Last Minute Script

There are more than a few things I'd like to write up, including how pleased I am that Trump is a convicted felon (and how sad I am that this makes almost no difference at all to his cult of followers but it might make enough of a difference to the swing voters in the swing states).  I guess we won't know until November.  I also managed to track down quite a few missing photos.  The number of missing posts where I showcase the amazing museums I have visited in the past couple of years is really shamefully long.  I will see if I can rectify that next week.

I'm fairly busy this weekend but probably not quite as busy as last weekend.  I also did a bit of yardwork recently.  So I may water the plants but I probably won't bother weeding this weekend, so that is one thing that is a bit less stressful.

I will need to decide fairly soon if I am going to try to go swimming at Jimmie Simpson because the pool at Matty Eckler is out of service and probably will be so for at least one more week, which really means two more weeks.  I expect to be at Jimmie Simpson on Sunday for the Riverdale Art Walk, but because I need to head over to the Distillery by 12:45, I just can't see getting in any laps this weekend.  But I will try to coordinate and go at least once next week (and maybe even two times to make up for not going last week when I found Matty Eckler was no longer a viable option).

Anyway, today I wrapped up work right around 5:30 and headed over to The Rex.  I think this is the first time in May.  I wrote out a few more pages of the piece I am working on, which is called The Door.  I also dug up a notebook where I had written down some of the very first pieces I had jotted down about this potential series about planners and their planning hijinks.  Most importantly, this has the names I came up with for the main cast.  So in a way, I feel I can start piecing things together in earnest now.  I really was not able to type up my notes until I got home.  (I have been out late and crashed when I got home on the other evenings.)  Since SFYS deadline was May 31, that meant I really just had to transcribe a bunch of pages and edit on the fly.  I think it came together reasonably well except for the second last page of the script.  It's still moderately impressive (to me) that I wrote a 10.5 page script in about 4 hours, even with the scribbled notes as a starting point.  I then struggled to get access to Google forms to submit the script, but pulled it off with about 15 minutes to go.  Hopefully, next time around I won't cut it quite so close.

Ok, that's enough about that, but I did want to share a minor triumph over deadlines with you.  I will try to carve out more time to talk about other things on my mind later this week.

Edit (6/10) My piece is being read tonight.  Yea!

Random Thoughts--Munro, TCAF and Toronto Theatre

I suppose it is not a great surprise, but Alice Munro just passed away at the age of 92.  She said she was retiring after Dear Life (over 10 years ago now!), and unless some snippets or an unpublished story emerges, then we have everything in 14 collections of short stories, which is certainly quite the legacy.  I have been slowly working my way through her work in order.  I had managed to get through Open Secrets fairly recently (late 2023).  I didn't do a full review, in part because I have given up on the Canadian book challenge and also because I just didn't like the stories that much, particularly the historical ones.  I may review her other books if they resonate with me more.  We'll see.  Anyway, I don't have time to read all of The Love of a Good Woman this week, but I'll try to read a couple of the shorter short stories and then work my way through the rest by this summer.  If I do that, then I will only have five more books to go, which is sort of exciting but sad at the same time.  Of course, this just adds to the number of things that are keeping me from my interim reading list.  I'm also somewhat likely to reread Camus's The Stranger and tackle Howard's End (after seeing The Inheritance at Canadian Stage).

At least it doesn't take nearly so long to read comic books, which is somewhat appealing at the moment.  In fact, Camus is only on the list because I just read a graphic novel version of The Stranger, and I am curious how it compares to the "real thing."  I also was at TCAF this past weekend.  On Sat. I had a bit of time before The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp over at TIFF.  I actually had even managed to sell off some classical CDs at BMV (perhaps the last store in the city that will buy classical CDs!) and had some cash in my pocket, which is always a good thing.  I was a bit annoyed that I just missed one vendor selling an interesting 'zine comic.  And then I found out that there was a whole group of vendors up on the 3rd floor!  So in the end I went back on Sunday and bought a few more things.  I'll try to circle back and list the main things I picked up.  I briefly debated buying an autographed copy of Seth's Palookaville (I had missed his relatively short signing window Saturday morning), but decided my bag was already full enough!  I did stop by Luke Healy's booth up on the 3rd floor, but he was actually ill and was having to skip pretty much the entire TCAF, which was a terrible blow for him.  Anyway, I had a good time and bought a lot more things this year, particularly compared to last year where I think I only picked up a couple of zines from OCAD* students.  One bit of shocking news is that the Toronto Reference Library is going to be closing down for extensive renovations for a year or two, though I'm not sure when this is starting.  Anyway, TCAF is looking for a new home for the next couple of years.  I would imagine the Toronto Metro Convention Centre would work but probably will cost too much money, so we'll see what happens to TCAF.  I will have to remember to go back and look at anything I really wanted to see at the Reference Library over the summer and fall.

I was going to write a bit more about Toronto theatre, but I think I will just note that I am fairly excited about the upcoming Canadian Stage and Tarragon seasons.  I am deeply uninterested in Soulpepper, which is a real shame, and the off-Mirvish plays leave me pretty cold as well.  While I'm not quite as excited about Crow's Theatre as this past season (and certainly I think their ticket prices even with a subscription are too high), I will still subscribe again.  I'm quite curious if Factory Theatre manages to make a comeback.  I'm also interested in Coal Mine.  I skipped them this season, but I hope there is something I like next season.  I actually came very close to seeing Hedda Gabler, as the reviews have been great, but it's just not a play I like very much.  And I did see a good production in Chicago (of course).  I finally wavered and tried to pick up one of the few remaining tickets, but it worked out to $82 with all the fees and taxes.  That's just too much for a play I don't even like that much.  I'm kind of feeling the same way about Herbie Hancock at Massey Hall.  I missed out on some reasonably priced tickets and now everything that is left is $100.  (Or there are some $75 tickets with obstructed view and limited leg room!)  I might try to rush Herbie Hancock, or maybe see if another coupon pops up.  I think that is a thing at Massey Hall but not 100% sure.  I guess I could even try to rush Hedda Gabler, but it seems unlikely they will have any rush seats, though I suppose Tues. and Wed. are the nights to try.  I'll think about it...  Ok, I think that is enough for now.  Ciao.

* Interestingly, I managed to stop by OCAD's graduation festivities this year.  I wasn't nearly as impressed with the paintings this year compared to 2023 (or maybe it was even 2022), but I did like some of the photos and video art.  I actually picked up two photos for sale.

Enzo Earl Chen, Untitled, ca. 2024

Daniel Han, Lenox, ca. 2024

Sing-for-Your-Supper Reborn

So it actually has happened.  Sing-for-Your-Supper is back on!  It's actually the 2nd Monday of the month way out west at the Assembly Theatre on Queen West (or Queen West West...).  Monday was a particularly crappy day to try to head west across the city.  Line 2 was down for 12 hours!  I almost never take the TTC anymore, though I do take it if I am going out to Parkdale.  But it was threatening to rain, and I had a very oversized book to collect from the library, and it simply would not fit in my bike bag.  I got to the library and got the book, then saw the King streetcar coming, so I jumped on that.  I really think they should have made some announcements that Line 2 was down.  The streetcar just crawled up to Broadview station.  I saw hundreds of people out on the street waiting for shuttle buses.  One of the workers said that Line 2 had already been down for 3 hours, so I jumped back on the King streercar, which naturally got extremely crowded.  While I could technically have taken this downtown, I just didn't want to get stuck downtown when I needed to get back home in the middle of the afternoon.  After we finally got back to Gerrard, I got off and caught a streetcar home.  So incredibly frustrating.  

Even after work, the subway was still down, so I decided I would need to stick to streetcars.  I took Gerrard all the way to Yonge, then Line 1 (which hadn't been effected by the hydraulic fluid spill!) to Union.  I actually grabbed some things from Longos, dropped that huge book off at work, and then caught the King car west.  It was quite crowded to roughly Bathurst and then it got better.  It is somewhat droll that it is actually easier for me to get to the Theatre Centre and Assembly Theatre with the King streetcar diverted up to Queen for watermain work on King.  I think the diversion lasts through the end of the year more or less.  I made it with about 5 minutes to spare, not that they started remotely on time.  I saw a few actors I hadn't seen in years, and we chatted.  I was very surprised to see Scott Garland and Kat Letwin back.  They had been the original hosts when I started going to Storefront Theatre up on Bloor many, many years ago.  (Probably around 2017, though I'd have to dig through the blog to confirm...)  Scott bowed out roughly around the time that Storefront lost its lease and then SFYS started moving around the city, first to some random venues in Parkdale and then mostly over at Tarragon.  Kat and another comic did hosting duties and they had someone else vet the scripts, but then she moved to Ottawa!  And then Covid hit.  Actually Scott and Kat came back and did virtual hosting for a while, but eventually they pulled out and it fell to a couple other actors and then people just lost interest in Zoom readings unfortunately.  So it was great to see them back, lending their support.  A passing of the torch, as it were.  I think it may take a while for this to hit critical mass, but it may get there eventually, now that it seems to have a new home.  We definitely need younger actors and more female actors to show up.  Kat was cast in 4 plays, which meant there was no run through for most of them.  I stepped in and read one part, which I often did during the Tarragon days.  My piece wasn't selected.  While that is unfortunate, mostly I wish I had been notified one way or the other.  What's a bit interesting is that the current crew seems to favor playlets with parts for more actors, which makes sense as they are actors first.  (I think my piece only had two or at most three parts.)  But until a larger crowd starts showing up, then more intimate pieces make a bit more sense.  Anyway, the next piece I am working on will probably have 5 or 6 parts, so maybe they'll take it.  Fingers crossed.  More information on the newest incarnation of SFYS here.

It was a fun evening, though the performances were pretty ragged and almost none of the playwrights were in attendance!   Again, something that will likely be fixed in the future as the kinks get worked out.  I was surprised that transit going back was pretty smooth.  I took a King car to University, since this one was going to the Distillery.  I was going to take Line 1 up to Line 2 to see if it truly was back up, but there was a Kingston car immediately following, so I took that east and then was able to catch the 72 bus.  I think it took less than an hour, which is pretty good for running west to east like that.  Nonetheless, I will try to stick to the bike the rest of this week, though rain is definitely in the forecast.  Booo.

Hamilton Round-up

The trip did not come off exactly as planned.  The trip to Union was mostly ok until we got to Lakeshore and Yonge where the traffic really was quite bad.  Then the bus driver was absurdly meek at the light at Bay and Lakeshore.  She let the light cycle through 4 times before she finally really started turning.  Most people bailed after the second missed light.  My son and I finally exited the bus after the third missed light and were easily able to walk faster than the bus.  I sadly had missed the 12:30 GO bus to Hamilton, but still had a few minutes before the 1:05.  My son's train was at 1:17, so he had a bit more time, but still not as much as he should have had.  

While traffic was quite heavy on the Gardiner, we did get in more or less at our scheduled time.  As it was on the way, I stopped in for about 10 minutes at the Art Gallery of Hamilton.  I only went to the upstairs galleries which are free.  I'd seen most of the art already, though they did have a lot more Norval Morrisseau on view than they normally do.

Norval Morrisseau, Shaman and Apprentice, ca. 1980-85

Marla Panko, Fab, 2008

Anyway, it was about 3 by the time I finally got to the Hamilton Public Library.  Only to find out that their computer system was completely down, so it was impossible to copy or scan any library materials.  I was extremely pissed when I found this out, only slightly mollified by the fact that nearly all his books are now available in Toronto.  I sat down and read through two collections and some broadsheets that were only available in Hamilton.  I tried to take photos of the best poems, but I honestly don't know how they turned out.  I may see if one or two of the collections can be requested through Interlibrary Loan, but I certainly don't think I'll make the trek over to Hamilton again...

I wrapped up just after 4 and then went over to the farmer's market, which is in the same building.  I didn't have time to eat lunch but grabbed a cookie.  Walking around downtown, I ran across a music shop.  While the vinyl prices were absurd, I did get a few used CDs.  I kept walking around and saw that a Route 5 bus was pulling up, so I jumped on that.  I think I probably should have held out for a 5B, though this did eventually get me close to where I was going in Dundas.

Then I ate at an Indian place.  It was ok, though I would have preferred going at lunch when you can get 2 curries for some variety.  I didn't really liked what I had that much, but I think I just was unlucky.  A lot of the other menu items looked pretty good from what I could see.

I still had some time to kill, so I walked over to the Dundas Little Theatre and sat down outside and read more of The Night Alphabet.  I have to admit, it had some interesting moments, but kind of read like an extreme version or even a parody of radical feminist literature.  If I had more charge on my phone, I might have abandoned it and read The Chinese Groove instead.  

At 7, I got into the theatre and booked a cab for 10:30 (with pretty much my last gap of juice on my phone...).  I think the cast did a pretty good job, but, sadly, this just isn't a very good play.  The cop talk is straight out of a dozen better cop movies and tv shows.  It all felt completely fake.  And the main character (the "lobby hero") is completely annoying.  Obviously, had I known everything, I would have not made the trip.  I was pleased to find that the show actually wrapped up almost 10 minutes sooner than I expected, and also the cab showed up 5 minutes early as well, so I had plenty of time to get back to the Hamilton GO Centre and catch the 11 pm bus back to Union.  That part of the evening did go better than expected, though the cab ride was certainly pricey.  As it happens, it was period 3 of Game 7 between the Leafs and Boston, and the game was still 0-0 at that point.  By the time I got back to Toronto, I saw a lot of very sombre faces, so it was clear that the Leafs had not pulled it off after all.  I managed to hop on the subway around midnight and finished up The Night Alphabet to round off a fairly exhausting day.

I'm scheduled to go off to the gym and get groceries tomorrow morning, but I'm not entirely sure I can follow through, at least with the gym.  I guess we'll see how I feel in the morning...

Plans for the Day (May 2024)

I will briefly sketch out what is supposed to happen today, and then tonight (or tomorrow), I can circle back if things went wildly off track.  I'm going to run down to Union Station with my son, who is heading back to Ottawa on the train.  I will then catch the next bus to Hamilton.  I should be getting in close to 2 pm, and ideally quite a bit sooner than that.

I'm going to head over to the main branch of the Hamilton Library to look up books by Chris Pannell.  Now this is a bit weird.  There was a significant period of time where none of his books were in TPL or Robarts.  I remember this, because I actually asked a work colleague who lived in Hamilton to borrow them for me.  Pannell is a Hamilton-based poet and might even have been its poet laureate for a year or two.  It never worked out with my co-worker, so I decided I should combine a visit to Dundas Little Theatre (to see Lobby Hero) with a trip to the library.  I was starting to get a bit bent out of shape when I found out that two of the books I was going to look at were actually in the Dundas branch and not the main branch, and I don't think it is feasible to get to both branches (without a car at any rate).  Then I circled back and found that the books in question were in Robarts after all.  Weird, thought I.  But I put a hold on them, and continued planning.  Then this morning I went and checked the TPL, and they had all of Pannell's poetry collections, so I don't really need to go to the Hamilton Library after all.  (Though the Sunday matinee was sold out, so changing plans doesn't really make sense at this point.)  I know for a fact that none of these libraries had them at the time I was looking, so this definitely seems pretty strange.  But good news for poetry lovers in Toronto...

Assuming there is a bit of time, I'll probably run over to the Art Gallery of Hamilton, but I think I'll only go upstairs where the gallery is free, since the paid exhibits just don't hold a lot of appeal.  Then I'll catch the #5 bus from downtown to Dundas and get something to eat, and then slowly make my way over to the theatre.  I really hope it doesn't rain as much as they expect, or at least not in Hamilton, as I don't think there is anywhere to hang out for an hour before the play starts.  I'm feeling a bit anxious, as it looks like it won't actually wrap up until 10:30, and then there is a bus back to Toronto at 11 and then next one after that is midnight.  So I will definitely have to have a cab waiting at the theatre door to get me back downtown pronto.  

I'm not exactly loving it, but I expect to wrap up Joelle Taylor's The Night Alphabet today, so I can drop it off at Robarts tomorrow when I pick up the Pannell books.  Otherwise, I probably would have taken Nicholas Nickleby along.  I'm not really sure when I will find the time to read that, though I guess I will just keep chipping away at it, in between other things.  In the end I didn't really love Shteyngart's Our Country Friends and I thought the way he "cleverly" name-checked Boccaccio with a character named Dee Cameron but then didn't have the characters tell each other any stories, was actually pretty lame.  This review is pretty close to my views on the book.  I am finding Naben Ruthnum's A Hero of Our Time to be quite good so far.  I do worry that it cuts pretty close to the main throughline of the play about planners that I am writing, though the way that the young but fairly ruthless characters achieve their ambitions are probably different enough.  Nonetheless, I will probably find a couple of riffs on corporate life are now off-limits to me (sad), but I'll just finish it off now anyway, and then read the last (for now) pandemic novel, Rosenblum's These Days are Numbered.  After this, I suspect I will alternate chunks of Nickleby and the Heptameron, and then Rushdie's Victory City and Koestler's Darkness at Noon and Dawn Powell's The Golden Spur.  Somewhere along the way, I think I will tackle Oblomov as well.  Unless I take a summer reading break, or do a lot of travel out to California, this may well take me into the fall.

Assuming I am not completely stuck in Hamilton and I get some rest tonight, I plan on taking a few more CDs over to BMV.  I was pleased that they bought most of the CDs I brought over last time, even the classical sets!, and I have a fair number of CDs I would really love to clear out of my office space, to help get me moving on cleaning and reorganizing it.  I am currently planning on seeing District 9 at Carlton at 1, and then an animated film called Mars Express over at TIFF at 4:15.  But I have a bit of other work I should try to wrap up, and I may have to scale back my ambitions a bit.  We shall see.  As always, I am just a bit too ambitious for my own good.  (I did manage to get over to the AGO on Wed., now that the striking workers settled with management, so at least I can cross that off the list!  I didn't really love the Making Her Mark exhibit because the time period is far outside the art I like.  They are supposed to open up a modernist art exhibit in mid to late May, and that will be much more my cup of tea...)

Strange Saturday

Yesterday did not go at all as I planned, but I suppose things worked out ok, aside from the fact I am dog-tired.  I had a very clear vision of planning to wrap up the Canadian taxes and also dropping off some music for sale at BMV.  (I had taken the stuff over on Tues. after work, but it was after 6, which is when they stop looking at buying material of any sort.  This means effectively that I am not likely to make it in time during the week and have to go on the weekend.)

I did get through the taxes, though I have to admit I know I didn't do them to the best of my abilities.  I think I may have left some money on the table by not claiming the foreign tax credit.  And so forth.  Everything just dragged and was particularly hard this time around.  I'm not really sure why this year was so terrible, but it really was for both US and Canadian taxes.  Sadly, next year will probably be just as challenging.

Anyway, by the time I wrapped it up, it was just about noon (and I had long ago abandoned the idea of getting over to BMV).  I was slated to see a play at Crow's Theatre at 1:30.  I had been so sure I would be in and out of the office that I had left my glasses at home.  Rookie mistake.  Since it was raining and I hadn't ridden my bike, I was pretty sure that I would just be cutting it too close by taking transit home rather than to the theatre.  So I sprung for a cab, which is incredibly rare for me.

With that, I was able to get back, grab my glasses and get over to see Huff at Crow's Theatre.  What happened next was a little hard to believe.  Huff starts out with Cliff Cardinal with a plastic bag over his head in a simulated suicide attempt.  He got about three minutes in, and stopped the performance.  He ripped the bag off and said that his body just wouldn't let him go on and the show was over and then left the stage.  The audience sat around for a few minutes, before eventually the manager came over and said that they would be arranging for refunds.  As you can imagine, things were pretty somber and some people were extremely put out, having braved the traffic and the weather to come out for the show.

I went over to the library and dropped off a fairly overdue book and picked up a couple of books on hold for me.  Then I did some grocery shopping, getting everything I should need for the recipe I am making this week.  Oh, and I ran into Staples and got a new ink cartridge and was able to resurrect my printer.  Score!  Then I fired off an email to Crow's, asking about the various refund options.  They got back to me quite quickly saying that, while they preferred people pick up an extra ticket to their next show, The Wrong Bashir, there were a few tickets remaining to Huff's final two performances: 7:30 in the evening and then a Sunday matinee.  I couldn't go on Sunday, so I asked about rebooking for the evening, though I thought the chances were pretty strong that whatever was bothering Cliff was going to carry over to the next show.  Still, it was worth a gamble.  I was a bit surprised when they said they were able to make the switch.  Definitely one of the advantages of living relatively close to the theatre is that I am able to come back on short notice!

It was just short of 5 pm after all these various tasks, so I ran up to the Shoppers on Danforth and mailed off the taxes, so I am done for the year.  Whew!  Apropos of the vagaries of the postal system, it looks like Amazon is about to ship me the last Krazy Kat volume, and I have to decide if I am going to get some of the back copies of the dailies from the 1910s (through eBay).  And I am waiting on Cela's The Hive, since my brother didn't remember to bring it when we met up in Seattle, so he's just going to ship it to me.  (It's just as well, since I didn't get nearly as much reading done on these recent trips as I had expected...)

I decided that I would bike to Crow's (since the rain had finally stopped).  That way if Cliff flaked out again, I would just head straight over to The Rex to see Neil Swainson playing.  I had planned on getting over there just after 8 pm, but thought the Huff gamble/gambit was worth taking.

I was really holding my breath the first couple of minutes, but Cliff got past the part where his head is in a bag, and things seemed quite promising.  There was a tense moment when someone's phone rang, and he came fairly close to stopping the whole performance when the audience member was incredibly stubborn about not taking out their phone and turning it off, but we fortunately got past that.  It is a tough play, so I can see why this might well be the last chance to see him doing it himself, and I am glad that I did get to see it in the end.  The show wrapped at 9, and I zoomed over to The Rex.  I got there just as they were playing the last song of the first set.  Also, it was quite crowded, and it wasn't clear if I would even get in!  In the end, I got a seat at a weird back table.

I was able to get Neil to sign an imported CD from his days with the Woody Shaw band.  He had never heard of this CD, so I said I would try to get him a ripped copy the next time he is at The Rex, which should be June.  The second set was great, and I managed to write out a decent chunk of a scene from my "planner play."  So a quite overstuffed day, but a good, if exhausting, one.  I perhaps should try to make it over to the gym Sunday morning, but I suspect I will want to sleep in a bit.  I think the main goal is to try to get over to BMV fairly soon after they open (at noon) and then hit Robarts and then see a concert at Koerner Hall at 3.  I may try to get to bed early after all that.

I was planning on taking on some thoughts about all the double bills and overstuffed days from the past couple of months, but this post is already too long.  Until next time.  Ciao!

Two Trips (and Taxes)

I have been particularly bad about updating the blog, but I had my reasons.  Two weeks ago, I was gone almost the entire week for a business trip.  In fact, I had to leave Sunday evening because the main reason for going was to drop in on the TransLink model users' group, which was Monday morning out in Vancouver!  I also really wanted to see Shakespeare Bash'd do their staged reading of Knight of the Burning Pestle.  So I pushed to get one of the latest flights that I could, which I think was 10 pm.  If the reading had been just a bit shorter or the Dundas streetcar ran a bit more on time, I might actually have run into MOCA, though I'm sure I'll have other opportunities before the new group show closes.  

As it turned out, I had a lot of time to kill at Pearson, so I worked a bit on a bid for the new transit vision for Surrey and eventually read a bit.  It was a game-time decision, but I took Nicholas Nickelby instead of Oliver Twist, in part because Oliver is somewhat shorter, and I thought it might be more likely I could just read that as part of my regular reading (and didn't need the boost of a long train or plane ride).  It might be just as well I did bring that for reasons I'll get into a bit later.*  However, I really read very light on any of the plane rides, except for Tues. afternoon when I went off to SFO.  All the other times, I did my best to sleep on the plane.  I wouldn't say it was a wasted opportunity, but I just hadn't expected it to play out that way.

I got to Vancouver just after midnight, but it took forever to get off the plane and then get my luggage from the belt.  I decided not to risk running over to the Canada Line, since the last train was around 1 am.  I took a 5 minute cab ride to the hotel and crashed.  I think in the end, I left around 6:45 to try to get out to Sapperton (in New Westminster) by 8:30.  I actually had to take everything with me, since I was going to transfer to a downtown hotel after work.

The meeting went well, and I saw a lot of consultants I used to work with, though nearly all the modelling team joined since I left TransLink.  I actually managed to eat lunch with them.  Then I had a meeting at 3.  It took a very long time to get the wifi working, since in fact it was a largely virtual meeting.  Then I hung around for another hour or so, and met a former work colleague, since we were going to have dinner together downtown.  (I may have already mentioned that the weather was pretty overcast and in fact rained on and off all day.  Given that the eclipse wasn't going to be that special in Vancouver, no one bothered to go out to see it.  I was really sad to hear that the weather didn't cooperate much in Toronto either, and in fact the sky cleared up after the eclipse was over, though at least it got really dark and eerie.  Just in general, Toronto weather never cooperates for anything like this, though the partial eclipse in 2017 was an exception...)

Tues. I went over to the company offices, and I had a few phone calls to deal with.  I gave a lunch and learn on post-COVID forecasting.  Four people from TransLink showed up in person, and quite a number were on-line.  Then 3 of them were able to grab coffee afterwards, and we chatted about scenario forecasting and their new survey.  The weather was much nicer, and I took the Sea Bus over to North Vancouver and had dinner there.

Wed. I had a morning meeting quite close to the office, and then a 11:15 meeting at Metrotown in Burnaby.  I was a little early, so I just went a bit further on the Sky Train and took photos and videos of the view.  I do miss the views from Vancouver, which are among the best I've ever experienced.  

The second meeting also went well, then I had lunch in Metrotown.  While a lot of restaurants had changed, there was still a fast-food Indian place.  It was good, though certainly much spicier than I remembered!

I had the rest of the afternoon free, so I went to the Vancouver Art Gallery.  Most of it wasn't all that interesting, though the had recently rehung a bunch of Emily Carr paintings.

I still had some time, so I went into the Bill Reid Gallery for the first time.  It's pretty small but focused on his art, as well as rotating through other First Nations artists.

Then I went over to catch the Amtrak down to Seattle.  It wasn't a bad trip, though it definitely shouldn't take as long as it does.  I managed to finish up a shortish novel (Paradise Travel by Jorge Franco).  In general, I was reading a lot more of The Decameron and very little Dickens, but I did want to see if I could just leave this somewhere in Seattle, which I did in the end.

Seattle was a bit more frantic.  I ended up meeting two mobility data reps and someone in our Seattle office.  Then I met up with my brother for an extended lunch at Spice King (an Indian place).  Then I went over to the Seattle Art Museum.  I was moderately excited that I had a second chance to see Jaune Quick-to-See Smith after seeing this massive retrospective at the Whitney last year.  It's possible that some pieces were left out, but this felt a bit easier to get through in one pass.

I think the exhibit only runs through mid May, so definitely check it out if you are near Seattle.  They also had a pretty nice Calder exhibit running as well.  I was a bit surprised that they didn't have any Mark Tobey on display.  I think this is the first time since I've started visiting that they didn't have anything of his on view.

After the museum, I went over to the Target, which is basically next door.  Had I realized that everything over at Pike's Place Market shut down at 5 sharp, I would probably have rearranged my visit slightly.  I was a bit bummed that I didn't get a chance to look at any of the used book stores in the market (not that I had much space left in my bag!) and essentially all the restaurants closed up as well.  In the end, I found another Indian place, which was fine, but I would have preferred Thai or Chinese, since I had had Indian twice before in as many days!  After dinner, I grabbed my bag from the hotel and headed over to the airport.  The flight from Seattle to Detroit was uneventful, but in Detroit there was some issue with the plane and we got in an hour late.  At least customs was a breeze.  In an ideal world, I would have just taken the day off, but I had some work to do and to conduct a hiring interview.  Then I was seeing a concert at Roy Thompson Hall (a combination of The Four Seasons and The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires).  It was nice, but I was pretty tired and glad to get home and rest a bit.

In general the weekend was quite busy.  Sat. I saw a matinee performance of George Brown's production of As You Like It, then worked on taxes some more, then saw Shaniqua in Abstraction at Crow's Theatre.  (I wasn't that crazy about Shaniqua unfortunately.)  Then I did more taxes after I got home.  Sunday I met a friend to see El Terremoto at Tarragon, then wrapped up the evening with Lucas Hnath's A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney.  I really hadn't planned on seeing this, but I had to move the date from the middle of the next week to that weekend.  It was definitely interesting, and they made Walt to be a right bastard.  One super annoying thing on Sunday was that it appears my printer has died, which then made filing taxes extra complicated.  I had to file the US taxes after work on Monday, instead of around lunch time which had been my original plan.  This is by far the latest I have filed them, but I just wasn't able to wrap them up between all the travel and waiting around on some critical documents from my bank.  Oh well.  Hopefully, next year will be better.  For the Canadian taxes, my wife's are ready to go, and I am planning on wrapping my up this evening.

Monday was a relatively normal day, but Tuesday, I flew off midday to San Francisco.  Again, I got there far too early, and I mostly used the spare time to read.  I had actually managed to get halfway through The Decameron by this point.  Sadly, the flight was fairly delayed, and I had a small child behind me kicking my seat on a regular basis and an infant up in front that was crying a lot.  And we had turbulence for about 3 hours out of a 5.5 hour flight, so people were pretty cranky about not being able to get to the washrooms.  I was supposed to get there before a group of people flying in from Vancouver, but in the end I help them up for close to an hour, which was stressful all the way around.

We actually ran into SF for dinner, which was probably wise as there was nothing to eat in San Ramon that late in the evening.  Then we had two days of work, which aren't particularly interesting, aside from a very interesting opportunity that may manifest in LA.  (More on that at a more appropriate time.)  I was able to run by SF MOMA on Thurs.  Someone in San Ramon office was able to just drop me off at the hotel on his way home.  I was able to see almost the entire museum.  However, I couldn't get tickets to Yayoi Kusama's Infinite Love for Thurs.  I decided to shuffle Friday's agenda and go to SF MOMA first (instead of the Legion of Honor).  SF MOMA doesn't open until 10 am, however.  I ended up getting a Muni 1-day pass and took the cable car back and forth a bit, then went over to SFMOMA.  I managed to get a timed ticket for Infinite Love at 11.  I looked at a few rooms that I had hit too quickly on Thurs.  Infinite Love is pretty neat, especially the second room.  I've seen some of her infinity rooms before of course, but it was still worth it, especially the second room even though you don't get more than 2 minutes in each room!

If I had been just a bit quicker on the draw, I would have gotten a great photo from outside the Infinity Room before the door shut.  C'est dommage.  

Then I took the bus way out west to the Legion of Honor.  In addition to some pretty interesting paintings in the permanent collection, they have a special exhibit called Japanese Prints in Transition.

Gustave Caillebotte, Sunflowers along the Seine, ca. 1885-86

 

Masami Teraoka, 31 Flavors Invading Japan/French Vanilla, 1979

I was a bit ahead of schedule, in part because I managed to catch the 18 bus down the hill.  So I went down to Fulton and then into the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park.  I didn't pay for the special exhibit this time.  Unfortunately, my phone battery completely died, so I didn't manage to take any photos.  I probably would have taken 10-15.  Oh well.  The ones that I cared the most about are in the books about the de Young that I own, but it is probably just as well that their Stuart Davis was not on view at the moment, as that would have been terribly aggravating (to not take a photo of it).

Because the phone died, I had to retrieve my charger from my luggage (in order to prove I was a member of the AGO with reciprocal privileges) instead of going straight on to the Asian Art Museum.  Well, I also hadn't had any lunch, so I grabbed a sandwich at a French bistro.  This meant that in the end, I got to the Asian Art Museum at 4:15 instead of 3:45 or so.  So I did see the Asian Art Museum, but it was a pretty rushed visit.  Fortunately, I have been there a couple of times before and a lot of it seemed pretty similar to previous visits.  I did snap a photo of Ganesh, as is my habit.

After all this, I didn't feel like walking around with my luggage, so I just caught the BART to SFO.  It was a good if somewhat overstuffed day trip.  Again, I had too much time at the airport, though security wasn't as much of a breeze this time around.  The trip back only takes about 4.5 hours, but I was in the same row as an infant.  The baby was fine for the first two hours, but then was fussy and crying most of the last 2+ hours, and then as we descended another young child across the aisle started crying.  So not an ideal flight, but still better than the flight to San Francisco.

I got through Customs and came straight home.  I actually had to go back way out west to the Theatre Centre to see Mad Madge, which is all about Margaret Cavendish, who was a female author during the English Restoration.  They did take quite a few liberties with her life, but it was quite entertaining.  I also managed to see the cherry blossoms at Robarts, which I generally prefer to making the trek out to High Park.

Then the day ended with a concert by Oumou Sangare.  This was quite a nice concert, very upbeat.  She managed to get the whole audience to their feet by the end, which is no small feat at Koerner Hall! 

I had planned to go over to Hamilton to see Lobby Hero, but I was just worn out with all the travel.**  I ended up going to the gym (late) and getting groceries instead.  No Frills officially closed on Sat. (due to the Ontario Line construction), which is incredibly sad and inconvenient for us.  So I will have to work extra hard to combine trips over the bridge with shopping at Food Basics.  The rest of the day was spent cleaning up computer files and working on taxes (and blogging...).

Edit (04/28): I completely dropped the thread on The Decameron.  I did wrap it up at the end of second trip, though I cannot remember if I literally finished it on the UP Express trip back from Pearson or later that day.  This is actually my second time through it!  I had forgotten just how bawdy some of the stories are, including a story that starts out as a wife-swapping escapade that ends in a happy, open marriage!  There is even a story (or two) about homosexual acts that doesn't end in eternal damnation.  I do think it is somewhat unfortunate that the final story is Patient Griselda, which is also retold in Chaucer's The Clerk's Tale and then recast again in Shakespeare's The Winter Tale.  It's basically about a young woman, elevated from peasant status to become a lord's wife.  The lord then tests her patience (& virtues) by taking away her children and saying they had been murdered, but she continues to submit to his whims and then everything works out in the end.  Margaret Atwood was so bothered by this story that she wrote Impatient Griselda, where the perverse lord is murdered (by aliens perhaps) and then people live happily ever after.  Anyway, it is not a particularly uplifting story...  But I am through it (again).  On to Shteyngart!

* I see that I dropped this thread.  Basically, I agreed to gatecheck my bag on the way back, and it rained and I guess they left the bag on the tarmac or something, and Nicholas Nickleby got a bit water-damaged.  I'll still be able to read it, but it's going straight to the Little Free Library as soon as I finish it.  (Probably better that than Oliver Twist, though the odds I will ever read Oliver Twist twice are next to nil!)  Maybe the next time I read a big chunk of NN will be on the trip out to Hamilton.

** It actually runs two more weeks, and I may go the last weekend, especially if I can spend most of the day at the Hamilton Library looking into some poetry books that are in their collection and not in TPL or Robarts!  So that's my tentative plan at the moment, but it may get derailed.