that we only have a short hose, so I have to tote all the bricks to the side yard where the hose can reach them.  Yesterday I toted and hosed 59 in total.  It was exhausting work, and I had to take long breaks, but nothing could stop Moira. (She runs a lot, and it keeps her in shape!) She puts me to shame...

Today it was raining so we left off the work.  Except that later I toted 24 more to hose tomorrow. (My shoes got muddy!)

The other night I dreamed of being the guest of an obnoxious Manhattan millionaire, a jerk in both his business  dealings and his personal life; seeing a Spy-style magazine devoted to saying nasty things about him, and wondering if he gave them scoops just so he'd be talked about.

Wednesday night when I was going to Debi's place to screen Peyton Place, I got off the University line at St. George station, as I usually do to get to stations on the Yonge line.  But I'd forgotten I was going to catch the King bus at St. Andrew station, so I had to wait for the next train to continue.  As it turned out I met my friend Betty-Anne (the art walk girl) on the next train, so my mistake actually worked out well for me!  When that happens I think, "What the old man does is always right." (That's the title of a funny Hans Christian Andersen story.)

Yesterday I read the Classics Illustrated comic book of Jules Verne's Michael Strogoff.  It's about a Russian scout delivering a message from the Tsar himself to the governor of Irkutsk urging them to hold out against a Tartar rebellion threatening his hold on Siberia, with various people out to stop him.

At one point the Tartars blind Stroganoff, but near the end it turns out that he isn't blind after all because the teardrops in his eyes protected them! That's a cheap narrative trick, just like in the Batman movie The Dark Knight where Commissioner Gordon got killed (an "anything can happen now" moment), but it turned out he'd faked his own death to protect his family...