paleaswater often says the US, or rather New York City, and frequently New Jersey as well, is turning into a third world country-- this usually in response to some delay or breakdown in transit. By which definition Ontario is third world too, if my adventures with Greyhound yesterday are anything to judge by. But then there's K-chan's stories of having to instruct a Greyhound driver how to get to Kitchener while they were in the process of /going/ to Kitchener, and doing it with a migraine as well. My driver didn't lose us in the middle of the countryside like hers, but our bus did fail to restart after a mandated *stop* in the middle of the countryside; which stop is a whole 'nother story I won't bore you with. Oh, and then my left eye decided to take umbrage at the presence of a cat and dried to Gobi-like levels and my lens crawled off so persistently I had to take it out, so getting home was an interesting experience as well. (Took out, had no place to put it because lens case had peroxide solution, not saline, so held it in my mouth, if you want to know, for upwards of two hours. Moral is 1) never travel without glasses and 2) never travel without saline.)So today I woke late and Did All The Things.
Renewed library card, checked out monitors at Above All (happily not needed because 15-incher has recovered from its sulks this morning), bought antihistamines and eyedrops for still grumpy eye, mailed Christmas cards, checked out furnace filters (happily not needed because they last for three months and I changed mine this morning), bought a useful kitchen knife which I may have to give to bro for Christmas, bought a monthly planner at Grand and Toy, had lunch at a Chinese restaurant at the point where Condo Alley becomes fit for humans again, and then because I was near the Museum, got a ticket for the terracotta warriors exhibit at 11 am on Tuesday, fully resigned to having someone call me at 7 Tuesday wanting me to work.
I haven't been in the museum since they started adding The Excrescence and renamed the whole thing Michael Chin Crystal, which means a good seven years or so. The front entrance is now on Bloor, into the slanting and undistinguished space of The Excrescence, and not the imposing triple doors on the Queen's Park side that lead into the Romanesque rotunda. There are new bike posts on Queen's Park, quite beautifully done as metal versions of various artifacts; but no posts on the side of the actual entrance. Or popcorn vendors or hot dog sellers or any of the things that made the old ROM a people place. So normally I wouldn't touch the ROM with a bargepole, much as I loved it from childhood until middle age; but then again, I'll never go to China and see the warriors in situ either. So I hold my nose and pay their appalling prices. Experience was lightened by catching part of the Santa Speedo Run, not that I knew what it was.
Then to my surprise did two things I was iffy about-- washed the comforter I picked off someone's lawn last summer (am pretty sure it's not buggy, and it *was* in fact clean, but safe than sorry etc) and shall use it as a mattress cover under the flannel sheets when the cold weather comes back again next week. And then walked down to the Bloor Cinema and watched a free film courtesy The Japan Foundation, Always -- 三丁目の夕日. Based on a manga, the notes say, which explains the tendency for characters to bash doors down bodily while five other people drag them back. But otherwise sweetly sentimental, nostalgic, and sappy, just the thing to make me cry like a drain and put me into a happy frame of mind.
