So Very Busy

While I had a bit of downtime over the weekend, I've actually been quite busy since Friday.  Friday was a particularly full day.  I woke up at 6 and went jogging with my daughter.  She hasn't followed through on the jogging quite as much as she hoped, but we've gone a few times.

I then biked to work to get a meeting room set up for a 9 am meeting.  It was fortuitous that I showed up when I did, as some other team was squatting in my space, despite my having booked the room for the entire day.  After I kicked them out, the meeting got going.  The first meeting went from 9 to 3, though with an hour for lunch.  Then I had an even more intense meeting from 3:30 to 5.  I was kind of wiped out.

However, the day wasn't over.  I had seen there were quite a few seats available for Yaga at Tarragon, so I decided to drop by and try to score rush tickets.  I got quite good seats, though I was just a bit distressed that the show ran over 2 hours.  (I'm getting more and more into the mindset that 75-90 minutes plays are my preferred mode of experiencing theatre.)  I enjoyed this quite a bit (though probably would have caught some of the twists and turns sooner if I had been a bit more rested).  Maybe I'll say a bit more about the play after it closes in mid Oct.to avoid spoiling things.

Sat. I visited two libraries, the Humane Society, the Eton Centre and then finally the Regent Park Aquatic Centre for leisure swim with my daughter.

I actually did take a nap but then left around 7:30 to go up to the Danforth to catch Tinariwen in concert.  This makes the fourth time I've seen them live, twice in Chicago and twice in Toronto.

Sunday was a bit calmer, mostly going to the gym, getting the groceries, doing laundry and so forth.

Today was a moderately long day at work, but I was trying to pace myself since I was going to the Salman Rushdie event at the AGO.  I wasn't so surprised that I had to check my bag, though I wish they had been more clear there would be no book signing, since I could have just left my book in my bag. The other thing is there were quite a few open seats, and I know a few people who would have come if they had made those seats available.  Oh well.  Finally, this was just a long interview and not a reading at all.  While the interview was quite wide-ranging and interesting, I think it still might have been a bit better if they had kicked things off with Rushdie reading a passage or two from the start of Quichotte to whet the audience's appetite.

At any rate, I have survived all this, and I think things slow down a little bit today.  I only have to swing by the library on the way home from work to drop off some books (including Morrison's Tar Baby, which I am abandoning midway through) and to pick up Frying Plaintain.  I'm somewhat surprised that this did not make it to the Giller Prize shortlist, though it is more of a surprise that Atwood's The Testaments was also cut.  In terms of major things on the horizon, I'll be off to Stratford in about 3 weeks to see Henry VI, and then I have a week in Nov. where I am attending quite a few classical concerts, but again I am hoping to pace myself and not end up as exhausted as I was this weekend...