As always, far too much has been going on, and I am too far behind on too many other things to really sit down and keep the blog up to date. The weather was quite glorious, especially Sat. I got in a relatively long bike ride on Sat. I swung through Withrow Park, and there were lots of people out (most of whom didn't have masks on, though it is a large park and people were doing better on the distancing front than at Trinity-Bellwoods to be sure). I did have to get back by the early afternoon to supervise a guy who had come over to trim the tree in our backyard. I had been extremely worried about how the tree limbs were interwoven with a lot of cables going to the house (and since these weren't electrical wires per se, it was my problem and not the city's...). He cleaned that out a bit and did a bit more pruning in a few places. I think in the end the job only took 90+ minutes, rather than 2-3 hours. I still had time to run over to the grocery store afterwards, and it was surprisingly empty. I was able to breeze right in.
On Sunday, I had expected it to rain in the afternoon, but somehow the rain passed us by, and it probably won't rain until Thurs. That meant that I actually needed to water some of the plants in the yard after all. I was able to get a bit of work done and some reading outside, though I was trying to finish up Aristophanes's The Clouds (rather than tackling Camus's The Plague). I realize times change and all, but The Clouds is incredibly dreary stuff. There is no conceivable circumstance I can imagine actually going to watch a production of this. My impression is that The Birds still holds up and perhaps The Frogs. While the sexual politics of Lysistrata are deeply outdated, this might still be watchable in the right hands. Still, as a general rule drama and tragedy seems to transfer better than comedy.
I've been meaning to get back to these library books, and the time is certainly creeping up on me! We are now entering the phase where library books can be returned (though I believe there is still some time before the due dates (and fines) will restart). The library up the road Pape/Danforth will be open (for returns only) in the morning and then most of (all?) the other libraries will accept returns starting June 1. About a week after that, they are starting to provide pick-up service, so the hold system is starting back up again, though it isn't clear if you will have to schedule an appointment, as I can imagine quite a few people (particularly in this neighbourhood) will all want to go at once. While I have been going a bit over the top with all the e-books (finding that probably close to 80% of the fiction I own has an e-book equivalent, though it is much, much lower and probably not even 5% of the non-fiction on my shelves), I think I will start to pivot back to physical books. That said, I did take advantage of the sale on e-books at Brick Books (still running for another week or so) and picked up three books that aren't in the library system. No question my next major task (in addition to cleaning up the basement), will be to get through a bunch of reviews and post them up here before July 1. (I haven't really decided but right now I am leaning against re-upping for the Canada Reads book challenge.)
While the good weather (and the fact I didn't need to line up to get into the grocery store) did help my mood, I'm still very frustrated by the general situation and the fact that the things I really like about urban life are all off-limits. (That said, while theatre and concerts are all definitely off-limits, I suspect museums will be able to reopen, and I think there is a reasonable chance that the AGO will succeed in hosting the Picasso exhibit in the fall after all.) I'm still dreading transit, and will try to bike everywhere for as long as possible. Maybe this is the winter I get more serious about the winter biking (and then just say I will work from home on days where there is ice or slush on the roads). People are definitely tired of quarantine-like conditions, and we didn't have it nearly as bad as Italy or Spain. The problem is that people get complacent and they get careless and sloppy (especially in the parks this weekend!), and then the infections creep back up again. (On our block, a lot of people are hanging out in front yards, 1.5-2 meters apart, just chatting and being social, as this has always been a particularly social street, interestingly enough.) No question the testing needs to be rolled out on a much, much wider scale for this to work -- and for us to get some semblance of our lives back. I don't have anything else profound to add at the moment.
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