Good Timing

I ended up shaking things up a bit, but I managed to get pretty much everything I wanted to get done, so that was a good day.  Around 10 I decided I probably ought to go to the walk-in clinic first rather than going to the gym right away.

The weather was nicer than I expected, so that was a pleasant surprise.  I got to the clinic around 11.  It took about 30 minutes waiting to see a doctor.  His cough was just about as bad as mine, so I felt a bit foolish.  However, he did listen to my lungs and said there didn't seem to be any fluid built up in there.  The cough will probably just go away on its own, though he did prescribe an inhaler I could use.

Since it was still pretty nice out, I headed over to Robarts to pick up another book on the suburbanization of Toronto.  I also saw the last remnants of the cherry trees in blossom (a bit hard to make out in the photo).

I had to hustle back to the station.  I think I managed to get back inside the two hour transfer window, but I may have missed it by a minute or two.  I guess I can check tomorrow.  Perhaps I should have skipped the cherry trees...

Anyway, after getting home and grabbing lunch, I went over to the mall.  I did get a decent workout in, then grabbed a few groceries, then bought a clematis at Home Depot.  I don't often wrap up my workout with the mall still open, so that was a nice change.

It was a bit overcast when I got home, but I went out and did a bit more weeding and I planted the clematis and a rose bush I bought the other day.  (You can also see the remains of the dead rose bush which I dug out to make space for the new one.)

I then went to the back and planted some milkweed seeds.  I am not too fussed about whether this comes up or not, but it would be nice to try to help out the butterflies.  Just as I was wrapping all this up, it started to rain, so I didn't even need to do any watering today.  I'll probably get a bit more fertilizer and read up on what else I need to do to keep the rose bush and the clematis alive.  I then managed to get laundry started during dinner.

So that was my long and fairly productive Sunday.*  It looks like the Raptors are going to just eke out a win.  (As much as I would like them to go all the way, it's pretty hard to see them getting past the Bucks...)  I might do a bit more reading, since I haven't quite gotten through the Musil yet, and perhaps I can even sleep in a bit tomorrow.

* Oh, I also helped my son get his bike out of storage and pumped up the tires a bit.  It should still go into the shop for a tune-up, but this is good enough for now.  Yes, a very busy day...

Midway Through Another Long Weekend

Yesterday (Sat.) I was probably a bit busier than I strictly should have been.

I ran off and did the grocery run fairly early.  I also stopped off at the garden centre that springs up in the No Frills parking lot.  I bought a small rose bush to replace the one that finally died off last year.  (I'll have to get some tips from my next-door neighbour to keep this one alive a bit longer.)  I considered getting a climbing plant, but basically didn't have another hand free to carry another pot.  I hope to take a look at the Home Depot Garden Centre today (I assume it is open), but, if I don't like anything there, it turns out that this place will be open on Monday after all.

I then took my son to see the Infinity Room at the AGO.  This is the last week before it opens to the general public, so I am taking advantage of the slightly shorter lines during the advance screening for members.  It's pretty cool, though I liked the one from last year that looked like a star field a bit more.

It's mostly large silver balls on the floor and suspended from the ceiling and then glass bubbles inside this mirrored pillar in the centre of the room.  I've seen it twice now, and it's definitely interesting.  It will also be interesting to see how long the buzz lasts, but probably for a while.

After checking this out, I saw him off back home, and then I went into work for a while to try to straighten up my desk a bit more.

Today, I'd like to get to the gym relatively early.  (I went twice last week, once doing roughly 50% of my normal set and once 75%.  I'd probably do 75-85% today, but maybe a bit longer on the stationary bikes.)  I probably ought to see if I can get over to the Walk-In Clinic.  It is supposedly open today and tomorrow.  I think at this point I need to see about my cough, since it just doesn't seem to be getting any better.  And as I mentioned, I'll take a peek in at Home Depot.  I probably won't do any actual gardening today, as it is likely going to rain, but if I have everything, then I can spend some time on Monday planting everything.

I'd like to carve out some time so that I can finish up Musil's The Man Without Qualities.  I've wrestled it down to about 200 pages of posthumous notes remaining, and I'd just like to finish it up.  I'm not really enjoying it much any longer, since he went in such an uninteresting direction (focused on the forbidden love between Ulrich and Agathe, his faux-twin sister).  I'm also relatively likely to wrap up Bellow's Ravelstein by Monday.  It's ok (basically a fictional valediction for Allan Bloom), but I wouldn't call it a late masterpiece, as some have done.  For my money, the last truly great book Bellow wrote was The Dean's December, which I do hope to reread one of these days...

Monday should be a bit more relaxing, and I'll see about doing a bit of gardening, assuming the weather cooperates.  I suppose there is a small chance I'll carve out the three hours to see the Avengers movie (I've actually managed to avoid spoilers up to now).  And then it will be back to work.

The Misery Continues

This is mostly about the bad weather dragging on and, probably not coincidentally, my illness as well.  I held off from going to the gym at all over the weekend, partly because I was still coughing a lot.  While I don't think I am in a contagious stage, I just didn't feel all that great.  I did manage to drag myself there Monday night for basically a half hour, and I guess that went ok.  The plan is to pretty much do the same thing tonight.

Tuesday I actually biked to work, though it was wet and drizzling in the morning.  I was so frustrated, since I hadn't seen rain in the forecast.  However, I really needed the bike on the way home, and in fact the weather did improve a fair bit.  It wasn't warm, but at least it wasn't raining and you could even see a bit of blue sky.  I was going to say that at least the weekend should be nice, but I've just checked the weather and now the overcast skies are returning.  It probably won't rain Sat., but that's about all you can say for it.  It's frankly depressing.

Work is going extremely badly, but I don't think I need to write any more about that for the moment.  I'll write something appropriate at the appropriate time.  I do have an interesting side project that looks like it is leading to a couple of academic papers, but I need to carve out more time for them.  And basically every time I look at world headlines there is something else depressing.  As one of my characters says "I don't think I'm going to miss this place or any of you"...

Small Disappointments

I'm going to skip over a couple of major disappointments, as this isn't really the time to write about them, and I may have to return to this topic again soon.

The top disappointment is that I am still not completely recovered from my illness.  I am well enough to make it to work and most of the junk in my lungs has broken up, but I'm pretty tired.  I'm not going to bike to work today, even though the weather is passable.  I may be able to squeeze in a very light, reduced workout at the gym tonight, but there is no point in really pushing it.  If I am still coughing and spreading germs I won't go.*

Over the weekend, before I got quite so ill, I actually went into work with the express intent of cleaning up my desk.  While I did manage to clear out a lot of no longer needed paperwork (see overflowing blue bin), the desk itself still is pretty cluttered and chaotic.

I mean it's better than it was.  The piles are more organized and it isn't nearly as hard to find space to work (I can actually see the desk in spots), but it is a far cry from the clean desk policy that the higher ups are attempting to implement.  Definitely still a work in progress...

I just heard from the CRA, which is virtually never a pleasant experience.  While they seem to have accepted my overall tax return (for now -- they almost always come back a second or third time with changes), they are asking me to pay interest on an installment payment that was late.  The CRA, in my experience, is much, much pickier about this than the IRA, which virtually never charged me interest on taxes due.  I vaguely recall that the UK's revenue branch was quite particular about interest owed as well, though that may be a false memory.  At any rate, I'll just pay it, cross my fingers and hope that is the last I hear from them for this tax year.

I'm a bit disappointed that the Raptors lost, and it wasn't really all that close for most of the game.  While I suspect that, in the end, they will beat Philly in Game 7, these are the games you really need to win to have any kind of momentum.  I just don't think it bodes all that well for the Eastern Conference Finals.**  I mean truly, I don't actually get that wound up one way or the other about a sport for spoiled millionaires and don't actually take the time to do more than check the score online periodically (and there is something to be said for not caring at all about the outcome of the championship), but it would still be cool if the Raptors won it all.  That's looking extremely doubtful at this juncture.**

I was just at the Toronto Reference Library and found out that the 2008 edition of Angela Hewitt's The Well-Tempered Clavier has been out for "mending" since last year, which presumably means a disc was broken or something.  This means that there is no library in the city (not even UT) that has this edition in their collection.  And you can't listen to it on Spotify or Naxos nor can you stream it through iTunes.  It is possible to buy the mp3s outright through iTunes or the Hyperion store, but this is really not my preferred choice.  It just seems very unfortunate there isn't a public library option available.  If I thought they would take it into the collection (and not just sell it off), I might actually purchase a copy and donate it.  To be fair, I was able to donate a graphic novel to the special Merril SF reference collection, so that felt worth it.  Well, something to consider, since donating material that will actually be used does lift my spirits a bit.

Perhaps my next post will be about the changes to the AGO's pricing policy.  Extremely good news for those of you under 25.  But enough for now.

* Unfortunately, the hacking cough isn't really gone yet, but I may be able to get to the gym on Sat.  At this point, it's probably more about whether I am getting enough fluids and rest.

With the benefit of hindsight, this seems too pessimistic, but it really was a tough mountain to climb to get to the Finals.

Ill

Well, it's hardly a secret that when one is sick, everything seems even more overwhelming.  I can't say whether stress at work contributed to my current illness, or if it was more just dealing with the shifting weather.  At any rate, I've been sick since Monday.  I left work maybe just an hour early on Monday, but then much earlier on Tues.  I tried to get enough rest on Tues. and thought I had turned the corner, but then at work I was getting major chills, so again left early on Wed.  I'm still not 100%, and I am definitely not going to be biking to work or going to the gym the rest of the week, but perhaps this Thurs I can at least make it through a full day of work.  I guess we'll see.

There's quite a bit to update on the blog, but I think for the moment, I will just mention the third book I have dropped in an extremely short period of time.  I was so disappointed with PKD's Confessions of a Crap Artist, where the narrator feels humiliated by having to buy his sister a box of Tampax, so he ends up punching her in the stomach and getting into a real brawl.  What a pathetic little man.  (It might be also worth mentioning that he has to get three drinks into his system to go buy the Tampax and he locks his niece in the car during this period.)  I could not even contemplate finishing the novel after those two scenes.  I suppose under very limited circumstances I might finish a book where there is violence against women and children, though almost never if the narrator tries to justify his behaviour and make the reader complicit in it.  I truly don't know how the ultraviolence is handled in American Psycho (not that I have any intention of reading this) but say for example A Clockwork Orange, the beatings and rapes are described almost clinically.  I certainly don't recall that Alex ever pleads with the reader to "understand" his point of view.   I actually made this decision on the weekend before I got ill, so I know that I wasn't in a harsher frame of mind.

I should see if I can get back to bed now and see how I feel in the morning.

Grey Days

This whole week is pretty much going to be overcast and fairly chilly.  It may not actually rain all that much, though I did get sprinkled on a bit while biking home Monday.  It's quite likely to rain tomorrow (Wed.) and Fri., so I'll be back on the TTC for those days.  I'm still really quite gun-shy about riding when the streets are wet.  I just don't need another crash, that's for sure.  On a positive note, I basically don't notice any pain in my hands while riding, so that's a big improvement.

There's not really any point in getting into it, but I am in complete despair over the state of the world in general and the poor choices that the electorate has been making over and over, mostly in North America, but other places as well.

It's not really that big of an accomplishment, but I finally got through the published part of Musil's The Man Without Qualities.  There are roughly 200 pages of essentially completed chapters, which he was reworking at the time of his death.  That won't be so bad, but then there are 400 pages of just draft notes.  I honestly don't know if I will truly read all this, or just skim it, or just skip it.  At any rate, my impression of the novel has been declining a bit over these past weeks, and now it is more or less on par with Proust.  There is certainly no way I would dream of rereading this, given that I am not getting that much out of it in the first place.

What is not just rare but unprecedented is that I have abandoned two other books in the same week!  I was slowly making my way through The Boarding-House by William Trevor.  He sets it up with quite a few quirky characters in the boarding house, but very quickly it becomes a test of wills between two unsavoury characters who inherit the boarding house and want to evict the other tenants.  In this case, I was getting impatient, so, after about 50 pages, I turned to the good folks at Goodreads.  While many did like it, many that felt that the former owner was acting out of some weird malice, since it was quite obvious what would happen after he turned over the boarding house.  This just makes so little sense given his previous life's work in giving these lost souls refuge in the first place.  It's sort of like he was an evil version of Prospero, but one that didn't have the guts or nerve to see all his bad plans come to fruition.  So this was a major strike against it (since the owner was acting more like a convenient literary device and less like an actual person), but then reviewers said it was like a dark Ealing comedy, waiting for these two to get their comeuppance.  Frankly, I have better things to do than wait around for unpleasant characters to get their comeuppance (and I really could hardly bear to read about the doings of the petty thief & grifter, Mr. Studdy).  I strongly disliked Trevor's Nights at the Alexandria as well, so I do wonder if I am just not receptive to him.  At some point I will dive into his short stories, but I am more than willing to part with them if it turns out I am not digging them either.

I didn't even wait as long to abandon Mitzi Bytes by Kerry Clare.  I saw her give a short reading and interview at the library, so I was sort of primed to enjoy this book, but I just found it over-written and a bit repetitive.  In addition, it is so hard for me to be interested in 1) Mommy blogs or 2) what happens when someone's secret on-line identity is compromised.  This was leaving me completely cold, and I stopped around page 30.  I just look around at the hundreds of books I still want to read and think almost every one of these has to be better than this...  I think I'll switch over to Bellow's Ravelstein for my new gym book.  It's certainly better written to be sure.  I guess my main hope is that my spirits will perk up a bit next week if we get better weather.  I'm also hoping to come across more books that I actually enjoy.  I may literally only have encountered two or perhaps three for the entire year, depending on how I count Montaigne, and the rest I've just sort of dragged myself to the finish line!