Super Busy Day vs. Cruddy Day

Sat. was just so busy that it really put a bit of a crimp in the rest of the long weekend.

The morning started out with quite heavy rain, which meant that I didn't get over to the gym as soon as I had planned.  I finally braved it around 9.  I only went for a fairly short workout, as I mostly wanted to see what the Sunday hours were, and I also wanted to use the lower back stretching machine, as it has the side effect of loosening my rib cage.  (I still haven't written about the fact that I had a small accident on the bike(!), leaving me a very bruised knee and some extreme tightness in the chest, as if my ribs were collapsing a bit on my lungs!  I'll definitely circle back to this in a bit here...)  I grabbed a few snacks at the grocery store and came back.  

It was still sprinkling a bit, but I figured there was no way to get everything done on the TTC, so I risked the bike again.  I went to Jones Library and grabbed a copy of Shelley's Frankenstein, since my daughter is reading it for English class.  Then I went over to the Regent Park pool, though it was already 12:30 and lane swimming ended at 1, so this was cutting things very short.  This time around the pool was staffed much better (than the previous weekend), and it looked like the whirlpool area was working again.  (A few weeks back I learned that it was back in service after being broken for literally years, but then it wasn't running last weekend, which was a disappointment.)  I was able to get in 12 or even 13 laps and then spent a few minutes in the whirlpool.

Then I biked down to the Distillery to check out the Corkin Gallery (and also Thompson Landry, but I was mostly there to see the Riopelle exhibit at the Corkin).  It turns out they extended one last time, so you should be able to check it out through July 6 and maybe just slightly beyond that.  If you are at all interested, it is worth doing, as there are a number of small pieces there from early in his career (1948-49) that are not in any other catalogue of his work.  Our of curiosity I asked what they would cost.  The answer was $57,000 each.  I mean they are definitely nice, but that's a pretty silly price for a small watercolor.

Jean-Paul Riopelle, Sans titre, 1948

It was starting to rain a bit harder, so I decided to bike over to work where I could stash my bike.  I put in about an hour of work, then caught the subway up to Bay.  Then I walked over to the library at Yorkville where I picked up the DVD version of Frankenstein.  Then I crossed the street to the Reference Library.  I was looking to scan a few pages that had been ripped out of the only circulating copy of Toronto Places.  They apparently have 3 copies of Toronto Places in the Reference Library, and I was able to grab it off the stacks and scan those pages.  (The quality isn't quite what I hoped for, but it's ok.)

It was nearly 4, and I had hoped to watch an animated movie over at Carlton called Night is Short, Walk on Girl.

It was weird as hell.  Basically, imagine a slightly less fraught After Hours, and some amazing time-dilation to allow everything to fit into one evening: lots and lots of drinking, a wedding, stopping by a used-book market, multiple episodes of musical put on by a guerilla theatre company and then lots and lots of visits to friends who had caught a super-contagious cold.  I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but it was definitely strange but fun.

After this, I stopped by Bulk Barn to stock up on Tootsie Rolls, then took the subway down to Union Station, grabbed a snack at Kibo Market, then retrieved my bike from the garage and biked home.  I was pretty much down for the count, but I did manage to do a load of laundry.  So really quite exhausting.

Sunday, I didn't do nearly as much, though I did get to the gym for a more typical workout, and then I got the groceries for the week.  I had thought pretty seriously about going to Harbourfront to see the TSO in a free show, but the timing was just not great (a 9 pm start!), and I had no idea what they were actually going to perform, so I bailed.

Today was Canada Day, and I was glad to try to get caught up on a few things.  However, the nagging feeling that Doug Ford will still be in charge next year, and then most likely the Conservatives will take over Ottawa gives me a sick feeling in my stomach.  I'm definitely not going to be proud to be a Canadian under those conditions, even if it is still much better than living in the State.  I am definitely thinking of holding off on that tattoo!  

Like pretty much everyone else I knew, I was just sickened by how badly Biden did in the debate, though I didn't make the mistake of watching it!  As if that weren't enough, the Supreme Court just ruled to make Presidents kings.  On top of some other completely shitty rulings last week, including one that will make it impossible for the federal government to rely on, you know, expertise, rather than the poorly written excuse for legislation that comes out of Congress these days.  It's as if the conservatives on the Supreme Court have completely lost their minds and decided to make the U.S. completely ungovernable past anything that the Founding Fathers would have accepted.  The sad truth is that the Founding Fathers did know better than these fools, particularly Alito who opens wants a religious theocracy in place of what the Constitution actually says.  I mean the Founders were entirely clear on the reasons why religion should be kept completely out of the political sphere, and indeed that the President wasn't supposed to be a king.  I really can't express how much contempt I have for them.  I actually felt sick to my stomach pretty much all morning.  Along with the rise of the right all over Europe (and the fact that no politician will ask for even the smallest sacrifice to slow down climate change) and it all feels completely pointless.  The world is truly fucked.

So my mood was completely crap all day, and I certainly didn't feel like celebrating anything.  I did manage to finally finish Rushdie's Victory City.  In some ways it feels a bit like a rehash of The Enchantress of Florence, though the ending was a bit better than many of his endings.  (I liked quite a bit of Fury, including some riffs on Shakespeare, but the ending was lame.)  It just dragged on a bit too long, since I wasn't reading on the way to work, but I'm glad I finished it.

My computer has been given me more and more issues, and today the DVD burner crapped out.  I suspect it is something to do with the Windows 10 updates that keep forcing themselves onto the computer, but I think it's just time to transfer everything over to yet another hard drive, and buy a new machine.  The worst thing was I had thought this was a computer I had replaced a bit after my move to Toronto, but no!  I bought this computer in Dec. 2020, so it isn't even 4 years old, and it is already ready for the scrap heap.  So disappointing.  I remember just how many programs I need to port over, and it just pisses me off even more.

There's probably not much else I can get done today.  I may attempt to work on a paper I am giving at the TRB Equity conference in Baltimore in about 3 weeks, though I am more likely to finish up Satyajit Ray's The Adversary (the first film in his Calcutta Trilogy).  I have finally decided that it is kind of silly to run over to Montreal to see one act at the Montreal Jazz Fest, particularly when I am in such a bad mood.  There is a halfway decent exhibit on Hiroshige at the MMFA, but I've seen a lot of his prints, including on my last trip to San Francisco in April.  If I can swing it some other time (it closes in early Sept.), then I might go.  So on the whole, I think I'll just stay home and sulk instead (and probably book a few extra Fringe shows, since that is coming up fast this week!).