Longer, long-distance reads

As I just explained, I really don't want to be making the trip between Toronto and L.A. often, and I probably will quit my job if this becomes a regular trip I am expected to make.  I don't mind going to the West Coast in general (in moderation), and I do hope that we win some work in Metro Vancouver -- and that I can make a trip to Vancouver, perhaps in late July or August.

Nonetheless, I probably should make a list of the books I would be reading on really long flights (or indeed the train to Ottawa or Montreal, which I am likely to be taking in late May and then June).

I was looking over this post (about my reading gaps) and seeing which really long books I still need to read, which is now slightly different from what I was thinking here.  It seems as if I only could read two more novels by Dickens, I think it should be David Copperfield and Great Expectations.  Great Expectations is not actually all that long, but David Copperfield is.  However, I think I would probably read Dombey and Son next.

Followed by:
The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies (reread)
David Copperfield
Terra Nostra by Fuentes
The Golden Notebook by Lessing (reread)
Emma by Austen
The Bride of Texas by Skvorecky
He Knew He Was Right by Trollope
Larva by Rios
The Brothers Karamazov (reread)
Divine Days by Leon Forrest
Buddenbrooks by Mann
Bleak House (reread)
The Recognitions by Gaddis
Gravity's Rainbow by Pynchon (reread)
The Power Broker by Caro
Women and Men by McElroy

I don't really think I will stick to this order, but it helps organize my thoughts on reading or rereading really long books.  As I said, I think I would quit long before I made 15 or so flights out to L.A.  

It may well take me through retirement to get to all of these really long books (as it is not comfortable to fit them into my regular reading cycle).  At that point, I would probably read Fontane's After the Storm, Tolstoy's War and Peace (and perhaps reread Anna Karenina) and then Grossman's Stalingrad and Life and Fate.

Needing a Break

I'm just super frustrated by so many things right now, including that my email provider completely swallowed an email to a friend, despite my having tried to save it as a draft a few times.  I just don't feel like going back and retyping it, even though the note wasn't especially long.

I'm really frustrated by everything going on south of the border and wondering why the Dems just seem so completely feckless and disorganized.  I'm really unhappy about hearing all the issues people are facing crossing the border.  While I am expecting no issues on my upcoming trip to L.A., I am at the point where if I need to make this trip on a frequent basis (due to work), then I will find a new job.  I probably should find a whole new line of work, but it's a little late for that unfortunately.

I also just read an article about how Doug Ford is going to be ripping out even more bike lanes and telling cyclists to fuck off and go use the side streets (aside from the fact that Toronto doesn't actually have parallel side streets to its main roads).  Unfortunately, this is a case where the institutional power is all concentrated at the Provincial level, and the courts have told dissenting municipalities to go fuck off as well.  I'm feeling we are at the the point where all civil, democratic means of changing the situation for the better have failed, and we shall see what comes next.  I personally cannot defend or support "the system" any longer, even though what comes next will likely be even worse. 

I'm awfully depressed about everything, and it is hard to stay motivated.  And then my will power slips (because nothing really matters), and I get frustrated that I am gaining weight instead of losing it.  I am about 5 pounds worse off than when I really started to watch what I was eating (back in the fall I guess).  I briefly made some progress, and then winter hit and work got really terrible, and I gained about 10 pounds.  I think I have lost about 5 of that, but I need to lose 15 pounds in the next two months.  That is unlikely to happen, but being back on the bike does help.  And this week I will make it to the swimming pool twice and the gym once.  Maybe I'll actually get to the point where I made it to the gym twice and the pool twice, though that will likely be a challenge, given how often I am working late or going to plays or concerts or indeed just being away from home (and finding hotel exercise rooms to be quite pitiful). 

It's interesting because I have been at least considering whether I should try Ozempic or one of the other wonder drugs.  There is so much stigma around them -- because of course "if you had the will power," you could lose the weight on your own.  But that's likely not the case for genetic reasons, as well as the fact that junk food is cheaper than proper food, and we are all over-stressed these days.  Someone (not me) started a thread about this on a bulletin board, and within minutes someone came on to basically say that once they buckled down, they were able to lose all this weight and that the drugs were essentially cheating.  It was such a confirmation of this article.  Indeed, the guy circled back another time to do even more fat shaming, and I would have blocked him, but the board's software is so out of date, I can't do that any longer.  Sigh.  But I do wonder about the long-term impacts of taking these drugs, and in fact there was a very recent study saying that the drugs were incredible, but once you start, you are essentially locked into taking them forever, as the minute you stop, the weight comes back incredibly fast.  Super depressing...

While I have stayed super busy and engaged in the arts scene, I missed out on two events that I really wanted to see.  In one case it was totally my fault, whereas in the other case it was 10% (at max) my fault and basically the fault of the theatre company for completely failing to advertise their event.  The DSO was going to play Shostakovitch's 10th Symphony, and I had pencilled in on my calendar forever, but I think I got very busy due to getting ready for a conference and somehow I never ordered my digital ticket in time.  I probably thought there was a Sunday concert, and I could stream it after that, but it was gone.  I emailed immediately afterward asking if it was possible to buy into the stream for another day or two, but I never got a response.  There is still a chance that the concert or part of it will turn up in their digital archives, but it is still really frustrating, and I just don't know how I let this slip.

The other one is even more frustrating because if you miss a live theatre event, it can be years or even decades before there is another chance to see it (and it is even harder now that I pretty much am ruling out traveling to the States for 3+ years unless I absolutely must for work).  I had been checking out the upcoming productions at DPS and Concord Theatricals (formerly Samuel French), and I had noticed a few plays of interest coming up in Toronto, including Posner's Life Sucks and a student production of Arcadia.  I have seen Life Sucks in Chicago but really wanted to see it a second time.  I forgot to get my blog post up in time, and then got busy.  So that was on me.  But then I never heard anything about it.  It was a two week run that was completely under the radar  No emails from Theatre Centre or prompting from any of my actor friends.  And SFYS is defunct where I might have heard about it.  No reviews in the papers (since only one or two plays get reviewed each month these days, and pretty much only Coal Mine, Soulpepper and Crow's get ink -- Tarragon has been completely shut out this season).  Mooney's closed down, and there just is not a decent site that gathers up all the plays in a timely fashion.  I finally saw Slotkin review it but it was basically the last day, and I simply couldn't rearrange my schedule to go.  I am truly pissed.  And it doesn't help that I went back to DPS to see if it was playing somewhere else, and they seem to have revamped the website to eliminate the Current Production search feature, which sucks beyond belief.

I had stumbled across a poster about Three Penny Opera over at Video Cabaret, but lost track of dates and then I found out it was closing this weekend.  I went to buy tickets but it was completely sold out, except Thurs. when I am off to The Fox to see Woman in the Dunes.  I did put myself on the wait list for Friday and Sat. evening.  If that doesn't pan out, I might go back over to The Fox on Sat. to see Cronenberg's The Shrouds, as this date works a bit better for me than the late May dates at the Revue.  (I was thinking it might turn up at Market Square, but so far no.)  I mean I did end up scoring a ticket from the wait list for Lowest of the Low, so it might happen, but I can't count on that.  I think this is a case where it is 50/50 my fault for dropping the ball but equally their generally poor promotion (outside their circle of friends and fellow students who have managed to sell out three shows, so more power to them but sad for me...).

Anyway, just a few more things to be disgruntled about.  I guess it could be worse.  I could be a Leafs fan...

Edit (05/16): I think I am going to be extremely sore for a while about missing Life Sucks.  It really wouldn't have taken more than one email notice from Theatre Centre.  I would have been able to squeeze it in somehow, even if it meant rescheduling A Strange Loop and paying the $8 charge this time around.  In fact, I wouldn't say I'm sorry I saw A Strange Loop, but I didn't like it very much, and I would absolutely have preferred going to see Life Sucks instead.  I did manage to get off the wait list for Three Penny Opera, so that's at least one fewer regrets.  And I managed to score a couple of free tickets to some plays in development over at Canadian Stage in a few weeks (again coming off the wait list for a piece by Erin Shields).  So that helps a bit.  Also, when I am extremely grouchy, sometimes donating to charity puts me in a slightly better mood.  So far I have donated to the Canadian Red Cross and the Heart and Lung Foundation.  I'll likely give to the Toronto Star Outdoor Fund this afternoon, and that may also help a bit.

Nickled and Dimed to Death

I guess these are all small things, but oh so annoying.

I am heading over to see A Strange Loop at Soulpepper on Sat.  I think I'll find it interesting, though I am definitely not the target audience, and indeed I generally am not that big on musicals in the first place, with a few key exceptions.  Anyway, what was not made clear (or at least I definitely missed it) is this is such a challenging role that the lead is taking off every Wed. and Sat. matinee!  (Honestly, that feels a bit extreme.)  Of course, I had already booked a ticket for a Sat. matinee and thought, well I really ought to switch that.  There was a bit of a hassle, and I had to downgrade my seats a bit, but I managed to get this done.  And then after I thought everything was settled, a different person from the Box Office wrote me back saying that there was an $8 ticket transfer fee.  I wrote back a pretty salty email, saying that this was part of a subscription, as well as I thought it was misleading to not have the lead actually in every performance, and I would never have booked that date in the first place, etc.  I guess I just really was annoyed by the constant nickle and diming, esp. as the original person I was talking with did not mention an extra fee.  They ended up just sending me the ticket without collecting the extra fee, though maybe I used up all of my karma for the week.

I had recently put in an order from Dusty Groove.  It's quite a decent jazz store in Chicago, and they do a good job with shipping items, even internationally.  I definitely miss dropping in on the store, which I used to do all the time while living in Chicago.  At any rate, I ended up putting in an order.  Normally I ship to a friend still living in Chicago, but I won't be going back to Chicago any time soon, so I investigated the cost to ship up to Toronto.  It definitely cost more but not a ridiculous amount more, and this was offset by not paying Illinois sales tax.  However, when the package arrived, it was over the de minimus limit (which was supposed to be raised in any event), and I ended up paying $20 extra dollars in GST.  Which makes it that much less likely I'll be ordering again from them in the near future.  Darn it...

But the most annoying has to be this poster I was working on for a conference that was in town.  First off, I was never granted permission to go, even though I had the poster accepted and it was just down the street.  So that really dampened my enthusiasm.  Then my hours supporting the other conference activities were cut substantially, and I ended up having to do the research for the poster on my own time, which understandably started to drag...  I did finally pull all the data and putting the poster together (pretty late at night), but I was also disheartened by the fact that the data didn't line up with what I was expecting to see, which made it particularly hard to come up with any punchy findings.  So generally it was a disappointment all the way around.  Anyway, I finally got it done, though far too close to the conference deadline, but then I needed to actually print the poster.  I uploaded it to the Staples website after asking someone who said it would be ready the next day.  Well, they definitely gave me bad advice.  The next day I waited quite some time and then finally started calling in the afternoon, but I never managed to talk with anyone in the print shop.  The conference had already started by this point!  

This morning I decided enough was enough, and I biked over in the morning, only to find that the poster still wasn't done.  However, if I forked over another $20, they would turn it into a rush job, and I would have it in about 30 minutes.  So I did that, though with very poor grace.  I think next time I will just go to The Printing House instead, which is just a bit further up University Ave.

So just a few of the many interactions leaving me annoyed these days...

 

A Busy, Busy April

As April comes to a close (with more unseasonably cold weather and even a hail storm, though one that seems to have bypassed Toronto), I thought I should write down the highlights of what I got up to.  As I have been moaning, I spent an awful lot of late nights on my US and Canadian taxes, though, in the end, everything got mailed in with one day to spare in both cases.

I saw Esprit Orchestra three times(!) with several highlights including Vivier's Lonely Child.  And I saw Amici perform, primarily pieces off of their Armenian Chamber Music CD, along with a few other "Hidden Treasures."  I saw Logan's Red up at the Theatre Centre.  It was a solid performance (and I'm glad I went), though I did see the original production in New York, and that is awfully hard to beat... 

I saw Godard's Une Femme est une Femme at the Fox, though I didn't care much for it at all.  I saw Certified Copy at the Paradise and was somewhat dissatisfied with the way information was withheld from the audience, though I certainly liked it more than the Godard film.  I followed that up the following day with Kurosawa's Yojimbo at the Revue, and that film I did enjoy a fair bit.

I was misled and didn't see a couple of David Lynch films on Good Friday as planned, though I did make it to the gym and then that evening I saw A Public Display of Affection at Crow's.  On Sat., I saw both parts of The Mahabharata at Canadian Stage, as well as hit a few art galleries in Yorkville and even went swimming.  That made for a very long day.  On Easter itself, I helped out with the neighbourhood Easter egg hunt (planting eggs not searching for them...) and then saw Pochsy Part IV at Video Cabaret.

Somewhere in there I ended up seeing The Little Prince at Theatre Passe Muraille.  I didn't care much for this at all, because I hadn't realized there would be no dialogue at all.  I had assumed there would be some dialogue (though interpreted in ASL).  I found it just too difficult to follow along -- and the story seemed to have been altered and stretched out beyond what I remember from French class.  Speaking of French, I received a free ticket to a different production at TPM called Cispersonnages en quête d'auteurice, which was indeed in French (though with super titles, so it wasn't that hard to follow).  This is a spin-off of the Pirandello play.  It's a bit hard to describe.  I didn't love it, but it was interesting.  I don't regret going at least.

Last Saturday, I went swimming, then went to Bau-Xi over on Dufferin.  The transit ride to get there was pretty bad, and I was not impressed with the new exhibits.  I made it back over to Tarragon, though I was about 10 minutes late to meet my friend.  We were there to watch Feast.  I thought individual scenes and characters were interesting, but did not find the ending remotely plausible for all kinds of reasons.  And there was absolutely no reason to make this a 2 hour play with no intermission!   I went back south with my friend to Osgoode.  I thought I would find something to eat on Queen Street.  I settled on Queen Mother Cafe, but it really was a not very appealing Thai-inspired dish.  I kind of doubt I'll go back.  Anyway, I went in to work (and work on taxes) for a couple of hours, and then back out to TPM to see the French play, as I mentioned.  At least I didn't get rained on, as I had feared.*

Sunday, I did not get up as early as I hoped, but I still made it to the gym and did the grocery shopping.  I made it to Union Station to catch the 12:30 bus out to Hamilton.  I was there to see the Helen McNicoll exhibit.  It was pretty good with a lot of paintings that are in a private collection and aren't displayed frequently at all.  I thought the exhibit only ran for another month, though perhaps it was extended through the end of August?  At any rate, it is worth checking out this spring.  I'll add a few shots from my visit later.  It was unfortunate that the Farmers Market at Jackson Square was closed on Sundays (I keep forgetting that detail), but I ended up catching the bus back and not having to wait too long.  It was probably the 3:50 bus, and we got in around 5:30.  (Traffic on the Gardiner was pretty slammed in both directions...)  I was able to finally wrap up Soseki's I am a Cat and started in a bit on Joy Williams's State of Grace.** 

I grabbed a bite at Kibo at Union, then went over to the office for the last plunge into taxes.  It was so late when I finished that the subway was no longer running!  I debated catching a cab, but in the end I waited for the King Streetcar and then walked home from Queen and Carlaw, since the overnight bus wasn't going to show up for ages.  I had kind of thought I would take Monday easy, but that didn't happen.  I put in essentially a full day at work, though I had to leave at 5:30 in order to pick up my bike from the bike shop before it closed.  Then I voted.  Then I turned in a library book.  Ideally I would have gone swimming, but I really was wiped out.

And I probably bit off a bit too much on Tues. as well.  I ended up working until 7:25 (partly on a bid for new work, as well as on the first draft of a conference deck) and then took the subway round the loop to Yonge & Dundas.  I walked over to Massey Hall with 10 minutes to spare and saw a huge line.  I almost gave up, but then the line started moving quickly, and I was able to get to the box office and scored a ticket to the Max Richter show.  It was a very hot ticket and had been sold out forever...  Indeed, there were quite a few people who bought standing room only tickets, which I thought was just absurd.  It was an obstructed view seat but on the main floor, and really the view wasn't too bad.  I had a very clear view of Richter himself and the first violin (and then the vocalist in the second half).  They decided to play not one, but two complete albums/compositions.  In the first half, it was In a Landscape.  After the break, they played The Blue Notebooks.  I enjoyed The Blue Notebooks more, particularly the ending of the piece.  But it did remind me of electronic mood music more than a contemporary classic concert.  It was worth seeing, but I wasn't really knocked out the way I was during the Steve Reich celebration a few years back.

I don't have much planned for the 30th, though I may try to go swimming after work.  I do have a pretty full agenda from May 1-4, however, so I guess I need to gear up for that.  And with that, I really do need to get some sleep.

 

* Somehow I totally forgot that after the French play on Sat., I took the Queen streetcar over to the Rex.  It was just after 9 (and the show had started at 8:30, so I hadn't missed all that much).  It was supposedly sold out, but they managed to find me an open seat (and in the front section even!).  The line-up was unusual: 2 guitars (Peter Bernstein and Lorne Lofsky), Neil Swainson on bass and a drummer.  I had actually stopped by on Friday at 6, but they were sold out for the evening sets and even the early set was pretty full, and I would have had to sit in the back, which I try to avoid.  I ended up taking the subway to College and seeing In the Mood for Love.  (I had tentatively pencilled it in for Sunday afternoon, and that would not have worked at all...)  So I was glad that I managed to see this group on Sat. as sort of a last minute add-on to an already busy day.

** I may have mentioned that I finished rereading Tim O'Brien's America Fantastica (for a book club at work!), which is quite dark and full of largely unredeemable characters and other characters that make terrible decisions.  It was clearly written as a response to Trump being in power, and frankly isn't as funny now that he is back in power and even worse than before.  There are some interesting parallels to Timothy Findley's Headhunter (another dark, flawed work).  I finished Abe's The Woman in the Dunes.  I'll still go see the movie at the Fox in a couple of weeks, but I don't think I'll bother with the book lecture.  I'm midway through rereading Carr's A Month in the Country, and thankfully this novel does stand up to a second reading.

 

A Dog's Breakfast

I think the first time I ever heard this term (or at least the first time it stuck with me) was 1993 when someone was predicting the federal election would result in a "dog's breakfast" with no party able to govern effectively.  As it happens, that didn't happen, and the Liberals under Jean Chrétien wiped out the Conservatives and had a stable majority government.  While it is a bit too early to tell, I worry a bit that last night's result will result in a weak minority government.  I mean there is no question that the Liberals cannot believe their luck (and will gladly take this result).  Not only did they avoid being wiped out, which clearly was going to happen under Trudeau, but Poilievre lost his seat!  I'm sure he'll be around carping for quite some time, but if the Conservatives were smart, they would dump him now and find someone less grating.  If the current projections hold, then the Liberals will come up 4 or 5 seats short of a majority, but the (very weakened) NDP will have 7 seats and could enter into a Supply and Confidence arrangement.  I think this could probably work, rather than the Liberals having to rely on the Bloc or hiving off a few Conservative votes now and again.  But if the math doesn't work after all the votes are counted, then we are looking at a really precarious government that would likely only last a year or two before going back to the polls.  So fingers crossed.

I'm still recovering from being up nearly all night doing taxes.  Last week I finished my son's, only to find that his T4 was completely incorrect.  He did have provincial taxes withheld but this wasn't indicated anywhere on the T4, so he will need to get that corrected and then refile them.  So infuriating and unfair.  I did get a modest refund, though I was expecting a much larger one.  As always, the issue ends up being the large bite that Ontario takes.  I think what continues to grate on me the most is that the marginal tax rate is pretty high in Ontario, but then they hide it.  So you calculate taxes and then have to pay not one but two surtaxes, i.e. tax on your tax, which brings you incredibly close to 50% marginal tax (and indeed 53% for anyone earning over $250K), and it just seems completely dishonest to me.  So I'm feeling very surly today.  It isn't just the tax (not that I enjoy paying these sneaky surtaxes), but that I am paying to support a bunch of provincial politicians that I despise and are making life worse most of the time for progressives in Toronto, by ripping out our bike lanes and weakening environmental laws and just being stupid and generally corrupt.  And we seem to have no way to get rid of them, as the voters are still punishing the provincial Liberals for the sins of the 2010s.  Sigh.

I did manage to do a few fun things over the weekend, and maybe tonight or tomorrow I can account for the time I was not doing taxes.  I'm actually going to run over to Massey Hall to see if any tickets opened up for Max Richter, but I think that's fairly unlikely, so I will probably have this evening to work on this, as well as a few other outstanding issues on my plate. 

Edit (11 pm): While there are two or three extremely tight ridings that will go to recounts, the unofficial count shows the Liberals at 169.  So very, very close to 172.  (Again, in their wildest dreams, the Liberals couldn't have expected this outcome, even a month or so ago.)  If I were Carney, I would probably cut a deal with the NDP to allow them to keep official party status (and not much more) in exchange for a Supply and Confidence arrangement (and just let the Conservatives' complaints about "corruption" roll off his back).  I think that is probably the stablest of any of the options, but I guess we'll find out what they decide to do.  I would definitely hope we don't go back to the polls for at least two more years.

So long, Cinemaclock

I've been more than a little annoyed at Cinemaclock for some time now, not least because whenever I get around to turning on Adblock (which I really should reinstate on the new computer), it completely blocks me from the service.  While I am not 100% against ad-revenue on principle, most of the time these ad-happy websites don't do any meaningful screening, and you can end up with some really annoying computer infections, so it doesn't seem reasonable to me to over-react when people try to keep their computers clean.  Nonetheless, that isn't really the issue.  The issue is the several times now that I have been given bad information from Cinemaclock, including the wrong time for Mickey 17 out at the Beaches, and then on Friday I had planned what would have been an incredible twofer of David Lynch movies at the cinema kitty-corner to the Eaton Centre.

I actually made an extra effort to get over to the gym early on Friday so that I could leave in time to make it to the 12:30 show.  For once, transit went super smoothly, and I made it there by 12:15.  Then I went up the many escalators, only to find that Mulholland Drive wasn't playing at all that day, and Lost Highway wasn't playing until the late evening.  They had nothing on at 12:30, and only Eraserhead at 1 (a film I didn't care for and have no intention of revisiting).  I was very clear on putting the schedule together, so someone screwed up, and I am not sure if it was the cinema itself or Cinemaclock, but I was beyond pissed to the point that I am going to make a conscious effort to block Cinemaclock from all my devices.  In addition, I don't plan on going back to the theatre at Yonge and Dundas (just as I am avoiding Beach Cinema).

So I went home in an incredibly foul mood.  This even spread to the point that I decided I didn't want to see Memento at Carlton Cinema, even though this had nothing to do with them.  I just decided this was a movie that I wasn't sure I really wanted to see, and I wanted the opportunity to stop the film if I didn't like it (as I generally don't care for gritty crime films, no matter how novel).  I will still see In the Mood for Love next week, though I will go straight to the Carlton website.

I took a nap and did a couple of other things (though I didn't make any appreciable headway on Canadian taxes), and then I saw A Public Display of Affection over at Crow's.  It wasn't the worst way to end the day (and in fact it is a very thoughtful piece on growing into a "gay elder" in Toronto), though I had such higher hopes for the day...

Taxes and Other Certainties

I wouldn't say I exactly procrastinated on the taxes, though it is true I didn't get too far on them on the weekend of the 5th-6th.  I was still pulling together lots of materials at this point, especially the small gifts to charity.  The only positive is that I need almost all the same material and even a bit more for CRA, so it won't take nearly as long to get started on them, though they do take twice as long, since I need to file completely separately from my wife.  Sigh.  Also I am mostly but not 100% finished with pulling together medical expenses.  This is likely going to be another year where this will be treated as a non-refundable credit, so I am not likely to owe too much to CRA, though I guess I'll know in a few more days.  (I am definitely not leaving it to the last minute like I usually do with the IRS.)

I'm struggling a bit to remember what I did on the previous weekend, though I remember I did bike around a fair bit, even though it was wet.  On Sat., I had tried to fit in a swimming session (since the Regent Park pool was closed).  I found a pool near Corktown, though I didn't actually get there until the pool hours were over.  They strongly warned me to not leave anything in the lockers, as there were massive security issues there.  The pool itself looks pretty nice, and I may go one of these days, though it isn't a free pool (like Regent Park and Jimmie Simpson).  I did hit the galleries in the Distillery, and a small gallery on Richmond near Jarvis, then went to Gallery Gevik in Yorkville.  I honestly can't remember if I did anything else that afternoon or evening, but I think it was mostly spent on taxes, esp. starting my son's.  I did spend a lot of time pulling bank statements together, but some were missing, and it took forever to try to track down some health expenses, though fortunately they don't matter for US taxes only Canadian taxes.  That Sunday I saw Esprit's concert, which featured a solo percussion piece, as well as a Vivier piece.

Over last week, I was mostly overwhelmed by work, but I did continue to pull receipts together.  As I mentioned, I finally managed to get to see Mickey 17.  I had been debating going to see The Little Prince at Theatre Passe Muraille (and they offered me free tickets!), but in the end I passed.  I may go this week possibly, depending on my mood.  Friday, I managed to see Godard's Une Femme est une Femme (literally catching the Lakeshore East train with one or two minutes to spare!  I didn't care much for it at all, and I feel you can already sense the contempt Godard has for conventions and certainly audiences that like movie conventions.  Also, I strongly disliked all the characters who were very unappealing to me.  I wish I had known how much I would have not liked this movie, but live and learn I guess.  

Then Sat. I did manage to get some swimming in, though only about half my normal laps.  Then I went to Gallery Gevik to look again at a small painting that is calling to me, along with a Yorkville gallery that had quite a few Letendre paintings, including a watercolor that is also calling to me (and somewhat blocked my interest in the painting at Gevik).  Then I ran into the AGO to see a new exhibit I missed last time.  (It really wasn't worth my time...)  Then I swung through Richmond 401 and used the cheque that I thought I was going to use at Gevik to pay for the framing of a piece I bought at Abbozzo.  

Then I finally started in on the taxes, and it took pretty much all night.  The worst was I started with the FBAR, which has the worst consequences if you don't file it.  I somehow put it in for the 2023 tax year and used the wrong file name as well!  I wasn't even that tired, so that was an extremely bad sign.  Over the next couple of days, I tried to tell the system to delete it, and that this was not an attempt to amend my 2023 filing, which was on time a year back.  I finally got a note from the government saying that they couldn't delete the improper filing, but that they had noted my comments.  I guess because I then filed the FBAR again with the same info but correct year and file name, that's the best I can do.

I took the forms home for my wife to sign.  I thought I would sleep in, but in the end, I did go to the gym for 25 minutes and picked up a small number of groceries.  I'm glad I didn't completely give up this weekend on staying active (and I had biked everywhere on Sat.), even though taxes were pretty overwhelming.

I still had a few minor tweaks to the taxes (mostly filling in Forms 8938, which are a total pain and simply repeat the same information on the FBAR!).  I think I probably could have/should have amended my Form 2225 and Schedule 1, but it wouldn't have actually changed the tax consequences, and it just wasn't worth it.  (If the IRS asks for any other amendments, I will do it at that time.)  I will read up on the topic and make changes for next year if it is still relevant.  While I haven't decided definitely to renounce or not, the ridiculous extra burden of all the extra forms for having investments in two countries makes the idea of renouncing very appealing, on top of the fact I wouldn't be connected to a country that seems determined to be run into the ground by the Worst and the Stupidest (to say nothing of the most Corrupt and Venal)...

Sun. was at least a little more fun to make up for the last gasp of the taxes.  I saw an Amici concert where they focused mostly on Armenian music.  Then I went out west to Ossington (luckily that was the last stop before a weekend subway closure!) and had Ethiopian food and watched Kiarostami's Certified Copy.  There are many parallels to Before Sunset, and personally I found Before Sunset to be a lot more satisfying.  Kiarostami refuses to let the audience know whether the couple are actually married or not.  Perhaps the one (fan) theory that makes the most sense is that the two are in a long-term affair and that Binoche's character decides to just play along that they are married (after a woman in a cafe assumes they are married) as a "copy" of marriage that has its own intrinsic value.  That still doesn't quite square up with the beginning of the movie where the author seems to have no idea about Binoche's family life, including her sister's name.  So a movie that is being intentionally obscure in a lot of ways, which frankly I don't appreciate.

Anyway, the important thing is that taxes are done, and I mailed them off on Monday.  I don't think I will be quite so late with Canadian taxes, since I have everything pulled together now.  I should be able to get them wrapped up this weekend.  Fingers crossed.  (And perhaps if I don't owe anything or even get some money back from CRA, I will more seriously consider buying the artwork I saw on Sat.  And while I don't buy art as an investment, it wouldn't be a bad idea to track down what I did pay for these other pieces and just note it down somewhere, since "collectables" are taxed at a different rate, and I probably have two or three pieces that should have at least held their value whenever I die or otherwise decide to give them up.  Such a cheery thought for a somewhat dreary day...)