Flash Updates

I've been struggling to migrate bank accounts and make sure I could pay my taxes (so I could file without asking for an extension), and I just managed to do that.  Today was sunny if a bit chilly, and I ran up to the Danforth to mail them off.  That's a load off my mind.  I guess I have the rest of the week to try to get a different home insurance policy, as I am quite unhappy with my current insurance company.  

This weekend (really Saturday evening), I finally sat down and wrote out a short play I've been thinking about since last summer!  It's about a very lonely barista in an abandoned food court.  I guess I only write out these short plays when there is an audience, and SFYS has been on hiatus for a long time.  However, it is restarting on May 3!  Normally, we would have had up until the last weekend (i.e. the upcoming weekend) but there was such pent-up demand that they didn't need to wait.  I was already told that my piece is on the slate, which is great.  Details and the link to the event will eventually be posted here.  It's nice to not sweat the deadline for once, and maybe I can work on a few other pieces I have been toying with.  If I extended my Pandemic Diaries piece and wrote long piece on urban planners I might have enough to do a Zoom event.  Something I might target in May (about a year after the first one) or June.

I haven't really decided if I will start reviewing books formally or semi-formally again.  I probably could make up for lost time if I largely stuck to poetry, which is largely what I've been reading lately (aside from Don Quixote and now Under the Volcano).

I only just today learned that Talonbooks has published a major new collection by George Bowering, Taking Measures, which collects most of his book-length serial poems.  I have much but not all of this in an earlier Selected Poems.  They are also publishing Daphne Marlatt's early works, including Vancouver Poems, in Intertidal.  I'm definitely going to order the Bowering.  I'm less sure about the Marlatt collection.  The library has both, and I'll check them out, along with Marlatt's recent book, Then Now, to see how I feel about them.  Whichever I choose will be a bit of a belated birthday present to myself.  I was going to order them directly from Talonbooks, but the shipping is simply outrageous.  It looks like Queen Books can special order them all as well as pre-order Bowering's latest Could Be, so I'll do so and pick them up at a later time, since curbside pickup is still allowed.

I had hoped to watch a French comedy over the weekend (Tati or Etaix), but my son had a bit too much homework.  We watched an episode of Blackaddder IV instead.  I really don't think I've seen that much of this particular season, though I think I managed to see all or nearly all of the 2nd and 3rd seasons.  At this point I expect we'll watch the last episode tomorrow and then the Back and Forth special on Wed.  And then on to Fawlty Towers.