I'll just mention this here more for my own sake than for anyone else. I have started biking though it is still fairly irregular, particularly to work. Last Sunday was quite nice though, and I biked to work, leaving my bike overnight (in order to see Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest* at TIFF and then take the train over to Toronto Cold Reads** for the rest of the evening). Monday I then took my bike home, making a quick stop at Robarts on the way. My knee bothers me from time to time, especially if I don't get enough sleep, but probably there is nothing torn in there. Not sure if I will be able to take up jogging again, but at least the swimming and biking don't seem to put too much strain on it.
It's fairly chilly today, but I think I will bike anyway, since I want to hit the pool† on the way home, and I'm getting very tired of how poor TTC service is on both Dundas and College. Given that we are just about at that point in the coronavirus cycle where they will tell us to avoid transit (and Union Station, which I can't avoid unfortunately), it is even more critical to be on my bike as much as possible. The rest of the week looks better, weather-wise, though Sunday may also be chilly.
I did push through and went to the gym last night, even though I didn't really want to go, which is often the time you really need the will power to go. So far, people are still going to the gym, though they are pushing us to wipe down the equipment more. Also, they have removed the big pail of Tootsie Rolls, since reaching in and rummaging around seems a bad idea at the moment. But otherwise, life goes on as usual.
* I totally regret taking the time to watch this, and if I were viewing at home, I would have bailed in the first 20 minutes with the dreary, dreary set up and the boring emo main character. I find it actually intriguing that so many critics rate this film so highly, probably because they don't feel (as I do) that the theological questions posed by the priest are laughable. One thing that I really didn't like is that the priest "preaches down" all the time, leaving alone some of the major "sinners" who frighten him and brow-beating women instead. Bleague! I was so disappointed with this film that it makes me considerably less likely to catch any of the other Bresson films in the TIFF retrospective.
** I've said this before but TCR is just not the right venue for me. I find it kind of a closed-shop, and they essentially never take my pieces (and SFYS always does nowadays). I do have one piece that they may be considering, but I would be quite surprised if it is taken. Also, I find their approach very static (reading in chairs in a straight line) whereas there is usually some acting out of parts at SFYS, which is far more useful for a playwright. The flip side is that, currently, they have the better bench of professional or quasi-professional actors (and writers), so if I actually did want to make a web-series or a short film or even a podcast, I'd probably be better off recruiting there. At any rate, there is no point making a messy break with them, though I won't go that often. I did think the line-up looked particularly strong last week (and I liked the musical guest and Dave Healey's short piece), but one piece I found pretty cliched and the other was a not very compelling remake of The Taming of the Shrew. The most surprising reveal, however, was that one of the pieces had been done at SFYS the previous week! There isn't supposed to be direct double-dipping, but I guess it is hard for these groups to monitor it. So I'll see if a piece by a favourite writer like Healey or Jamie Johnson or David Strauss is on the line-up, but otherwise I probably won't be going back this year.
† The big difference from previous years is that I have been pretty good about going swimming twice a week and still trying to go to the gym three times a week, though with various events here and there it usually is closer to twice a week. Now that I am going to start biking regularly, I may actually be in pretty good shape come the summer. (No question that it takes my legs a while to get used to pulling my whole weight around, as opposed to the ease of a stationary bike!) Unfortunately, the pool will be closing down for almost three weeks starting March 21, and in fact if the city and the inside workers union doesn't settle, the pools and rec centres may be closed for a lot longer than that... However, the city was able to settle with the outside workers (so thankfully no garbage strike!), and there is a reasonable chance they will come to terms with the inside workers as well.
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