I wonder if I am still trying to recover mentally from the sustained push we had at work to get this huge report out. There is still some remaining business (like an extensive appendix) for which I am responsible, and yet I am not feeling motivated to begin. Or rather I start working on it and then am called away on a number of other tasks. I threatened to work from home for several days to avoid distractions, but that wasn't actually feasible, since I was also needed at public meetings and hearings and there were many small but urgent tasks I was called in on (making new slides and reviewing other documents). Also, the other senior advisor did work from home several times, and that left me to supervise the juniors. All that said, I do need to buckle down and take this seriously, though I don't know if I will start this weekend.
I actually feel completely off-kilter right now. It's the afternoon but I am just wrapping up breakfast, and I need to get to the store and probably to the library before it closes. That doesn't really give me any time to take my daughter swimming, which I promised to do. Or to go to the gym (this past week was truly terrible in terms of how late I had to work and also not being able to bike to work). But there is no point in beating myself up over it.
I think today I will do a quick shopping trip and bike up to the library. That still should hopefully give me time to take my daughter swimming. Then I may be able to go to the gym in the evening and hit the other grocery store for the special bread that she likes.* What I won't do is try to watch Blade Runner or Life After. That would just be too much, but they should still be around next weekend, which is also when we will get around to putting up Halloween decorations.
I assume I will be a bit more on the ball tomorrow. The main problem is that it is likely to rain and even storm tomorrow. What I am thinking about doing is heading downtown (despite the rain) and check out the Ryerson Image Centre and ideally the AGO, since I need to renew my membership. The rest of the time I could spend at work and then towards the evening, I would go off to Toronto Cold Reads. At least that is a tentative plan that makes some kind of sense to me, especially if I carry out all the transit using a TTC Day Pass. (And then looking ahead on Monday, we get to see The Psychedelic Furs, which should be great.)
Why did I get up so late, aside from general malaise? Last night, I really wanted to push through and finish reading Shashi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel. This is an odd novel that takes the main characters and structure of the Mahabharata and applies it to Indian/Pakistani politics from roughly 1917-1984. It's quite clever, but I had to turn to Wikipedia to unravel who the various characters were supposed to represent, since I didn't really know much about Indian politics beyond Gandhi, Nehru and Indiri Gandhi (and even that mostly comes from the movie Gandhi and Rushdie's Midnight's Children!). But it is also on the long side (400+ pages), and this is following right on the heels of reading Philip Roth's 400 page novel about baseball and politics, The Great American Novel. I'm quite glad that the next few novels are in the 200-300 page range, just so I can feel I am accomplishing something. Anyway, nobody forced me to read these books, but I did feel strangely obligated to get through them and onto the next thing. Now I am paying the price. With that, I really do have to get going.
* I did manage to square the circle, but only by sending my son off to the library in my stead. (It is so great that he is finally able to do these sorts of tasks, and he is fairly good-natured about doing so.) Then I was able to escort my daughter around the neighbourhood, selling raffle tickets. It's fairly impressive that she can overcome her natural shyness when she really wants something. She sold far more than I expected (largely because my neighbours are really nice, though of course I will be obligated to reciprocate down the line...). Then we went swimming and were able to get a few more groceries on the way home. Ideally after I eat dinner and relax a bit (and digest), I should go back over the bridge to the gym, but I may pass. Then tomorrow I have a fairly busy but not overwhelming day.
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