Saturday, January 21, 2017

Mixed up day

This was a little like the up and down day over a year ago, though fortunately no technological melt-downs (knock wood).

I've been working a bit too hard lately, so I tried to sleep in at least a little bit this morning.  I decided I would deal with groceries on Sunday, though I did run a load of laundry.  Then I set out for Kensington Market.  It's always a bit hard to decide the best way to get there, and I thought that perhaps the subway would not be ideal, since it was not going to be running north of St. George, so there would be a lot of chaos at the station.  I walked over to the College streetcar instead.

I'd heard that there was a medical marijuana dispensary nearby, but I hadn't actually paid any attention until today.  It's next to the pizza place (where a nail salon used to be).  I do find it a bit droll this is in a building with lawyers apparently on the top floor.


The ride was relatively uneventful until we got to Queen's Park.  There was a huge rally/march planned for the day.  I still don't really know what it was about.  It seemed like a total grab bag of protestors with a pro-women agenda who were pissed off about Trump.  (Maybe all the people stopped on the way to D.C. decided to march in Toronto, though it seems fairly pointless to me, since the march didn't have a real focus.*)


I do know that the police officers could have held the crowds back and let the streetcar through (there were almost no people in the actual intersection), but decided instead to make the streetcar wait (at least a half hour).  I thought this was a dereliction of duty, and I was royally pissed off.  Fortunately, I was only going another 2 or 3 stops, so I hopped off and walked it.

I was just a bit early, so I stopped in at the AGO, only to find enormous crowds.  Even to get in to the main galleries (not the special exhibit) took far longer than I expected, so I really only stuck around for 10-15 minutes.  I was getting pretty sick of crowds by this point.

I then walked over to The Round (it's actually on Augusta, but is just one block west of Kensington Market).  I saw Wolf Manor doing Danny and the Deep Blue Sea.  I thought the acting was quite good, but actually wasn't that thrilled about the script.  It seemed kind of implausible on several levels.  Anyway, it was quite intimate, basically one ring of tables surrounding the actors.  If this sounds like your cup of tea, you can hustle out and catch them tonight or tomorrow (details here).  That's it for this run.  (I was happy that I was able to keep my cough under control.  I think I'm finally on the mend, and even my ear isn't bothering me much anymore.)

I have to say I am more interested in the rest of Wolf Manor's season, particularly Three Sisters in March.  As far as I can tell, they aren't selling subscriptions, but I'll keep checking in to find out what they are up to.

I swung by a bookstore in the Market, but actually thought the books were overpriced (particularly the ones that had been sitting outside), so I probably will not go back, even though I definitely enjoyed the vibe inside.  I have enough books anyway...

I then walked the rest of the way to U of T.  I actually stopped in at their bookstore.  I didn't get any textbooks or anything (I remember years and years ago, they used to have a big shelf of nothing but Penguin paperbacks), but I did pick up a UT t-shirt on sale.  I could have gotten a Class of 2016 sweat shirt for cheap, but decided that was a step too far.  It was getting quite foggy by this point, and there were far fewer people around, which was quite different from the afternoon.

Robarts Library didn't have the books I was looking for, though I put a search on one of them.  I found out that one book was at Pratt and the library was still open for 30 minutes, so I headed east.  I think I was a bit confused, however, and I stopped in at the Trinity Library instead.  (I realized my mistake quickly, but actually Pratt would have been too long a walk anyway.)  The Trinity Library didn't have any of the Buzzati or Rezzori books I wanted to borrow, but they did have Juvenal and a newish translation of Ovid's Metamorphosis, so I took those.  (I'm on just a bit of a classics kick, inspired by Vanity Fair, but I'll go into more details about that later.)

That's the day so far.  I'll focus on resting and doing a bit of reading this evening.

* To expand just a bit, many women had on the pink anti-Trump hats, but then there were posters about proportional voting (since it supposedly will be better for women's interests) and some pro-union posters and some others that I had no clue about.  So definitely no overarching goals or obvious organizing principle to the protest.

No comments:

Post a Comment