The cold snap seems to be over. I was able to bike to work on Monday, though it was far from great. There was still a fair bit of snow and slush, particularly near all the streetcar stops on King. I believe it should rain on Tues., which will hopefully wash most of that away, and Wed. and Thurs. look pretty decent, though I probably won't ride on Wed. either since I need to meet my wife at the theatre. We're seeing Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which should be a lot of fun. At least for me.
I was pleased that The Heptameron showed up, and actually I was able to order a replacement for a Krazy Kat book of the dailies that never arrived. It turned up, and I ordered a couple more, which just got dispatched, so I think I have the full run of dailies from 1921-1928. I also have the "panoramic" dailies from 1920, though this is buried under a huge stack of art books, so I probably won't be reading any time soon, but at least I know where it is!
I'm now debating going back in time but most of the collections of daily strips from the 1910s are out of print, and I'd have to get them on eBay and have them shipped to the States. So possible, but not ideal.
I just finished Rushdie's Fury. It's probably in my top 5 Rushdie novels, though the ending wasn't as strong as I had hoped. There are actually some interesting parallels to Absurdistan (mostly when the main characters get trapped in somewhat pathetic revolutions in Third World countries). I found it a bit droll that the narrator of Absurdistan, Misha Vainberg, aka Snack Daddy, compares himself to Oblomov. This wasn't enough for me to drop Absurdistan and start reading Oblomov, but I do think I'll get around to Oblomov by the fall. I'm going to get started on Lermontov's A Hero of Our Times much sooner, probably by the end of the week, at least partly because it is so much shorter.
One nice thing happened on Saturday, despite my having to get my boots out of the closet. Sigh. I was returning some books at the Jones library, and I saw a sign about eclipse glasses. I didn't think they had any but asked anyway, and they were in stock, so I got a pair for me and a pair for my daughter. Score! (It turns out I will be in Vancouver on a business trip on the 8th, and the eclipse will be fairly pathetic that far west, not to mention the fact that it will probably be overcast and I don't think there will be an "eclipse break," but I'll bring the glasses anyway. At least I did see a pretty good partial eclipse in 2017.)
And I ran into an actor friend, who has a work gig in my new office building! That was quite a surprise. I'll see if we can grab lunch one of these days. I also had heard that SFYS is going to be restarted for real this May (and in person!), so that is also something that cheered me up. Of course, I'll be even more thrilled if my submission from many months back is accepted, but I'll be happy just knowing SFYS is back in business.
I managed to force myself to go to the gym on Sunday, despite not wanting to go. Then I had planned to drop by the ROM, since it was free all weekend. When I wandered by, the line was so, so long. It was probably moving fairly quickly, but it clearly was going to take 30-45 minutes minimum to get inside, and I was downtown to see a Tafelmusik concert and just didn't have that time to spare. So I went over to Robarts instead for a while, then on to the concert.
I don't want to write at length about it, but I just saw Canadian Stage announced their season. This is by far the most interesting (to me) season I have seen in some time. They clearly are returning to plays and much less dance and multi-media spectacle. I wonder if they have a new AD. I recall an interview with their AD from several years back, and he was almost entirely about spectacle, and I stopped going altogether.
Now do I need to see Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf again? No -- but to see Paul Gross, Martha Burns, Mac Fyfe and Hailey Gillis? I can't pass that up. I've seen Mac Fyfe in several things, plus some plays he directed. I saw Martha Burns several years back. I could have seen Gross as Lear at Stratford, but I was just all Lear-ed out... Many of the other plays they are doing are tied to Shakespeare, but in interesting ways. I think 1939 is probably the most intriguing, but Fat Ham looks worth seeing also. I'd probably pass on Playing Shylock, but we'll see. I'm even planning on going to High Park to see them do Hamlet, despite the extra hard seats, since the cast looks just amazing. I will see if I can take my son, though I don't know how often he'll be back in Toronto this summer.
Last summer, I had thought seriously about checking out The Mahabharata at Shaw, but I just couldn't swing it, so I'll go now. As I said, this season really fits me quite well, which is good, as I am generally not all that interested in Tarragon or Soulpepper these days, with a few honourable exceptions.
Today, after work I was able to switch the bank my gym takes the monthly fees from, which is an important step before I can close down that account and consolidate everything with a new bank. I dropped off the Keith Haring book, which I've had out for many, many months (since just a short time after the cyber-attack in fact). Now I just need to juggle the books I have out at Robarts, since I don't want to get hit with any late fees. Most astonishing, no one was at Matty Eckler pool, so I had the whole thing to myself and got my laps in early. That was quite nice.
Oh, I almost forgot. One of the stairs going into the basement had broken. In fact, we already had a handyman work on this exact riser before, but obviously the fix didn't take. It took some time, but we finally got contractors over on Friday morning. In fact, they showed up an hour early, which was quite a surprise, but they said that they could just fix the one riser, whereas other contractors insisted on recapping the whole staircase. They basically quoted me a relatively low fee for an immediate repair, and I took them up on it, and they had it fixed within an hour. How long will this repair last is a good question, but at least for now we can go up and down into the basement without peril, which is quite useful on laundry days...
So generally some good things were happening over the weekend and early in the week, and I will try to hang onto my good cheer as the weather continues to warm up. Ciao!
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