Meetup events

"What kind of man are you?" "A philanderer"--Upstairs, Downstairs

I've been really lazy lately! (Hence the long gap since my last post.) Today around noon I got back in bed for a nap, and slept another three hours!  At least I still have Meetup.

Saturday I went to the Book and Brunch Meetup, where we talked about Love in the Time of Cholera.  There were over twenty people there, but the only other man was the waiter!  I had to admit that the book, for all its brilliance, left a bad taste in the mouth.

Tuesday evening the Transit Enthusiasts Meetup group met at Dutch Dreams (my suggestion). I had a strawberry-vanilla sundae with tropical fruit.  Then we walked around the neighbourhood seeing places like the car barns complex.

At yesterday's Chinese art class we drew grapes.  I'm still afraid to try colours other than black ink!

This evening I went to the Non-Fiction Book Club, which met this time at the Fox & Fiddle near St. George station.  We discussed The Undercover Economist, but I hadn't had time to read the book so I didn't have much to contribute.  I left early.

Campaign volunteer

"'Everything in the world has changed,' she said.

"'I have not,' he said. 'Have you?'"--Love in the Time of Cholera

I've started doing data entry at Olivia Chow's campaign office south of St. Clair station. (Nelson Lui, whom I know from some Asperger's groups, is active in it and invited me to participate.) Yesterday I processed some canvassing reports and today I entered some phone canvasses.  I also bundled some leaflets.

I'm handy with computers and figured out the work pretty quickly.  The phone canvassing had been in the east end and there were a lot of people who only spoke Chinese. (A few were limited to Greek.) Of course, there were a lot of "No answer" entries.

Yesterday morning I went on a Walking Meetup in the Cedarvale Ravine at 8:10 in the morning.  I barely made it in time, and had to run a bit to catch up with the others. (Later I went home and back to bed!) I'm not sure if I'll continue with it, but I wanted some creative disruption in my schedule.

I've joined several Facebook groups recently.  The group devoted to the 1960s TV series Batman is pretty fun.  I'm also in a couple for Aspies, one for Elizabeth Warren fans, and some devoted to comics, including fans of the website The Comics Curmudgeon.

THE TRIP TO ITALY

"She led him by the hand to the bed as if he were a blind beggar on the street, and she cut him into pieces with malicious tenderness, she added salt to taste, pepper, a clove of garlic, chopped onion, lemon juice, bay leaf, until he was seasoned and on the platter, and the oven was heated to the right temperature"--Love in the Time of Cholera

Yesterday Moira and I saw Michael Winterbottom's The Trip to Italy at the Varsity.  It's the sequel to his The Trip, with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon visiting Italian places this time.  Beforehand, we saw a string of trailers for very conventional-looking movies.

I've finally got rid of two threadbare T-shirts, at Moira's urging, and last night I got two new ones at the Target in the Stockyards.  I also went to the nearby Bulk Bin and got a load of 12-grain flour to replace the multigrain flour that I can no longer find.  Those grains include stuff like quinoa, amaranth and sunflower seeds!

At today's Chinese art class we were painting chrysanthemums. (Our teacher Qingxin says that next week we may start doing landscape stuff.) This week I was on time for a change.  I finally figured out that the "rocket" bus from Don Mills station to Scarborough Town Centre isn't a pure express:  it makes a few stops along the way, include Kennedy Avenue where I get off.

I've finished Love in the Time of Cholera.  Its sensibility was kind of cruel.

The end of the world

Every year when I sing in the Toronto City Opera chorus at the Bickford Centre, there comes a time when we go down to the basement and bring up the set pieces and props that are stored down there.  The Bickford Centre basement is not for the faint of heart.  The place is chaotically strewn with the detritus that accumulates from decades of schooling, with every kind of junk from file folders to obsolete computers. (I think there was a room like that in the Harry Potter books.) It gives me the creeps.

I was thinking, maybe this will be the fate of the world.  Modern civilization is a machine that's developed to the point of spewing out junk faster than we can dispose of it, or even put it in order.  As the twenty-first century progresses, maybe the junk will overwhelm us all.  The earth may end up like that basement, with a million different things to show future archaeologists that we were here.

A few years ago someone wrote a book imagining what the earth would look like if the human race suddenly disappeared all at once. (After a few years the nuclear plants would explode.) Our physical legacy would gradually be eroded, but it would take some time.  That's yet another book I want to read someday.

Headache!

The weather's been cool the last few days, earlier than usual.  I like such weather, except that the temperature change gave me quite a headache, which slowed down my activity.  Yesterday John and his family brought burritos for dinner, but I had to retire to bed pretty early.

Sunday afternoon was the second Classic Book Club Meetup, again at the Victory Cafe.  We discussed George Eliot's Silas Marner, and five people showed up, the exact number I'd made the reservation for.  There was also a sixth guy who'd come for a different event but ended up listening to us.  John Snow was telling how his stepmother wrote a graduate thesis on George Eliot, and he'd taught the book to students, so he knew it pretty well. (He liked that I called it "deceptively simple" in my writeup of the event. I also brought the Classics Illustrated comic from my childhood, though it's lost the centre part where Eppie crawled into his hut.  We're reading Balzac's Pere Goriot in October--John warned us not to read the Raffel translation--and Henry James' The Europeans in November.  Then we'll read a long book over the Christmas break!

Afterward I went to the supermarket in Dufferin Mall to look for Robin Hood multigrain flour, but they don't seem to have it anymore.  Oh, dear.

Yesterday a dozen people came to the memoir slam!  The subjects were the end of the world and recurring dreams.

Busy day yesterday

"Get busy with liven', or get busy with dyin'"--The Shawshank Redemption

Yesterday was busy.  First I went to my Chinese brush painting class in Agincourt.  I was even later than usual.  We did calligraphy for the first time.  I've been struggling with leaves the past few weeks, but I think I'm improving now.

Then I went to a picnic for autistic children at June Rowlands Park near Davisville station.  I went because Nelson Lui had invited me, and only made a short appearance. (Evgenia turned up too.)

Afterward I joined a Movie Meetup group and saw Frank Darabont's movie of Steven King's prison story The Shawshank Redemption for the second time. (It's been almost twenty years since I first saw it, at the time of its original release.) It ends up remarkably life-affirming.

Busy day yesterday, lazy day today.  It's time for me to go to Dufferin Mall and get a new supply of multigrain bread, but I just didn't feel motivated enough to leave the house.  Of course, this post is on the short side.

Somebody up There Likes Me

This afternoon was the latest ROLT Meetup.  The topic was religion, so I gave it the title "Somebody up There Likes Me." Over a dozen people said they were coming, but only five showed up.  Oh well, it's my biggest turnout in months.  I read "The Pinch-Bug and Its Prey," a chapter from Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer about a church service, as well as part of Huckleberry Finn where the hero tests the power of prayer.  And I read the chapter from the Book of Ecclesiastes with "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong..." I would have read a bit from Silas Marner, but one of the people there is reading it for my other group and I didn't want to spoil the plot for her.

They finally billed me for the copy of The Innocents Abroad I lost in the spring, and yesterday I went to Jones Library and paid the nineteen-dollar fine.  I also contributed the copy I'd bought as its replacement.  Last night I went to the latest Karaoke Meetup at BarPlus, where I sang Elvis' "American Trilogy" for the first time.

I've got past another bottleneck in the Facebook game Tribez.  This time I needed to produce more paint, which requires coral from the atoll island.  I've raised production partly by building a third coral factory, and partly by building paint factories on every island.  So  now I have coal plants on Marble Fiord and Piedmont Lands.

Yesterday I read almost 50 pages of Love in the Time of Cholera.  So I'm less anxious about finishing in time for the book club.

A new Meetup

"I told your daughter that she is like a rose." "True enough," said Lorenzo Daza, "but one with too many thorns"--Love in the Time of Cholera

Today I went to a Lunch Meetup with the awkwardly named "Daytime Monday to Friday Outing and Lunch Group." It was at the Green Papaya Vietnamese restaurant near Eglinton station.  I had the wonton soup--curried rice & shrimp combo. (Some of them went for a walk before arriving for lunch, but I wasn't up to that part.)

I was talking to a guy who's in even more Meetup groups than me. One day he joined so many all at once that the Meetup software temporarily stopped him in case he was a spammer!  There was also a girl who'd just arrived from Spain.  I suggested What a Bagel for a future location.

At Wednesday's Chinese painting class we started drawing bamboo.  I hope we start calligraphy soon! (I'm not yet motivated enough to buy materials and paint at home.)

I should get a move on with Love in the Time of Cholera.  The book club's meeting in two weeks, and I still haven't reached the halfway point.

Last night I dreamed of arriving by boat on the western shore of Ireland.

THE WIRE

I'm almost over my cold.  This afternoon I went outside and started snipping the branches from two limbs Father just sawed off the crab apple tree in the front yard. (They were blocking the sunlight from our living room and stretching over the neighbour's property.) The limbs will then be a lot easier to move to the back yard.

I'm now watching The Wire on DVD for the second time.  It's a really great show, with smart characters and lots of Baltimore atmosphere.  David Simon created this show before going on to do Treme. (A couple of actors are in both shows.) I mentioned that Treme always makes me angry about the neglect of New Orleans; The Wire makes me angry about the whole War on Drugs.  I plan to see the later episodes soon, which I haven't seen before.

This afternoon I went to a new Meetup group for puzzle enthusiasts. (It was at the Starbuck's in the Yonge & Eglinton Indigo Books.) At the last minute, unfortunately, the organizer changed the time from tomorrow to today and I was the only other person who showed up.  I hope the next event goes better.

Tonight I saw an episode of Upstairs, Downstairs with a music box playing a Strauss waltz that Elizabeth said was "Tales From the Vienna Woods," but I'm pretty sure it was "Roses From the South." Elizabeth was never as smart as she thought she was...

Last night I dreamed of being in a big shopping centre in New Guinea, with signs written in pidgin.

A cold!

I've had a bit of a cold for the last couple of days.  But I still managed to make the Bible Meetup yesterday evening.  It was at the Second Cup in the North York Civic Centre, and I ordered some hot cider, which should be good for the cold.  The Bible Meetup wasn't really my sort of thing--I'm not religious enough--but I did try it. (I missed a Movie Meetup that was going to the Beatles movie A Hard Day's Night.)

I've just joined several Meetup groups.  One is for Aspies who only got diagnosed later in life.  Another is for people who admire the comic strip artist Alex Raymond (Flash Gordon, Rip Kirby).

I've started resuming my translation of that Chinese novel Wandering Youth.  It's a 1950s anticommunist potboiler with a nice girl and a bad girl.  In the part I'm now at the bad girl is telling the nice girl her life story, which involves her running away from her aunt's home to escape her uncle's lust and marrying a dissolute good for nothing out of necessity.

I'm now reading Gabriel Garcia-Marquez' "magical realist" novel Love in the Time of Cholera, and it's pretty amazing. (I loved the author's 100 Years of Solitude.) I'm reading it for the Book and Brunch Meetup three weeks from now.