Timing

I suppose I am mostly stringing together one example of bad timing (that frustrated me hugely on a day I was already in a bad mood) and then a couple of examples of better timing.  While it is always tempting to think that the universe "balances" everything out, it is also incredibly egocentric to imagine that these random occurrences have anything to do with you at all.  That said, it is still nice to not always be on the losing side of things.

On Wed. I was in a pretty dark mood all day.  I don't even remember what really set it off.*  Probably mostly not enough sleep and being hungry at work and wishing it was even warmer (though I do certainly appreciate finally being able to wear regular shoes and not boots outside!).  I also had a pretty big cavity filled at the dentist and that was certainly no fun, though I suppose it could have been much worse, since the cavity didn't quite touch the nerve (and I avoided a root canal).  One of the few bright spots was going to the gym after work.  (I have to admit that I still have to kind of force myself to go, but after a few minutes into the routine it gets better, and I am always pleased afterwards that I went.)  If I had stopped the weights routine a bit sooner, I had an almost completely empty row of stationary bikes, but I wanted to get through the last set of reps and then stretch.  When I was finished, every single bike was full!  I couldn't believe it and went into the change room in disgust to shower and change.  When I came out, I couldn't believe it, as three of the bikes were now free.  My timing was truly bad, though I certainly couldn't have expected them all to just be doing 5-10 minute sessions.  Skipping out on the biking meant I didn't get in any cardio that evening nor did I read another chunk of Montaigne.  On the other hand, I didn't have to rush quite so much at the grocery store on the way home.  (I already mentioned that I often can bundle a trip to the gym with a trip to the grocery store and thus am far more likely to go, even on low-motivation days.)

Thurs. I did have something to look forward to -- I was going to take my son to see Mendelssohn's Octet in the evening.  We grabbed the tickets and then went over to Fran's.  It was going to be a 10 minute wait.  I almost bailed, but decided we still had time.  In the end, we had our meal and were just wrapping up when an alarm went off.  Everyone pretty much ignored it, and we managed to get our bill paid.  At that point, the announcement came on saying that everyone had to leave the building!  I can't imagine how disruptive this would have been for people just midway through their dinner.  And while Canadians are pretty honest overall, there must have been some tempted to just walk away in the confusion, particularly if they had had most of their dinner.  I really don't know what happened to everyone else, since we were able to walk out without worrying about coming back.  But it would have been quite a disaster if we were held up trying to pay for dinner with the concert about to start!  There was another snag in that when I bought the tickets, they sold me the wrong date!  Fortunately, the concert was not sold out and I was able to get the tickets exchanged with no fuss.  The first half was pretty solid (2 other octets), but really I was there for the Mendelssohn, and it was fine.  Coming back home on the train was fairly uneventful.

Friday I had a bit of luck in that I was assigned to stay at the home office and go to a meeting on long-term bus planning.  My co-workers were heading up to York for a meeting there.  While I had hoped to bring someone from the office along with me to the AGO Impressionist exhibit, I settled on planning to go the following week.  At any rate, the day went pretty quickly.  Fortunately, I checked the TTC Alerts before I left, since there was some police activity and Line 2 was completely shut down between St. George and Bloor.  And in fact, they shut down the Don Valley Parkway as well!  While the police never full revealed what happened (to try to discourage copy-cats), it seems likely someone tried to jump off the Bloor Viaduct.  While I feel terrible for people in such distress, I am getting more and more utilitarian in my old age and feel that really people that snarl the transportation system for 100s of thousands of people really do need some jail time (in addition to treatment).  Also, I think going forward, the system is just going to have to be a lot more cold-hearted and find ways to keep moving even when there are medical emergencies or what have you.  I recall a few months back they shut down Line 1 because there was a raccoon on the tracks, whereas I think they absolutely should have just kept going and run over the vermin.  I decided that I might as well go to the AGO after all to see if the mess was over by the time I finished.  Upon leaving, it was pretty clear that Dundas was still terrible (and Line 2 was still down, so many east-west buses were now filling in as shuttle buses).  I walked down to Queen.  Getting from John to Yonge on the streetcar took forever!  (Probably because the city was flooded with Uber drivers making their surge money.)  It got a bit better east of Sherbourne, and I was finally able to make it home.  (All things considered, it could have been a lot worse, particularly if I hadn't checked the website and ended up on a Bloor shuttle bus.)  However, it was really pretty late and I was too frazzled to go to the gym, so I decided to do that early Sat.  I heard from my co-workers that their commute back to Toronto was horrendous, since they were indeed stuck on the DVP pretty much the whole time, so I have to say I really dodged a bullet there.  I'll probably have to bring them some Tim Bits on Monday to make it up to them.

* Oh, now things are starting to come back into focus.  I had my ZipCar membership terminated, which I'll explain in the next post.  The whole episode was so frustrating (and I was maybe dreading the dentist a bit), so I left the office early.  I then learned that the Market Gallery is now charging an admission fee, which seems a bit steep, given the quality of exhibits that they host.  I don't know if this is a one-off for this exhibit, but it will definitely discourage me from going on a regular basis going forward.  To sort of top off a lousy day, No Frills seems to have discontinued one of its own brands of chips that I really liked.  I had been checking routinely to see when they would come back in, but they removed the shelf label and put something else in its place.  Frustrating...