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Randomly Friday afternoon

Stuff for a quick break from writing job descriptions and assembling reappointment paperwork:

Back to work for another hour or so before departing to go to a retirement party. I’ll probably be here a good chunk of the weekend too, alas.

A new tradition

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It’s been a very tiring couple of months. The scorecard since September:

  • One month with Mom in the hospital.
  • One hellish week getting her situated in a new part of her assisted living facility.
  • An average of three exhausting phone calls a day…every day…from my dad, most of them repetitions of earlier calls (or worse, repetitions within the same call.)
  • One friend and coworker dead after a three-month illness.
  • Three big HR issues.
  • One two-month delay in a major aspect of my grant project.
  • One fun but not very restful road trip.
  • And, oh yeah. One reappointment package (the first baby step toward tenure) due in December, which is not quite as labor-intensive as a thesis but is pretty damned close.

So…

I’ve decided that if I can get all my paperwork done before Christmas (and if I still have my sanity) I’m going to do something terribly out of character the week after. I’m going to take an actual relaxing vacation. One where I sit in a nice oceanfront room by a freezing cold beach and just watch TV and read all those books I brought back from Canada. One where I feel no compulsion to cover lots of exciting new ground nor take lots of pictures of old supermarkets. And one where I will accept phone calls and email on my own terms.

I’ll probably hate it, but I will at least have tried it once.

Road trip photos

In case you care, photos from the Toronto-Montreal trip a few weeks back are now posted. I know I sort of fell down on the job when it came to the narrative. Blame it on an exceedingly busy month. I’ll try to rectify that soon.

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Tuesday in the GTA

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It was a very soggy Tuesday in Toronto and I was extra damp after walking four blocks to a breakfast place I’d noticed last night only to find that it didn’t open until 11:00. Apparently it’s more of a bar and only serves hangover breakfasts.

Monday:

  • Breakfast in Kensington Market.
  • Lots of walking and subwaying (is that a verb?) mostly downtown, Danforth Village, and the University of Toronto area.
  • Lunch at the Coach House on Yonge Street, a quite wonderful old diner in a stretch of old low-rise commercial buildings that’s probably doomed.
  • More books, and I accidentally just happened upon he final day of the University of Toronto’s annual Friends of the Library book sale. Just walked on campus, saw a sign, and there it was. Love when that happens.
  • Dinner at Falafel Queen, followed by a nighttime drive around the city.

Today:

  • Soggy trek to an uneventful breakfast.
  • Back to the hotel to do some work that couldn’t wait till after vacation.
  • Lurked around The Beach and had lunch at a diner on Queen Street East that provided a great salad and a very terse (OK…rude) waitress.
  • Revisited that bookstore on Spadina and scored some amazing stuff, including a 1959 annual report from Loblaws.
  • Dinner with a friend and former coworker from SF who’s back in his native Toronto now.

Off to Montreal tomorrow.

Greetings from Dundas Square

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Have I mentioned lately how much I love Toronto? It just sort of feels like home when I get here. Of course, it’s a home I get to live in without having to commute to work or dealing with the fact that the heat doesn’t work very well outside for a good chunk of the year.

But still.

So far:

  • A really quick visit to Pittsburgh Friday night. I really need to start spending more time there.
  • Lunch with Sarah outside Buffalo and a visit to her amazing new house.
  • An uneventful border crossing.
  • Book binging and neighborhood roaming.
  • Much shawarma.

Coming:

  • Lunch today with an old friend from SF.
  • More book binging.
  • More Toronto exploration.
  • Montreal on Wednesday.

Pictures when I return.

On the road. Maybe.

I may or may not be leaving for Canada in the morning, two weeks later than originally planned. Right now it seems “on” but I want one last talk tomorrow morning with one of the people taking care of my mom.

While in some ways I feel like the worst son in the world for leaving while my mom is till in the hospital (nothing life-threatening, just the next stop on the Alzheimer’s bus), I also realize that I can’t stop living my life waiting till she’s “better” because she’s not going to get better. And after the past few very stressful months of family and work, I need very desperately to get away and do something other than work, visit the parents, and collapse on the couch in front of the TV. Her life is not going to be impacted in any significant way by my departure. She may not even notice my absence. And this week is the only time I can really do it. So away I go.

Unless I don’t.

Monday morning urbanity

Some random links to things urban for a Monday morning:

The Ghost of October Past

I used to do these all the time but I haven’t recently. Tonight seems like a good night since I haven’t much of anything to say tonight that doesn’t revolve around (a) whininess about the fact that I’m not in Canada right now like I’m supposed to be, (b) misplaced resentment that’s making me feel a little guilty, or (c) new techniques in the avoidance of starch and sugar.

We’ve already established that October is my reflective month and that I’m not averse to reruns, so here’s early October through the years: