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Twelve drummers drumming
Jan. 5th, 2006 11:58 pm
High temp today, here: 1. Dewpoint then: 0. High dewpoint: 0.
High temp today in TO: 2. Dewpoint then: 1. High dewpoint: 1.
Low temp today on the balcony: -3.1. High: 2.9. Current: -3.1; 79% RH.
Temperature in the apartment has been falling slowly but steadily more or less ever since I got the thing. Down to 21.3 now. I surmise that wherever the thermostat is, it's even more poorly insulated than our apartment, which is kind of hard to imagine. Although the apartment in the next building over, which is owned by the same guy and is pretty much the same building, has its windows wide open all the time.
On the Greyhound on the way back tonight, beside me across the aisle was a 36-year-old former welder, former hairdresser, current I-didn't-catch-what, telling her 19-year-old alterno-dude seatmate about life 'n' stuff. When she sat down, I took her, just by the noises she was making, for a lost upper-middle-class suburbanite--evidently not one of us what take the bus, students too poor, and others too poor or crazy, to drive. She was making happy, outgoing kind of noises. Sighs. Ahh. Mmm. Not the kind of noises that any of us what take the bus would make when we are taking the bus, for taking the bus is onerous to us. To a lost upper-middle-class suburbanite, however, it might be an adventure.
But eventually she started talking to alterno-dude, and I realized she was a lot younger than I'd taken her for, though 36 was older than I would've readjusted her to. And she turns out to be no lost upper-middle-class suburbanite, but one of those self-assured working-class types, the type who can be a welder and a hairdresser and a remarkably young-looking 36 with a kid and who can tell a 19-year-old alterno-dude what bars, and what floors of bars, he ought to hang out in (avoid the upstairs at such-and-such because the young preppies are there; the gothic types are downstairs). I've been acquainted with precisely two other such women in my life. They have a certain way of speaking. It makes you believe they grew up street urchins, or pixies. (But this one, she speaks Ontarian. There aren't many Ontarians left who speak Ontarian, what with the American television (which is what makes you believe they grew up street urchins--I grew up with the American television, and, sadly, I do not speak Ontarian), but this one does. I bet she says Dee-troy-it. She says "bar" almost like "burr", a low "a" almost like a "u" and an extra "r" or two. Say "bar", and I bet some trained ear could tell you within ten blocks where you were born in Canada. Yeah, I'm looking at you,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
starmae, who goes to behrs.;) They're not afraid of anything, they're not jaded or guarded, and they're wildly out of place in a city or on a Greyhound bus, but more at home than the people who belong there.
Anyway--and this is what moves me to record all this--she tells the guy, along the way, about the Zoo Bar, on Queen West, in Toronto. The thing about the Zoo Bar is, the Zoo Bar ain't been the Zoo Bar for more than five years now. In fact, "Zoo Bar" was two names ago. Man o man but time do fly. Five years ago she would've been 31 and already an older-than-average clubber. Thinking which made me think of balding pointy-boot-guy who used to hang out at Sanctuary. And then I started humming something to myself, and after a couple of seconds realized that it was that "waiting for a sign to leave this place behind where no one knows my name" Apop song (which I see is called "Starsign") which was one of the most overplayed songs of my Year of Clubbing (that being, I forget now, the year, or the year before, Zoo Bar became Zen (and being also the year before Sanctuary became Skankbucks and the good ol' days (which I almost entirely missed anyway) ended)), and which I haven't heard, or thought of, roughly since then.
Oh yeah: I've forgotten to mention, the last two days, that on the tenth day of Christmas, we discovered that the 7-11 next door had Easter eggs.
Merry twelfth day of Christmas, Santa Claus.
High temp today in TO: 2. Dewpoint then: 1. High dewpoint: 1.
Low temp today on the balcony: -3.1. High: 2.9. Current: -3.1; 79% RH.
Temperature in the apartment has been falling slowly but steadily more or less ever since I got the thing. Down to 21.3 now. I surmise that wherever the thermostat is, it's even more poorly insulated than our apartment, which is kind of hard to imagine. Although the apartment in the next building over, which is owned by the same guy and is pretty much the same building, has its windows wide open all the time.
On the Greyhound on the way back tonight, beside me across the aisle was a 36-year-old former welder, former hairdresser, current I-didn't-catch-what, telling her 19-year-old alterno-dude seatmate about life 'n' stuff. When she sat down, I took her, just by the noises she was making, for a lost upper-middle-class suburbanite--evidently not one of us what take the bus, students too poor, and others too poor or crazy, to drive. She was making happy, outgoing kind of noises. Sighs. Ahh. Mmm. Not the kind of noises that any of us what take the bus would make when we are taking the bus, for taking the bus is onerous to us. To a lost upper-middle-class suburbanite, however, it might be an adventure.
But eventually she started talking to alterno-dude, and I realized she was a lot younger than I'd taken her for, though 36 was older than I would've readjusted her to. And she turns out to be no lost upper-middle-class suburbanite, but one of those self-assured working-class types, the type who can be a welder and a hairdresser and a remarkably young-looking 36 with a kid and who can tell a 19-year-old alterno-dude what bars, and what floors of bars, he ought to hang out in (avoid the upstairs at such-and-such because the young preppies are there; the gothic types are downstairs). I've been acquainted with precisely two other such women in my life. They have a certain way of speaking. It makes you believe they grew up street urchins, or pixies. (But this one, she speaks Ontarian. There aren't many Ontarians left who speak Ontarian, what with the American television (which is what makes you believe they grew up street urchins--I grew up with the American television, and, sadly, I do not speak Ontarian), but this one does. I bet she says Dee-troy-it. She says "bar" almost like "burr", a low "a" almost like a "u" and an extra "r" or two. Say "bar", and I bet some trained ear could tell you within ten blocks where you were born in Canada. Yeah, I'm looking at you,
starmae, who goes to behrs.;) They're not afraid of anything, they're not jaded or guarded, and they're wildly out of place in a city or on a Greyhound bus, but more at home than the people who belong there.Anyway--and this is what moves me to record all this--she tells the guy, along the way, about the Zoo Bar, on Queen West, in Toronto. The thing about the Zoo Bar is, the Zoo Bar ain't been the Zoo Bar for more than five years now. In fact, "Zoo Bar" was two names ago. Man o man but time do fly. Five years ago she would've been 31 and already an older-than-average clubber. Thinking which made me think of balding pointy-boot-guy who used to hang out at Sanctuary. And then I started humming something to myself, and after a couple of seconds realized that it was that "waiting for a sign to leave this place behind where no one knows my name" Apop song (which I see is called "Starsign") which was one of the most overplayed songs of my Year of Clubbing (that being, I forget now, the year, or the year before, Zoo Bar became Zen (and being also the year before Sanctuary became Skankbucks and the good ol' days (which I almost entirely missed anyway) ended)), and which I haven't heard, or thought of, roughly since then.
Oh yeah: I've forgotten to mention, the last two days, that on the tenth day of Christmas, we discovered that the 7-11 next door had Easter eggs.
Merry twelfth day of Christmas, Santa Claus.
