What Was I Up to in 2013?

I'm making decent progress on cleaning out the basement (I guess I only hinted that I have contractors coming soon to work on the basement) and going through 20 or so boxes in deep storage. At any rate, that's what I have been doing these past few days.

I've come across loads of old photos, some of which I'll eventually scan and post.  I also stumbled across a calendar from 2013.  This was my second full year in Vancouver.  I believe by the summer I had already decided to relocate to Toronto, since we didn't fully enjoy living in Vancouver for a variety of reasons and we felt we were too far from our families.  (Ironically, my brother recently relocated to Seattle...)  My email archive indicates that I really started ramping up the job search to find a company with offices in Vancouver and Toronto (to facilitate the move) by the late fall.

The calendar doesn't really go into that, but it does list some of the main cultural events I was up to in 2013.  I might as well list them here before I recycle the calendar.

In mid Jan., I was in DC for the Annual TRB conference.  This is probably the second-last time I made it to TRB, and unfortunately I don't think I'll be going back to TRB until I change jobs again...

Jan 19, I was at the VSO to see Prokofiev's Symphony 5 and Grieg's Piano Concerto.  I probably have already mentioned this, but I much preferred the overall concert-going experience in Vancouver, relative to Toronto, as the Orpheum Theatre is so much nicer than Roy Thompson Hall.  The two symphonies are surprisingly similar in terms of quality and adventurousness, rather than the TSO being light years ahead of the VSO.

Feb. 7 I saw Ninja Pirates Theatre Company (or whatever they called themselves) doing a SF play (about a cat cloning itself) called Kitty Kitty Kitty.

Feb. 17, I was back at the Orpheum to see the VSO in a very full program - Delius’s Brigg Fair, An English Rhapsody, Elgar's Enigma Variations and Britten’s Violin Concerto.

The calendar indicates I was thinking about checking out Swan Lake, but for one reason or another I didn't actually go.  Conversely, I did see Bach's Goldberg Variations out at the Chan Centre, but this didn't make it onto the calendar.

On March 23, I had to take an English comprehension test as a condition for getting my permanent residency status.  While this was quite annoying (given that I actually have a Master's in English literature, from the University of Toronto no less!), there really was no way around it, so I went off and took the test.  At the end of March, I took my son and daughter to visit their grandfather in Greensboro, NC.  The whole business of having to transfer for practically every flight heading east of the Mississippi (except for Toronto of course) was definitely one thing that pushed us out of Vancouver.

April was very busy on the cultural front.  I saw the Borodin Quartet and the Smetana Trio.  Then there was a program of slightly avante classical music on April 20 (Edward Top, Colgrass, Magnanensi, Gubaidulina and Andriessen).

I saw Chekhov's Three Sisters at The Cultch on April 16, and on April 27, I went out to UBC to see Heiner Muller's Hamletmachine (the performance was ok, though nothing as interesting as the version I saw in Ann Arbor as an undergrad).

On May 5, I saw the Pacific Rim String Quartet doing Schubert's String Quintet, and I took my son to the concert.  I saw the VSO twice in May (May 11 - Brahms Double Concerto and May 23 - Prokofiev's Sonata for 2 Violins and Shostakovich's 15th Symphony).

I actually flew down to San Francisco to see Tom Stoppard's Arcadia the first weekend of June.  The calendar doesn't actually have a lot on it for June or July.  I see that my mother-in-law visited briefly, and at the end of her trip, my wife and the kids went back for a long visit to Chicago while I stayed in Vancouver and worked.  At the tail end of July, I saw Middleton's Women Beware Women, and I checked out the Vancouver Art Gallery to see an exhibit called Persuasive Visions: 17th Century Dutch and Flemish Masterworks.

I'm really struggling to reconstruct mid-August.  It appears I flew into Toronto on the 7th (to start making plans to relocate to Toronto at some point in the near future), and I was at the Stratford Festival on the 9-10th (for essentially a triple bill -- Othello, Waiting for Godot and then Romeo and Juliet!).  But then on the 11th, I travelled to Chicago (presumably on Porter) and rejoined my family.  Then on the 13th, I took my wife to see The Book of Mormon, which was awesome.  And then on the 15th, I returned to Vancouver.  Presumably I brought the whole family along.  I have to say, I am completely exhausted just reading over this, and it is only slowly coming back to me.  I may have repressed some of those memories.  (In fact, I went to Seattle for a day in early August, but I can't get a clear understanding of why, since there doesn't appear to have been a major exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum opening or about to close...)

On August 25th, I saw Hamlet at Bard on the Beach.  I don't actually see anything on the calendar for Sept., which is a bit suspect...  In mid October, I took the kids to a family-oriented classical concert at the VSO (Carnival of the Animals and far too many other short pieces), and I saw the Kronos Quartet on Oct. 19 (which I blogged about at the time).  On Oct. 20, I saw the Vancouver Arts Club doing Baitz's Other Desert Cities.

In Nov., I saw the VSO on the 2nd (Mendelssohn's Symphony 3, Scottish) and then the 16th and 18th, for the first two parts of Yefim Bronfman's Beethoven Piano Concerto cycle (with the final concert on Dec. 7).  I saw Alan Ayckbourn's Relatively Speaking, and then towards the end of the month, I saw Pi Theatre doing a new piece called Except in the Unlikely Event of War (a dark comedy).  I went down to Seattle one more time.  I can't recall if I went back to the VSO to see Strauss's Don Quixote (soloist Raphael Wallfisch), since it is on the calendar but with a couple of question marks, but I suspect I went in the end.

Dec. 1 I saw the Takács Quartet presented by the Friends of Chamber Music.  And that wraps up 2013.  It was a fairly quiet December, all things considered, but the year was pretty full overall; 2014 was definitely more chaotic, as I got more and more serious about relocating.  I actually received an offer letter in early January, then had to pack up the house through the late spring and early summer (and we actually moved in early July).