I'm always running a day or too late at work, but that's pretty normal for a consultant. It looks like Sept./Oct. might be pretty busy for us, which is generally good. I tend to respond better when the work is a bit more continuous and at least a bit interesting. (And of course I mostly respond to deadlines, and I have to get at least some work work done today to hit a deadline next week.)
I've sort of hit a wall with unpacking various boxes, but I think once I accept that some of the art books have to get boxed up, that will help. I may scan a few images from a few to make the transition a bit better. I do want to get a bit more done today, since I will be away almost all day Sunday at Stratford watching King Lear. (It's been getting really solid reviews whereas the two versions of Midsummer's Night's Dream do not sound like my cup of tea at all.) I should be able to get a bit more of the art work hung. (It was kind of a sad day when they all came down in Vancouver.) And make more progress tying up boxes and getting them out of the way.
We've basically planned out a trip to New York in March to see relatives (but most likely my wife's best friend will have moved back to Chicago by then). Ideally, I will also be able to get a ticket to The Iceman Cometh at BAM, though I suppose I had better be willing to pay through the nose for it. I'll find out if we decide to take the whole week of Spring Break off if my wife wants to try to loop through Boston (another place Porter flies, though it may not be cheapest overall to go on Porter) on the way back or if that is just asking for trouble.
I'm having a little trouble figuring out a short trip to Detroit, but what I am leaning towards is something in April or May (or even June), where we take the train to Windsor and then the bus over to Detroit and perhaps just have my wife's relatives meet us downtown after we visit the DIA. On the other hand, if I push it that far back and we pick a non-holiday weekend, then maybe I would drive it after all. I won't ever try to drive across the border on a holiday weekend again. (While I would like to bundle the trip with a side trip to Cleveland (very cheap from Detroit on Greyhound) this makes for so many logistical challenges that it could only happen if I took a bunch of days off (and spring break is already largely spoken for) and/or went over a long holiday.)
We've have already booked our trip to Chicago in Oct., which is sort of my wife's birthday present, since she didn't get to Chicago this summer. (Next summer we will probably be there for a couple of weeks in August, assuming I can get permission to work remotely from the Chicago office.) In another week or so, I'll book the tickets to the two plays I want to see. Curiously, I am not that interested in anything on at Goodman or the Steppenwolf main stage.
There is a small irony in that I had kind of counted on seeing the TSO perform Dvorak's 9th Symphony, since I had skipped out of an amateur performance in Vancouver as recounted here. Well, the dates that the TSO perform Dvorak 9 coincide exactly with the Chicago trip. Oh well. Perhaps U of T Symphony will do it (their schedule isn't up yet) or it will pop up the following season. It's a warhorse I've seen a number of times (including in Prague!) but I always enjoy hearing it. Anyway, I should go ahead and put together my season soon with TSO, being mindful that their tickets are a bit more expensive than the VSO's, and also being a bit mindful of these future short trips I am mapping out.
What was a bit of a shock was just how much Soulpepper's tickets are, even for students. The base adult ticket is $75 with only small discounts for being up in the balcony or having quite poor sight lines. That seems considerably more than The Cultch. In Chicago, the main floor tickets are often in that range, but both Goodman and Steppenwolf have more balcony seating at a more reasonable price (and certainly this is the case with the Chicago Symphony). My general impression from the paper is that there are quite a few theatre companies that are priced more in my comfort zone, but Soulpepper is definitely on the high side, so I suspect I'll only go to a show or two each season and not plan on subscribing. I'll still try to make it to Tartuffe, especially as they added some shows in September, but I am going to pass on The Crucible. There will be a university production before too long, and that's what I'll take my son to. There's no rush, and he'll probably understand it better in a couple more years anyway.
I was able to bike to work yesterday, and the shed looks like it will work out pretty well. I just need to paint it soon. If rain wasn't in the forecast, I would do it today (probaby), but at this point I will aim for next weekend. So it turns out it isn't too bad of a ride, though there is a rough stretch on Richmond downtown where all the bike lanes end (this is somewhat equivalent to getting dumped into the Loop though not quite as busy). If they actually do surface Richmond and paint on some bike lanes, I think I'll be set. I just need to figure out where to store the bike and if I want to try to shower at one of these bike station places. The ride itself looks like it will take 25 minutes each way, which is a bit less than I was biking in Vancouver, but still useful exercise (that has slipped greatly since the move) and it seems like biking will be faster than the streetcar and obviously cheaper. However, it will take 115 days where I don't take the streetcar or subway to pay off the shed! The only real downside is that I will read less when not on transit, though I was typically finding I couldn't read on the streetcars anyway due to crowding and trying to carry too much here and back.
In general, the reading is going well, though it does feel I will never get through these various lists, to say nothing of the books that are getting stuffed back into boxes. I didn't care much for the second half of John Williams' The Man Who Cried I Am, but I am not sure whether it merits an entire review post. (The short version is that the novel devolved from one that was more or less a typical Harlem renaissance novel with the character occasionally going to Paris and then became a paranoid screen on the order of Chester Himes' Plan B. While both can be great, stuffing the two into one book doesn't work very well.) I'm starting Dostoevsky's The Demons now and then will tackle Von Rezzori's An Ermine in Czernopol. Then I think I will move up Faulkner's As I Lay Dying just a few positions to be next after that (I mistakenly said in the comments that I had read this already, but it just feels like I have given that I had restarted reading Faulkner last summer...). So many great books to tackle, so few years to do it in.
I haven't actually scheduled a specific time each day to do creative writing, but I will do that soon. It's the only way to stick to it, I find. At the moment, I just can't until the boxes are more under control. Ok, I am off to work on that for a while.
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