Rough Day

Today was a pretty rough day, but it did get better at the end, so I will end on a slightly higher note.  It's been rainy and dreary for two days straight, which never helps.

We found out that the counsellor who is supposed to turn up and help us through some family drama can't make it until Sunday (yes, really!), so this feels like a wasted week.

Our furnace, which is only two years old, has been acting up and not actually heating the house.  The repairman turned up and, after some poking and prodding, said that the control board needs to be replaced.  This happens to be under the extended warranty we have, but it still means two or three days without any heat.  I suppose better now than in December or January.  

In the late afternoon I had a dentist appointment.  The cleaning was quite involved and more painful than usual.  And a had a small cavity between two teeth that needs to be filled in two weeks.  So that was no fun at all.

Then my wife got a letter from the IRS demanding thousands of dollars.  This really confused and upset me.  When I got home I realized this was related to correspondence I had with them back in August & September.  I have no idea why they wrote to her, however.  I actually filed a 1040X and did pay what we owed in September (and they cashed the check!), so it is probably just crossed communications (and I don't owe any more), but it is still annoying and will probably take a while to straighten out.*  I also have yet another mini-audit from the CRA to deal with, though I didn't learn about it today, but it is still on my mind with all the other tax annoyances.

The bright spot in all this is that I was one of 200 or maybe even 500 Canadians to be selected to get a set of the books shortlisted for the Giller Prize, courtesy of Scotiabank.  I'm supposed to put them out in the Little Free Library, though nothing says I can't browse them first (not that I have the time to read anything not on one of my lists!).

Anyway, hopefully tomorrow will be better.  The weather should be nicer, and I'll plan on biking in to work and perhaps dropping off my bike for a tune-up, which it sorely needs after I have practically ridden it into the ground since the pandemic began...

* While dealing with the IRS is never fun, I found it easier to get things straightened out on the phone with agents in the early 2000s.  This time around, the agent more or less saw things my way, but said it would take 16 weeks for the 1040X to be processed, at which time they would say whether they agreed with my revised calculations.  I said it was fairly silly to pay the money, only to turn around and have the IRS refund it at the end of December.  He agreed to turn off the warning letters, but if the IRS doesn't agree with me, I will be on the hook for even more interest, though probably not a penalty on top of that.  Fingers crossed I got it right this time.  

Shifting Books and Movies

As always, I cannot always follow through on my stated intentions.  I am interrupting my reading plan, which itself is a fairly major departure from my overarching reading list.  I decided I really wanted to read Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita before seeing a musical version, which I am going to this Friday!  Now had I stuck to my original goal, it would only have been 40 pages per night, which is pretty manageable.  However, life intervened as it so often does, and I had about 300 pages to go and only 5 nights left, which is still only about 60 pages.  I did read another chunk this morning and then took the train to work for the first time in many, many, many months (so I could read, which is the main drawback of cycling).  I think I'm now at 200 pages to go and 4 nights left, so that's a little better and definitely doable.  I've actually read this book several times and in three different translations, though it has been a while since the last time (probably 10+ years), but I'm deep enough in that much of the plot is coming back to me.

Then I have Douglas Coupland's latest book, Binge, which is comprised of 60 micro-stories, out from the library.  I pretty much have to read this right away, as I won't be able to renew it.  Then I can return to Joyce Cary and his first trilogy.  I have to say I am not enjoying it much at all.  Once I found out that the artist Gully Jimson was a frequent wife-beater (mentioned several times in Herself Surprised), I knew that this was going to be a challenge, as I usually draw the line at reading about abusers (and I dropped Donleavy's The Ginger Man for precisely this reason).  I'll probably force myself to get through The Horse's Mouth, but already am pretty sure I won't like it, and To Be a Pilgrim is just boring and far too long.  I have no idea why this trilogy is rated so highly.  At that point, I will mostly be trying to read through books that are destined for the Little Free Library out front.  And then I guess I will get back to my main reading list, though still trying to squeeze in a lot of poetry on the side...  It looks like Maxwell's The Château is next whenever I get back on track.

My son has had a fair bit of homework and applying for scholarships over the past two weeks, so we've very far behind on watching the Britcoms compared to where I expected we would be.  Also, more often than not there is some sporting event on when I want to see a movie.  Nonetheless, we managed to see The Matrix.  (I probably won't bother showing him the 2nd and 3rd in the trilogy.)  Then we finally watched Chaplin's The Great Dictator.  I'm not sure I've ever seen the whole thing.  It did drag a lot, but I liked the parts where Napaloni (a parody of Mussolini) is on screen, and indeed the banter between Hynkel and Napaloni seems very similar to what goes on in Duck Soup.  I tried to get to Duck Soup yesterday, but he felt a bit pressed for time, so we actually watched an episode of Slings and Arrows instead.  On Saturday, I showed him Chaplin's Modern Times, though if I had known he was so pressed for time, I would have substituted in Duck Soup.  Well, we'll get to it fairly soon.  Given that it is fairly short, we should get to City Lights fairly soon.  I haven't decided if I'll watch his later talkies (Monsieur Verdoux, Limelight and A King in New York) by myself or with him.  Most likely by myself.  I also had strongly considered watching another Bogart film with him, High Sierra, but I am a bit more likely to try to turn that into a double feature, paired with They Drive By Night, and push it off a week or so.  Yet because we are so close to Halloween, I may pull yet another detour and have him watch Beetlejuice sometime this upcoming weekend.

Edit (10/31): So I did manage to stick to the (modified) plans for once.  We saw Beetlejuice on Sat., and then Duck Soup after the trick-or-treating was over on Sun.  The number of kids was fairly low this year, but at least the weather was quite nice, compared to the many times it has drizzled on us.  Both my kids have aged out of trick-or-treating, though my son went to a Halloween party with some friends and my daughter handed out some candy.  Duck Soup was great.  I think it is my favourite of the Marx Brothers' movies.

Slow Return to Culture

I'll probably end up bundling too much into this one post, as I have neglected the blog for almost the entire month.  This weekend is actually a fairly slow weekend for me.  Two weekends ago, I went off to see Picasso Painting the Blue Period over at the AGO.  I was able to take my son to the members-only weekend, and while it was crowded, I'm sure the following weekends will be even a bit more crowded (though controlled via timed tickets) until maybe mid November, which is probably when my wife will go.  That said, it is quite a good show, and I'll post separately on it fairly soon.  I would encourage anyone interested in Picasso to go obviously.  We stopped in at 401 Richmond on the way back, and he really liked the Brian Harvey paintings at Abbozzo.  I thought they were good but looked an awful lot like the type of artists at street festivals and outdoor art fairs.  I was really taken by the one room with Naoko Matsubara prints.  I probably won't ever buy one, but they are not outrageously expensive, so never say never.

Towards the end of the next week, I stopped by The Power Plant at Harbourfront, which has finally reopened.  I'm glad it's open again, but I have to say the featured artist, Miriam Cahn, leaves me entirely cold and she takes up all 3 galleries!  So I won't bother going back until 2022 when they rotate in another artist (or three).  I was gearing up to go see a couple of plays in the Soulpepper Her Words festival, though in the end it turned out that the theatre was one building further east (where Farm Boy has just opened up in fact).  I saw two staged readings* on Sat. and Sun.: Wild Woman by Kat Sandler and Queen Goneril by Eric Shields.  Both were good in different ways, but thematically they were incredibly similar and Queen Goneril suffered in comparison to Wild Woman (and in fact I left at intermission because the staged reading was longer than advertised and I was just exhausted).  They probably should have been programmed on separate weekends.  I'll try to blog on this separately but may never get to it.  One thing that put a serious damper on Sunday was that I had planned on biking out to MOCA (which has been open for a while) to see their new exhibit GTA21.  In general it has been really windy, making biking fairly unpleasant, and what should have been a 40-45 minute ride turned into a 55 minute epic slog.  When I got there, there had been some catastrophic problem with the doors, and the 2nd-4th floors of MOCA were completely locked down!  I was severely pissed.  While I may go back in November (calling ahead first!), I'm also just as likely to say that this was a sign I should take a pass.

There has been additional music at Crows' Nest but they have pushed it to 9:30 to not interfere with the current show (or rather a lecture on land acknowledgements*) and that doesn't fit that well with my schedule.  I really had been planning on going a couple of times but one thing or another interfered, and I just haven't gone back.  I did manage to get over to The Only Cafe to see live music, and perhaps I'll try to catch Allison Au at The Rex next week, though again I wish the shows started a bit earlier... 

I'm not doing any real culture outings this weekend, though I do need to type up all the pages of my script (most of which was written out in longhand at various jazz shows or in the intermission at the Soulpepper readings), and this should be performed at SFYS on Nov. 1!  So something to look forward to for sure.

* In fact, while this was the most satisfying live theatre I've seen in a long while, it isn't the first.  I went to see the faux production of As You Like It, which was in fact a 90 minute monologue on everything that was wrong about land acknowledgements by Cliff Cardinal at Crows' Nest.  I think Lynn Slotkin let this get under her skin a bit too much and her review was hasty, but it truly was disrespectful to flat-out mislead the audience and tell them they would be getting Shakespeare rather than a long lecture that tried to make them feel bad about themselves, esp. as for so many people it was their first night back out testing the waters.  I'll see how the other plays go this season, but it definitely makes me a lot less inclined to support Crows' Nest.  (If I want to go to theatre that makes me feel bad about myself, I can stick with Theatre Passe Muraille or even The Theatre Centre most nights.)   This could definitely lead to its own post, but I know I don't have the energy for it.  

Soggy Weekend (& Week)

It really looks like Toronto has inherited Vancouver's weather, at least for today (Sunday) and the upcoming week.  I definitely don't like riding in the rain, but I did learn to do it in Vancouver (or I wouldn't have ridden three seasons out of the year).  Now the irony is that last Thurs. and Fri. were quite nice, but Thurs. I didn't have to go to work and just did some walking around the neighbourhood.  I could have ridden in to work on Friday, but I was giving a conference talk and needed access to Zoom (and this is still blocked at work due to some outdated risk assessments from early in the pandemic...).  So I really didn't have any choice but to stay home.  

Now I could have ridden more on Saturday, though I did the grocery shopping early, then helped my daughter build a science project, then went to the gym, then looked one more time at the science project.  So it was a fairly busy day overall, and I actually did take a nap in the afternoon, instead of going off to a museum or the library or downtown.  I did end up taking a quick spin down to Queen to pick up dinner, but that was pretty much it.

I felt somewhat desperate for more exercise, so I biked downtown today, despite the rain.  I just hope that going back it isn't too slippery (or dark!).  Anyway, I'm hoping the forecast is wrong and next week we have a few more clear days than they are projecting right now (or even overcast days where it doesn't really rain).