S. Worthen (owlfish) wrote,
S. Worthen
owlfish

Good, Tiring

I've been exhaustingly busy for the past 3 days, and we're only halfway through the 4 day weekend so far! Thanks to Canada Day being on a Tuesday this year, the University has given staff Monday off as their first ever "Staff Appreciation Day." C. is taking tomorrow off work. Why have I been so busy? I'll tell you....

When I was 10 or so, I lived in London for a year. Lada was a friend of mine living there whose parents were also abroad for the year, from Toronto. Now that I'm living here, we've seen each other a few times, but not too often. She's working on her acting career. I'm on her mailing list, so I know when she's in major local productions. This week was her professional acting debut, and since I could go, it seemed too important to miss. I'm very glad I went. Not only was it good to see Lada, but the play she was in (a new one, Together, Apart, by Sean Curran) was very good. It's a story about families and their secrets, and was very powerfully performed.

This afternoon's entertainment was the first Pride Parade I've been to. For the last several years I've known that the Pride Parade and Caribana are the city's two single largest events of the year. Usually over a million people come to each. We had a good few, fairly far along the parade route, and didn't have to wait too long for the parade to appear. It was a solid two hours of fun, although the people behind us grumbled that in the distant past it used to go a whole four hours. I can only imagine it used to be slower and less well organized? I can't quite imagine twice as many people participating given how big an event it was as is. There were lots of floats, even more people walking. Of course, being as this is Toronto, all the groups were organized by neighborhood theme. All the school-groups were together. The university groups were together. All the unions were together. The political parties and candidates for mayor were all in one section of the parade. All the different religious groups were in another section, and all the drink-advertisement/sponsored groups were together. At times, the thematic unity of it proved mildly surreal.

The ruling the other week effectively allowing single sex marriage in Canada came just in time for the parade: there were lots of just married couples celebrating in the parade. Another ruling which helps to allow aspects of the parade: the legal ruling a few years ago which allows both genders equal right to bear their chests.


On top of these recent events, I've spent the last several evenings at parties and events. Friday was Colin's birthday party, which was a good gathering of people wherein we debated whether or not pineapples grow on trees, and most of us were wrong.

Saturday was pittenweem's housewarming, which was particularly noteworthy since at 7pm that evening, the local power substation exploded. Consequently there was no power for blocks in all directions, and the event was done almost entirely by candlelight. The electricity returned shortly after midnight, but based on what we could see, it was being restored street by street. Presumably this is because they were rerouting each circuit to a different part of the grid. Happily, the heat wave had broken, so we didn't need fans, and there were plenty of candles. It was a good ambience.

Tonight was another birthday party, this time Cat's. It was particularly good to talk to people I haven't seen much in a while. Unfortunately, as soon as we left the house to head out to the restaurant, the skies opened up and poured and poured and poured. I was largely soaked by the time we reached our destination.
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