Tempus fugit

This afternoon I went out to Dufferin Mall to buy a new strap for my watch. (The old one broke a couple of weeks ago, but I let it slide.) I got a new one at Wal-Mart, though I feel guilty about shopping there:  I just couldn't think of anywhere else to go.  There was some event going on at Dufferin Grove nearby which Bev was interested in, so I checked the place but couldn't find anything.

It took me almost an hour to get home!  The bus service on Dufferin Street is a real pain, and I had to wait a long while before a bus showed up.  Then I had a long wait for the St. Clair streetcar. I was late for dinner, but it was microwaved quesadillas which sometimes burn my mouth, so I was glad that they'd cooled down.

Then I went to the Poetry Meetup at Hart House.  First I had to print out some poems from my translation blog (I uploaded a new post of Euripides translations the other day), so I was a bit late again.  Like my event on Sunday, about a dozen people said they were going, then people started changing their minds, and only three people showed up!  I recited a passage from Euripides' Herakles where he comes to his senses after going berserk, and one from his The Phoenician Women where Jocasta's son refuses to hand over the Thebes throne to his brother.  And I also recited my Scots translations of "The Hill" ("Th' Brae") and "George Gray" from Spoon River Anthology.  George recited his poem about Atalante, the Greek woman who raced against a man and lost because he kept distracting her by throwing golden apples.

I've now finished Erckmann & Chatrian's Waterloo.  They wrote it in the 1860s and I wonder if there was a subtext about Louis-Napoleon's vainglory. (Mexico was the Second Empire's Russia.) Later I was reading on Wikipedia about the places involved and Napoleon's relatives.  If you ask me, instead of divorcing Josephine Napoleon should have made her son Eugene his heir.

Last night I saw the documentary The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne at the Bloor with a Movie Meetup group.  It's a biography of a notorious jewel thief, and I found it a bit depressing.  But I got the first of the four free popcorns that come with renewing your membership!