Off the Cliff

My great big pedestrian adventure

2026-05-01T22:51:34Z

Month's start is a good time to check one's weight so I did, and my cake and vodka habit has only cost me an extra half kilo, which is heartening.

So I started out early afternoon to do All The Things what I actually did not want to do. Returned library book; got cash from the BoM; got small envelopes for tips etc. from Midoco-- only not the ones I wanted because the only ones they had were a luxury brand coming in at $20 and tax. Got smaller brown envelopes instead, probably intended for change, but will hold a bill no problem, and I'm sure the delivery guys don't care. They'd probably accept naked cash if I could overcome my conditioning to hand it to them. Then tootled over to the Spadina Shoppers PO and was almost there when someone called my name-- my former coworker G fresh from the daycare. So we spent a few minutes catching up, now that half the people I knew have retired and G has become the Grand Old Lady of the place. But I discover that Baby Zoe from the early oughties has become a mother! of two!! and is now pregnant again!!! with twins!!! The math is not mathing here because I make her barely 23 if that, and I (and her mother) come from the generation that didn't start having kids until their 30s.

And then was the foot-draggiest chore of all, mailing a parcel to Japan. And I will never ever send any parcels from that outlet again. Because: I sat down with my phone and my data and filled out the online customs form with my fumble fingers, and corrected the many mistakes because Japanese addresses have a lot of numbers and m-dashes that fumble fingers mistype. Then took my package to the desk where he asked me to read him the address that I'd put on the package because it wasn't like a western address and the machine couldn't handle the information. And please write my return address there as well, even though all this info is on the declaration, and read my address to him while he entered *that*, and then he tried to scan the customs code I'd generated and couldn't, even though it was right on my phone and not a screenshot like the last time I tried it there. So he enters all my customs info manually and if he can do that why am I generating customs codes in the first place, sheesh? But the thing has gone off and I hope will arrive and this was all infinitely easier when I could write it on a form.

So then I went and had sushi and two glasses of wine because Maido's five ounces is nowhere near that.

After which I wanted to grab the subway home. But no, screw courage to sticking point, and down Spadina I go to pick up the new Murderbot. Reason I drag feet over these things is that doors are an unmitigated pain to open with a walker, often requiring the kindness of strangers, and doing this over and over gets wearing. But since I was there, I went over to Robots Library to look at the sakura. Which are sakura, no complaints but no big deal, and anyway everyone was taking selfies. I suppose selfie takers are better than drunken salarymen doing o-hanami, but they still don't count as an aesthetic experience.

It was now too late to get the subway: rush hour on a Friday, so I started back and made the mistake of going into the Metro super. Mistake because Metro has éclairs and so of course did I. Eclairs are always a disappointment since they never come anywhere near the Platonic form of an éclair but I keep hoping they will. Anyway continued on, working off that indulgence, and for my final trick, went into the dollar store that will soon move out to Pape. More doors that others had to open for me, and no space inside because it's chockablock with the everythings they sell, and I had to fold the walker out of the way and stand unsupported in line. But I got two pairs of cheap dollar store glasses-- exactly the same as what Loblaws has for four times the price-- and needed them because I sat on the side bedroom pair the other day and flattened them, and the Loblaws pair is wonky. So the day ended in triumph and over 7000 steps, go me.

comments

Reading Thursday

2026-05-01T00:15:19Z

Not that I read much last week. A Dr. Priestley, a Desmond Merrion, and Murder After Christmas, where the family can't inherit because one cannot profit from a crime even if the criminal is now dead. So that's settled. Am loose-endedly embarked on another Desmond Merrion, another oogie-making John Dickson Carr, and still hacking through When They Burned the Butterfly, which one must not abandon for too long because the twists and turns are twisty and turning and I am apt to forget who certain people are. Which is a problem when they subsequently get killed.

But! My reading will definitely pick up in the near future because my 100 Demons arrived from Finder Jean and the new Murderbot arrived at Bakka, which I hope to get to tomorrow after hitting the Spadina post office.

I got my garbage out last night but was hit by extreme don'wannas anent the garden waste, especially the pile of branches and twigs that needs to be tied up. My lower back has been spasming any time I get into shoes so I sit on the couch with hot beanbags rather than do anything constructive. However I did make it out to the laundromat today, so at least have clean towels and face cloths and one clean sleep hoodie. I'm not saying that showering at night, every night, might make my hoodies smell less because, clean or not, I still sweat and sweat still smells, as does hair after a day or two. But I'm not going to shower every night and turn into a prune, and certainly am not going to shampoo more often than every third day because my hair falls out sufficiently as it is. I shall just keep on washing my hoodies. And maybe buy a new one because the super-excellent dollar store where I buy these things on occasion is closing and moving out the Danforth. Landlord wants to raise the rent from 22000 a month to 28000-- yes, commercial rents on Bloor are ridiculous-- and the one at Pape will charge half of that. Of course, I suppose I could go out to Pape myself, now Christie has elevators.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-28T21:12:00

2026-04-29T01:38:35Z

Not really a Great Big Transit Adventure this time because I wimped out and cabbed down. Possible rain, possible subway tsuris, and in the event, College blocked off for filming who knows what. Cost me a bit more than usual because I had no fives and because Construction bloody everywhere. Anyway, one crown and one filling later, I set out towards University as the film crews packed up their vans. There were one or two small problems like the machine not accepting my bank card when I went to top up my Presto pass but then doing it, and the gates not wanting to open for my card but then doing it. 4:30 is the start of rush hour and yes the car was packed but the hell with it, I put the brakes on my rollator and sat on that. Again, knew better than to try for the e-w subway and hoped the Dupont station's elevators were working, because I knew two of the escalators weren't. But no problems there either. No bus scheduled for another 22 minutes, but there's the Shoppers handy so got my mailing envelopes. Eventually, because guy at the head of the line was requiring all sorts of things, and the clerk apologized to me for the wait. Mind, with People These Days (signs everywhere saying harassment will not be tolerated, meaning people have been harassing) this may now be standard operating procedure.

So I headed back towards home, hungry because my mouth was still frozen and she said not to eat for another two hours. Got to Bathurst and decided, since I'm awash with money just now (tax refund arrived yesterday) to get me party sandwiches at yuppie Summerhill market. And OMG have the prices gone up. $25 for a box with minimal salmon pinwheels. I got the $16 common or garden variety which was still too much and nothing out of the ordinary. However they're soft, if tasteless, so that was dinner. But shall not be going back there anytime soon, and not just because of the prices. Place was full of yuppie moms and their impervious offspring, both of them being the only people in the world. Also a store that has to hire a security guard is not anywhere I want to be.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-27T18:07:00

2026-04-27T22:32:49Z

I was looking out the study window at the newly popped cherry buds waving in the evening breeze against a blue van Gogh sky when a movement down on NND's lawn caught my eye. It was a rabbit. I have no idea where it came from or, for that matter, how it survived the neighbourhood raccoons and coyotes, but there it is, nibbling the grass. Granted, there was a rabbit down at the corner two years ago, but... that was two years ago and there are a *lot* of fences between me and the corner. Ah well. A mystery for the ages.

Last week Good Neighbour Chris' cat was out on its long leash, enjoying the air after a winter of being cooped up. But it had got its leash wrapped around the water shutoff on the grassy strip between myself and NND, and freaked out when I came to unwind him. In the process of going round and round the shutoff on an ever shortening leash, it managed to decapitate three daffodils, which are now sitting in a jar in my kitchen. The shutoff is supposed to be flush with the ground but isn't, and is supposed to be my shutoff and isn't either. Mine is under the paving stones of NND's front path. NND will be moving out in August because the owner has sold the house and I'm trying not to fret about what will move in instead. I am Old and do not like things changing around me. There will be renovations as well, which may be minor or may be a whole new third storey like Prof Islamic Studies had to deal with for a year and change. Must be Zen about this.

Had an ebook come in, The Hymn to Dionysus. Got two chapters in and sent it back because Bad Vibes. Nothing good can come of Dionysus even in a retelling and frankly I just don't trust Natasha Pulley to make him palatable. When They Burned the Butterfly may be oogey in its own way but it's a Singaporean oogey and I can deal with that.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-25T21:02:00

2026-04-26T01:20:26Z

For various reasons, largely having to do with the persistent rain of this rainy April, I have revived Project Tiddly, and went one better by ordering delivery of my vodka and cooler. Having gone out to the super this afternoon and having cleaned the gunk of spring off the walker's wheels, I had no desire to do it all again. Equally all I want to eat is cake and have in fact eaten cake every day this past week thanks to a McCains Deep and Delicious vanilla frozen cake. And very nice it was too. Vegetables simply don't do it for me anymore. I can't move in the mornings anyway so can't get downstairs to weigh myself so the damage will go unnoticed and unrecorded.

I wondered why I could never get Substack to load on my tablet. Discover it's because the upstarts tablet, bought in 2017 and retured to factory settings in 2021, refuses to load certain programs and apps like Kobo and Substack while the downstairs one is just fine with them. A nuisance, but nothing to be done about it. The upstairs tablet holds a charge much longer than the downstairs one, which is perpetually running out of battery. Like now, for instance, after I recharged it last night and this afternoon.

However, see that my nephew has at last cashed the wedding cheque I sent him a month ago, so that niggle is settled.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-23T19:34:00

2026-04-24T00:01:29Z

I spent large chunks of today cutting down garbage trees both front and back. I don't know what they are but I want them gone. The gardener was supposed to have removed them three years ago, but garbage trees are like cockroaches. One is never rid of them. A machete would have come in handy but the nameless tool with a serrated blade did well enough. I've cut the garage ones back to the root knot but have neither the strength nor the inclination to dig those out. I will try the effect of bleach instead. After which I was hacking away at the overgrown vines on the fence by the garage when SND's fiancé stopped me. He says there are birds nesting in the thicket, so I had to stop. Apparently by the end of May they'll have hatched and then he says he'll cut back the branches for me. He was out with my tree branch lopper, which he managed to assemble for me, cutting the cherry branches on the other side of his yard, the one belonging to Good Neighbour Chris.

I did manage to cut some of the dead and dried vines off the fence closer to the house, but my back was in conniptions by that point. Came inside and stretched, and shortly thereafter tackled the things growing in the front yard. This was much antsier because the footing in front is so uneven, what with the invasive species Eglish ivy. I begin to think boat shoes ie my New Balances, are maybe not the best footware for this, though I can't think what is. Something lighter and flatter that registers the ground underfoot better. But again, sawed down some quite thick stems leaving only the root knots, handy for tripping over should you be wading about my front lawn. Then took out some of the dead wood from the hedge, and finally sawed through the branches of the very dead pine in the corner of the planter. Sawing all this wood to an acceptable length for the garbage guys and tying it up as you're supposed to will be a pain, but sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

I expect to be crippled tomorrow and might try for a massage. Can only hope this counts as exercise and calorie burning.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-22T20:24:00

2026-04-23T00:43:37Z

Lessee. Finished Thoughts Contingent on a Blithe Spirit, a Dr. Priestley, The Terracotta Bride, and a fast reread of After the Funeral because I'd totally forgotten Who Done It as well as Who Was Done in the first place. This is very pleasant. Evidently I do forget Agatha Christies because in turning out my shelves I discovered a paperback copy of The Clocks, which I could have sworn I never read in my life.

But mostly I've been beavering through Murder After Christmas, a seriously batshit version of English country house Golden Age mysteries. It has one of those seriously batshit English families that one usually finds in places like Wodehouse where genre stops you from taking them as anything but comedic. I'm not sure if the author, one Rupert Latimer, intended this to be comedic because the rest is fairly deadpan serious. The twists in the plot made my head spin, as they did the inspecting Inspector. I'm still going But wouldn't his third wife's family still inherit? But no, because evidently his first wife was still alive when he married his third? But she couldn't have been because didn't he remarry his first wife when the second one died so he couldn't have married the third until she was dead but wait... I don't want to have to reread this to find out but it's seriously going to bug me if I don't. Also am not champing at the bit to start When They Burned the Butterfly which sounds like a downer.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-21T16:20:00

2026-04-21T20:44:03Z

So evidently any caffeine after 4 pm results in a nuit blanche. In spite of early-for-me rising yesterday, I was wide awake past midnight. Gave it darkness and beanbags and the old college try, but no luck. After an hour I gave up, turned on the light, and read Zen Cho's The Terracotta Bride until a quarter to four. Turned off light, eventually drifted off, and was awake at nine. And awake awake. So today has been something of a bust with every joint aching into the bargain. I miss the days when I could fall asleep just reading in bed. This I suppose is how the insomnia of old age works for me.

Reading on through the Phaedo, I am not impressed by Socrates' argument that everything arises from its opposite and that life must come from death.

Now to her lap the incestuous Earth
The son she bore has ta'en
And other sons she brings to birth
But not my friend again.

Socrates believes in a soul, an ego, that simply cycles through the cycles while I semi-Buddhistically think that's nonsense. There is no I in Buddhism-- though how then do people remember 'their' past lives? However I'm with Stoppard's Guildenstern: Death is not anything. Death is not. It's the absence of presence, nothing more. A gap you can't see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-20T14:29:00

2026-04-20T18:53:38Z

The tree guys are out back clearing branches from the cherry and piling the resultant brush out in front for the chipper. The whole street in front of SND, me, and NND was empty this morning which, as the guy said, never happens. Indeed, whenever I've had a delivery, for sure someone slides into all the available spots. When I last did this in 2020, they wanted me to reserve space for the chipper and when I did, said it wasn't long enough. That, plus price, is why I went with a different firm this time. Still can't watch the guy doing his thing high in the branches. Partly because imagination of disaster me sees branches breaking under him (yes of course he's clipped and carbined), partly because My tree, my tree, my poor tree denuded even before the blossoms have begun. However they've taken down any branch that comes even close to the wires, so no worry about high winds bringing stuff down. High winds love to strip twigs from the front yard trees so yeah, I have a thing about trees and wires.

Their email said I was second on their list today and they'd be here around lunchtime and lunchtime can be anything around twelve. Even if I know that work never ever finishes early I still felt it necessary to be up and exercised and fed by 11, so no rolling back to sleep when I woke at 9. Curtailed sleep and allergies have kept me logey all day, helped by ordering in a banh mi and Vietnamese coffee for lunch. Guys showed up at 1:45 and lunch showed up at 1:50. Is bright and cold and blowy today, after yesterday's 'four seasons in 24 hours.' I went out in winter jacket for the grey autumnal morning temps, had to take it off when the sun came out and warmed the world up, came home to snow showers followed by thunder and monsoon rain. One really doesn't need this kind of drama, you know.

It's actually not 'how terribly strange to be seventy' or even seventy-something. It's realizing that stuff one remembers perfectly well happened sixty years ago. Lots of people don't even live to sixty. That's the weird part.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-18T20:16:00

2026-04-19T00:31:42Z

Evidently walking 7000 steps leads to, conservatively, eleven hours of sleep, if we suppose it took me over an hour to fall asleep, which I don't think it did. So I finally woke up well after noon and forewent my usual exercises to have breakfast instead. But did them afterwards because heavy rain meant no going out. So I am stretched and no less limber than usual.

Succeeded in one long postponed task, which was sweeping the basement stairs, something I've probably never done since returningfrom Japan thirty years ago. But six years back when next door was moving stuff into my basement my s-i-l cleaned the place up and my did it make a difference. So I've known I should do it but I've never been happy on the stairs since tripping on them last year. However, did get them swept off, with my backyard broom because basement dust is nasty, and need only bring a dustpan and garbage bag down to dispose of the piles. Which will do when I rescue the laundry I did today after it dries in the furnace's heat. Furnace is still not on because temps won't drop until the wee hours, but have bumped the thermostat up to 15 so I won't freeze in those same wee hours.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-17T19:47:00

2026-04-18T00:21:07Z

One of those fitness bros on Tiktok was banging on about 'Your first 5000 steps don't count! That's just you moving around in your day. It's the second 5000 that will make you fit!' Yeah well, we know who doesn't have an office job. Also who is not an arthritic seventy-something. 5000 steps is a good day for me, achieved today by going out for lunch in the 'one day only! sun' and continuing along Bloor to Wieners Home Hardware, where I purchased an air purifier and a 100 foot extension cord, and walked both back on the rollator. I have good intentions of trimming vines in the back garden and the hedge in the front, which will not happen soon because my back is killing me these days. Maybe when April is over?

(There was an interlude there where I went to get cash from the BoM's ATM, which returned my card and gave me a receipt but did not give me cash. And because it was Friday, there was a lineup to speak to a person. So I waited and watched one woman do something with what looked like her business's account books, and then did something else, and then had to pay some bills, and then needed something else done with her card. All the time in the world. But she finished at last and I rolled up to the desk and asked about my money. The clerk took my receipt, looked at it, and showed me the small print under my total, which said the machine could not complete the transaction so the withdrawal was cancelled. I felt like an idiot, of course, but now I know. And know not to try for money on a Friday when the machines are likely to run out of cash. Or run out of tens, a new option that I'd like to use except that mostly the ATMs will only offer me twenties and fives. Well, fifties if I want them but I don't. I want small bills for panhandlers and tips.)

But after a rest at home with beanbags and muscle relaxants I did another of my perennial To Do chores and washed the warmer of my two winter coats at the laundromat. Cold water and a smaller load let me get away with a mere 2.75; the larger machines start at $4 for a cold wash. You can't dry clean this coat but I doubt that washing got much of the grime off the sleeves. I tumble dried it on low, as instructed, but it will require hanging up to get completely dry. Which is fine-- winter's last blast will blast through some time tomorrow and I will need the heat on for a couple of nights.

After which I went out again to see if Fiesta had turkey rolls, which they didn't. Got some hummous to eat with veg and a couple of Pepsis to help with the sinus medication I have to take in the allergy season. All this came to a grand total of 7000 steps, so no, no second 5000 steps for me. Fitness bro can go pound sand.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-16T19:24:00

2026-04-16T23:38:52Z

Oh happy day dep't. Fiesta has its bagels back. My email works again for my money woman and I have a chunk of change before the markets tank once more. Seriously, will no one rid me of this turbulent toddler? And greasy-haired Kegsbreath while we're at it.

My bank tells me when there's a withdrawal over $500, which is nice, but do they need to ping me the info at 2 a.m? Mind, I was actually up at that hour. Increasing my water intake has lost me some of the weight that vodka put on this winter, and I'm grateful, but even if I drink nothing after 8 p.m., once my body is in water-shedding mode it doesn't stop. So I'm back to those middle of the night bathroom trips which I thought were long behind me.

I have also discovered how one orders from amazon.jp. That odd country in the list, Club? That's Canada. So I could order the new 100 Demons from them but amazon.jp is still amazon.jp is still unmitigated highway robbery. The exchange rate is heavenly: a tankōbon comes in at $8. Once amazon has its weasley way, it will cost me $49 and change. Yeah, no, as they say in the Midwest. Must try to work out honto.jp's new buying system since they ditched the German company, and maybe then they'll be willing to sell me paperbacks again. In the meantime Finder Jean has offered to mail me a copy so I've ordered it from amazon to her address and hope it arrives there safely.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-15T21:29:00

2026-04-16T02:07:38Z

The rain kindly held off until well after I got home from physio, which was nice (I took my rain cape just in case, which is doubtless why it did so) but now is bucketing down and will probably keep on doing it until Friday. So no, not putting any garbage out tonight. Besides I should pack up those used furnace filters in the basement, which require a large type of garbage bag, and I don't feel like it. Rain and warmth makes things hurt, and sinuses not least of all. So shall sit inside and feel sorry for myself instead. Especially since there were no turkey rolls at Loblaws even though they had them last week-- also frozen stuffed turkeys for $55, dear lord-- and I wanted an easy cook easy carve turkey roll to supply my protein for three or four days. Old age is when eating is less a pleasure and more of a chore: have you had sufficient protein today, sufficient fibre, sufficient green veg? My wholegrain cereal and blueberries take care of at least half the fibre but the protein is a problem. It's supposed to be something ridiculous like 90 grams for someone my age and weight and I can't manage that. I should just lose weight and then I could eat less.

Reading is a bust. Finished a Miles Burton, or maybe two-- they don't stick in the memory, but I'm glad Kobo has more of them in. Have a dead tree Golden Age mystery from the library and When They Burned the Butterfly waiting there for whenever it stops raining. But my most enjoyable reading right now is an oddity. Back in the 90s there was a fanfiction collection called Anime House Presents, generally a mixed bag of stories in 80s series I didn't know, and varying widely as to quality. But one writer, Vicki Wyman, wrote in Lupin Sansei, and wrote really well. I don't know that series at all but it doesn't matter: Wyman did that best-of-doujinshi thing of making the characters distinctly her own, in stories whose titles all start with the words 'Thoughts Contingent'. I've been going through my collection with a view to getting rid of them, and have reached the special all Eroica issue. In which there's a longish novella by Wyman, crossing Lupin and his two henchmen in a caper with Dorian and Klaus. Thoughts Contingent on a Blithe Spirit is an utter delight and I'm taking it very slowly to spin out the pleasure.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-14T23:50:00

2026-04-15T03:52:58Z

Last night's thunderstorms were all rolling distant thunder, unusual for this town, but FB photos say the lightning was out of this world. Cleared up around noon but I stayed in and did desultory housekeeping and exercises. More rain tomorrow, of course.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-13T21:11:00

2026-04-14T01:33:05Z

Today, as my sister said, was a 'get everything done before the rain comes back' day. Everything for me was a library hold and late lunch at my tony Korean restaurant where I haven't been in ages, mostly because my regular waitress hasn't been around. I thought she'd left but no, she was just spending two months in China. With her family. Because she's not Korean at all, she's Chinese. She just happens to speak Korean that she learned at a Korean restaurant there, and Japanese that she learned in Japan, and English that she learned here, and now I feel like a piker. Yes, there are people who just have a gift for languages and I am not one of them, but ohh I wish I was.

I was ready to congratulate her on missing our ferocious winter, but turns out her family lives in Harbin, which was probably worse than us.

It was a sudden! warm day, after being furnace weather all weekend. The wind blew so it wasn't quite as oppressive as two weeks ago but I still have that scratchy antsy unhappiness that the first warm weather brings. At least the forecast rain got itself over with in the night so people could get to the polls, those who didn't do the advanced polls at Easter. Someone has been papering the neighbourhood telephone poles with flyers denouncing Carney, probably for not following a socialist agenda. Which is no surprise for anyone with an ounce of political nous, but the younger generation has no memory of what a red tory is. I too would like my left-leaning Iiberals back, but in the face of entrenched populism out west and the Orange One down south, a very central government is needed to pull the saner right-wing element in.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-12T18:36:00

2026-04-12T22:53:01Z

What's the use of sleeping till past noon if all it gets me is a dream of sitting the top level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test and not being able to read the tiny print of the exam, while the kind invigilator told me not to worry about quitting. I might as well have got up when I woke up, or woke for the third time because I kept coming to the surface in the dark.

The tiny print was in English and probably references the tiny print of my Plato texts. Anyway, finished the Meno last night and the Crito today. The Meno is head-hurty and hard to follow, even with diagrams, so I am happy to be embarked on the Phaedo now.

Seems we've had yoyoing temps for a good two months now, but in April we get near the need for change of season clothes. I put away the thickest of the wool socks and brought out a couple of the cotton sockettes, pulled the mid-weight culottes from storage, and shall swap the thickest of the waffle tops for tshirts. When temps swing from 20+humidex to 12+wind in the same week, you need a wardrobe for all seasons.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-11T20:54:00

2026-04-12T01:18:00Z

This being the last sunny day till oh who knows, I put a box of books out by the sidewalk and then... stayed in, because Saturday at the Opera was Don Giovanni from the Met last year. Having missed Idomeneo on Valentine's Day through not checking the schedule, I was very careful to keep today open. That library hold that came in will just have to wait. And being in the front room, I managed 30 minutes on the bike machine without triggering my Don'wanna reflex, that has kept me away from it for months.

Not to be snotty, though, but some of the singers' Italian was seriously English-inflected, particularly the Commendatore. Other English speakers can manage the vowels, like Kiri Te Kanawa, but obviously not everyone. And of course nobody else's Elvira comes up to hers. Still, a pleasant interlude. Don Giovanni was played as an oily snake, which makes sense, but is new to me since I imprinted on Raimondi's menacing Giovanni in the Losey film, which now gives me the oogies to listen to.

And note that May 23 is Turandot, that Met production that I've seen clips of on Tiktok and would adore to see live.

I did make it to an oddly empty Fiesta at 5. I wanted bagels but woe is me, Fiesta no longer has bagels. Can't think why not because they bake them on the premises and cannot keep them in stock. Mind, I don't *need* bagels, but those fritters yesterday upset my tum and I wanted some cushioning starch. Ah well, rice crackers it is.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-10T18:48:00

2026-04-10T23:04:47Z

Since it was raining all day, I had another stab at making zucchini potato fritters. The first thing to note is that all recipes must be halved, if not quartered. So, sorry, two medium zucchini and a large carrot are Far Too Much for one person. One onion and one medium potato was sufficient for that amount of carrot and zuke but three eggs was too much. The onion helped the flavour but the fritters were still pretty bland. I suspect you really need to add far more salt than I'm willing to, and that sautéing the onion would be even better. Cooking in a nonstick skillet doesn't really cook them: I ended up with a kind of okonomiyaki without the sauce. But I seriously don't want to fry in oil. These are supposed to conduce to healthy eating and deep frying is not that. Presumably something like HP sauce would help with the blandness, or worcestershire if you incline that way. Shall see which works best tomorrow because boy do I have a lot of zucchini fritters.

Rain stopped late afternoon so I got out for a prescription, as also a tensor bandage for my annoying left wrist that clicks and stabs at me. Physio thinks it's tendons rather than bones and I hope she's right. Tendons can be cortisoned into submission but arthritis cannot.

comments

My great big transit adventure pt the whatever

2026-04-09T23:24:21Z

Dentist appointment at 1:30 so of course was up at 8:45 to be breakfasted and medicated and exercised and showered to leave house before 12. Going by cab takes barely 20 minutes but a) the TTC is Like That and b) it's recycle Thursday meaning the trucks will come moseying up the street invariably when the cab is due. Also it wasn't supposed to rain until later and my subway station has elevators now. So I hoofed it down there and got on same. But someone has decided that telling people eastbound and westbound is too confusing for the poor dears, so they name the terminal points instead. Which might still be alright except that the termini are Kipling and Kennedy, waaay out in Heere men say bee dragonnes land, and conveying nothing to me personally. However. Kennedy is eastbound because it has an e in it, and also is the one where I have to go to the lower level and then cross to the elevator on the other side. Because I always go east and never go west if I can avoid it.

So off we start on our three station journey and then as we near the second station slow down and stop. Ah. Signal problems farther along have caused all trains to turn back at Broadview so eastbound trains are backed up. At least they tell us this, clearly for once. We start moving slowly and stop at Spadina, pull out and once again stop and wait before St.George. Start again, arrive, I get off and trek down the platform to the elevator. Woman is standing there looking distraught. 'It's not coming!' And I'm all Oh god didn't we do this last time? But as she's turning away I see the cables start to move. Two women get off with their kids in two wagons, the loading of which accounts for the delay. So up and onto line1 and off at Queen's Park. Woman outside the station asks me is the subway running yet, and I say No, still shuttle buses from Broadview and she turns sadly away. Mosey over to Yonge. It has taken an hour and change to get here. No time for a Tim's but do get to send my tax authorisation to the accountant, registered mail for a third of what the courier costs and no danger (fingers crossed) of it going to Quebec this time.

My dentist had an emergency patient as well as me, meaning she floated between the two of us, meaning I got a break from holding my mouth open with my weakened jaw muscles. (Cracked vertebrae apparently does that to you.) So I could actually move my jaw when she was finished, for which I was grateful. And grateful too that I still had money on account so the damage was half what it might have been. "I'll put this through for insurance." Oh no, they said they wouldn't cover this one. "Oh, they often say that and then pay it anyway." Which would be nice if it happens but I think they refused it twice. However, I stopped by Fran's (the last greasy spoon in TO) and had meatloaf and mash with what I would have spent on taxis.

Back on the TTC, and knowing better than to transfer to the Bloor line at 3 pm, up to Dupont. Elevator to the concourse, over to the elevator to street level, it arrives with father and two kids in a double stroller, and... the doors won't open. Guy inside tries opening them manually, I press the large help button and tell the voice what's up, voice says he'll come over but doesn't. Then Dad gets the doors open from inside, remarking 'It did this yesterday too' as he exits, but the doors close before I can get in and won't open when I press the button. And still no one comes. And this, boys and girls, is why I hope never to be in a wheelchair because though it's a pain, you *can* take a folding walker on the escalator, even the stupidly narrow ones at Dupont station. Which I do, and traffic being backed up to forever all along Dupont because condos have taken up a whole lane, as ever, I walk home. And no, no buses pass me as I do so. There are too damned many condos being built in this town, especially that one, which has a penthouse going for five million and lower floors for not much less. On grubby Dupont that has no shopping or green spaces to speak of. People are nuts.

Tomorrow is, what else, rain again so I shall sleep in and stay in. Does it always rain this much in April? My DW journal says yes, yes it does. Heigh-ho.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-08T17:10:00

2026-04-08T21:18:34Z

Well, if Armageddon returns, I at least have my minor pleasures. Like a gas bill in the minus numbers and a tax refund that's only slightly less than last year. And it's less thanks to the dental plan which is still a win. Then I was pleased to see the Folio Society has an illustrated Howl's Moving Castle available. Either my eyesight was acting up or someone miscoded the webpage because I saw the price-- $1000-- and was hell no. Only it's actually $100, which is more like. Maybe see how expenses go this month-- I have a crown that insurance won't pay for and a tree trimming on the 20th-- but perhaps after that...

Finished nothing but a Dr Priestley or two this week. Tiktok is all I'm up for in these antsy latter days.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-07T19:12:00

2026-04-07T23:29:09Z

Well, if we're heading towards the apocalypse at least we're doing it on a sunny day. A cold sunny day, mind: snow on the rooftops when I got out of bed at an unwonted 9:30. Vanished in the April sun when I eventually went out to catch the 4 pm opening of Sushi on Bloor. Had a bento, very pleasant except for the guy who came in and plonked himself down two tables from me. He'd been smoking before he came in and reeked of it. Had to put sanitizer on my upper lip to kill the smell. I know most people don't smell most things, and smokers certainly can't, but it's a misery for those of us who do. I suppose it's like those with perfect pitch who have to listen to rock singers who definitely don't.

Otherwise sun and snow do make a change from the chronic rain showers and also what was probably thundersnow last night. Whether it's the rain or whether it's a new stage of decrepitude, but my wrists are now catching and panging arthritically in the fashion of my April elbows. Last month I could skip acupuncture no problem, but having missed last week's session was clearly a bad idea. Have also ballooned with water weight as my ankles and scale inform me, alas. Time to drop the vodka coolers and reintroduce the 1.5 litres of water again.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-05T18:49:00

2026-04-05T23:10:31Z

Yeah, rain. And wind. And when the weather page said it would all stop, ie late afternoon, it started to snow. Well, sleet: little white things bouncing off the bunker roof. So I stayed in and did nothing much. Easter Sunday is not a day to go out to eat anyway.

Found a site with a downloadable .pdf No Canvassers sign but I do not have a printer and the library is closed tomorrow. I have no confidence that one pass will be enough for the Liberals or the NDP so must get it up before next weekend's last push and the following Monday's Day Of push.

The cure for Cabell's itchy-making idiocy and longueurs turns out to be, of all things, Plato. Reading the Meno in the Mentor paperback's small print, and the Euthyphro in the more legible but not as polished Loeb translation. Occasionally glancing at the Greek facing text and wondering how I was ever able to read that. Oh, and polished off my disintegrating translation of Inanna's descent into Hell, fifty years old or more, complete with editorial comparisons to Orpheus, Vergil, Dante, Swinburne-I-think (ETA no, Milton), some Irish hero I don't know, TS Eliot, and I forget what else. No doubt she'd have thrown in the Provencal poets too, like everyone else of that generation, if only they'd written about travelling through the netherworld. A quick consult of wikipedia suggests she should have been referencing Gilgamesh, but she didn't.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-04T17:16:00

2026-04-04T21:35:55Z

Yesterday achieved the dizzy heights of 22C, which means patio weather in TO, so after voting I went and sat on a patio and watched the great white clouds of summer lumber overhead. Evidently no matter the restaurant, fish and chips in this here burg means a great slab of deepfried something. Maybe I'm just confused by the fish fingers of my childhood because I always expect something more dainty. However Pour Boy's is better than Paupers' and the servings as ever were generous enough that they sufficed for lunch today.

When I went out to the polls I half expected rain shortly, just from the grey-banded clouds and the fretful wind. But those were presumably the last hurrah of the overnight rain that flooded all the street corners. I still ached and was abominably stiff all through yesterday so my 5600+ steps were accomplished in misery and wanhope. Today, with temps back to seasonable cold, I'm much more limber. Still not venturing outside because, sun or not, the weather pages are saying heavy rain. Am indoors with vodka and beanbags, trying not to spend the whole day on tiktok and failing miserably.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-02T20:17:00

2026-04-03T00:44:43Z

The one thing it reliably does in April is rain. It rained last night and this morning but stopped enough to let me get to Fiesta around 4 for more Savoyard omelette ingredients, against this weekend's double closures. Crammed enough that I had to wait for a basket but nothing like what Saturday will be. And Saturday is supposed to be heavy rain again-- oh these special weather statements, how they oppress my soul. Wind, rain, thunderstorms all spring, yielding to heat and air quality alerts all summer.

But tomorrow should be both dry and sudden!warm, though 18 with a wind is not quite the same as Monday's 20 in sullen sun. I will probably go to the advanced polling at the school beyond Fiesta for our by-election since our MP is being sent off to Ukraine. It finally registers that the advanced poll is located much much closer than the day-of polling station, and the Easter weekend allows four days for it. Last year's federal election fell on Easter, thereby allowing three days for the actual polling. This seems to be Carney's strategy, and go him. Doug Ford, take note.

And maybe restaurants will be open Friday and Sunday and maybe they won't be too crowded but am not getting my hopes up. Maybe I will just stay tiddly and beanbagged until this most unchancy of holidays gets itself over with. My elbows are unhappy and my sinuses are unhappy and, well, April is a cruel month all in all. Not the cruelest, whatever Tom says: that's July. But pretty bad.

comments

flemmings @ 2026-04-01T17:58:00

2026-04-01T22:22:27Z

Yesterday was a total washout, literally. Monday night was a nuit blanche interrupted by rolling thunderstorms, so I read until 4 and slept in to headachy noon. It continued to storm and deluge all day and especially into the evening, as the temps dropped from Monday's muggy 20C to something more seasonable overnight. Had the heat on when I went to bed because we were hitting 4C by morning. Today, well, got up to Loblaws for milk and such, bundled up garbage for tomorrow's pickup, and made zucchini fritters. I'd grated the zucchini and potatoes yesterday with my *extremely* achy elbows-- apparently pressure changes and damp are registered in the arms now-- and tried to squeeze out the moisture through the cheesecloth I bought on the weekend. Discover that kitchen scissors and nail scissors will not cut cheesecloth. Shoved the mixture into a tupperware and had something else for dinner. Today I used a linen tea towel and that worked fine, but the carrot I was going to add had gone rubbery unpeelable and ungratable. Tossed that, added soupçon of flour and egg to the mix, and fried them up. Passable, but if I ever do this again will definitely add onion. And maybe baking soda like they say, to make the things lighter.

Have had a Dr Priestley on the go since forever and still not finished it. I want country house murders and this is about a syndicate that steals stuff. Finished Cabell's The High Place, wondering why I still read Cabell and his extremely unlikeable protagonists, a murderer in this case, as well as a horndog like *every last one of his male characters.* There's a name for why I'm doing it, which I suspect is masochism. 'My critics think I am an enemy to marriage,' James whines. 'As a married man, I take exception to this.' Yeah well, all the guys you write can't stand their wives and go around having it off with any nubile thing available, so no wonder. I need to stop reading male authors, is what.

comments