The cats have been intensely watching this spot in the kitchen behind the garbage can and trying to pounce. I hope it is just some hapless bug they found and not another mice invasion, which would be truly disappointing. On the other hand, I am pretty sure without the cats we would definitely have more mice.
I guess it isn't a full-blown disappointment, but if I had perfect fore-knowledge, I would have gone to Hirut last Friday, as was my initial intent. Instead, I went to the Rex two days in a row to see Rez Abbasi. He and his group were very good, but they are such a young group that they just don't have that much to play, since they mostly want to play originals. The standard they did play (Monk's Let's Call This) were the same on both nights, as was the encore (Ornette Coleman's Humpty Dumpty) and even some of the between song patter! So I could definitely have gone off to see Ellington tunes at Hirut on Friday. I did have the extra cash on me on Sat., and I picked up a couple of Abbasi's CDs and had him sign Snake Charmer (which has such a cool cover!).
What was a definite disappointment was that Toronto Hydro had scheduled a power outage Sat. evening -- and hadn't gotten around to telling all the building owners. I asked the guy at the door, and he hadn't heard anything about it, and they finally got the owner to get in touch and, yes, the Rex was going to be impacted. So they had to cancel the late night act and try to reschedule. (They were very glad that I had warned them, however.) I went over to the office for a bit. I decided to leave my bike locked up on the street, since I wouldn't be able to get it out of the garage if the power did go out. Anyway, I was able to get about 45 minutes of work in and then left for home. Either our building wasn't impacted by the power outage, or they just didn't actually start on time.
Monday was generally ok, though my phone acted up again and wouldn't record this underground concert I was at, which was super frustrating.
Tues. was the most frustrating day so far. There was free pizza from Pizzaola for lunch, which was good, though it then had this weird cascading effect. I was off to see Tokyo Drifter at the Revue, and most days I eat at Pizzaola on Roncy. However, I didn't want to do that, since I had eaten this for lunch. I also was answering emails and trying to call RCM to move tickets (more on that in a moment), so I had to really run to catch the 6:04 train and didn't have time to grab anything at Union. I find it astonishing how few take-out restaurants there are at Bloor West/Dundas, aside from a McDonalds and the Pizzaola and another pizza place. There was one decent-looking Indian place on Bloor itself, but it was going to take too long (and there is a better Indian place on Roncy anyway). I actually went two blocks west on Bloor and there just was so little, compared to how many restaurants there are between Dufferin and Ossington, to say nothing of between Bathhurst and Spadina! That meant I was even more crunched for time before the movie started. I ran into this place that said it had bahn mi sandwiches. They didn't have any tofu, but they had a lemongrass mushroom one, so I ordered that and then waited impatiently. I started eating it, while crossing the street to the Revue, but it had such an extremely weird texture that I thought it must be the chicken. I went back in, and the guy swore up and down this was mushroom, but I simply didn't believe him, so I threw it out. This put me in a foul mood, and the only thing I managed to eat before the movie were the substandard nachos. The movie was good, however. I had seen it a couple of years ago (I believe at TIFF) but had forgotten a lot of it. Getting home was a drag. The 506 had been completely blocked due to a bad traffic accident on Howard Blvd., but fortunately that had cleared up and I caught the streetcar back and finished a couple of poetry books (Krisztina Tóth's My Secret Life and Ronna Bloom's In a Riptide) and made decent progress on Nabokov's Ada. (I really will need to post soon on the poetry I read recently for Poetry Month...) But even though the sign said the streetcar was going to Main, somewhere around Parliament they said we would have to exit at Broadview, which pissed me off. Then after waiting for the next one, it was crawling along Gerrard, stuck behind two different garbage trucks. So definitely not the best evening. Also, it didn't rain at all, so I could have biked, and instead it is raining this morning, which complicates my plans a bit. Sigh.
But I also was frustrated at how difficult it is to switch tickets at RCM. The Tafelmusik switch won't be too hard, though there is a $4 fee, which I think is bogus. Second, if I switch the Hillary Hahn ticket, I can only get credit for another show this season, which I think is bogus. If this is the case after talking to the supervisor, I guess I will just leave that ticket as is. I'm sure Hahn will be fine (and indeed she may end up not touring much after this season), even though there is a different concert with Schubert's Quintet that I know I would enjoy more. I had thought I could switch the Hahn ticket to Cassandra Wilson in late June, even though those tickets are more expensive than I really want to pay. However, that date is the last full run through of the Fringe play, and I really ought to be there for that. So this overall is pretty annoying.
I also learned that I had double booked myself. I had a Soundstreams concert for this Sat., but they hadn't sent it to me until pretty late, so I thought Sat. was open, and I booked a ticket to see Don Byron at the Rex. I think I will go to Soundstreams after all, and then just bike as fast as I can to the Rex and catch the second set at 9:30 and perhaps stick around for the late night set. Obviously not ideal, and it just shows how I really need to cut back on some of these extra-curriculars. Anyway, I've got to get going to work now.
