Springing
Wednesday May 10, 2023
It's finally Spring in Toronto. The plants and flowers are well and truly springing from the ground, but the weather has been bouncing back and forth unpredictably too. Last week, we had a solid run of six continuous days of rain, finally broken on Friday with some beautiful sunny weather. I was able to bike through High Park and see the tulips, magnolias and cherry blossoms, before heading down to the lake shore trail to Cirque du Soleil, now located in Mimico. I saw Kooza, which was fantastic. I had sweaty palms through several of the performances, just watching and admiring the stunts and acrobatics of the show. The good weather continued on into Saturday, but it rained heavily again on Sunday. This week is much more pleasant, with temperatures set to reach over 20C at the end of the week.
Emotions have been up and down over the last few months as well, for various reasons. I'm slowly getting back to full health with my back injury, and have started playing squash and badminton again. Gym is slowly getting there too, it still hurts a bit to bench press, but the fact that I'm able to lift things again is deeply gratifying. My friends and I have planned a trip to Newfoundland in August, which is incredibly exciting; work was supposed to have a meetup in Vancouver in September, but that got changed to Los Angeles today because Beyonce is in Vancouver at the same time and finding accommodation was difficult. I'm still supposed to go to the S Club 7 concert in London at the end of October, even though Paul Cattermole, one of the Seven, passed away tragically at the start of April. Today, I learned that my mother's eldest sister passed away at age 85. She lived a good life, and I have fond memories of her playing mahjong with my mother when she visited New Zealand. There's a nice photograph of all six sisters on her Facebook page that made me a bit emotional.
It's been nice catching up with various people as well. Lina came in from Singapore for a couple of weeks, there's been meals with ex workmates, I went and saw Avenue Q as well. I got 20 out of 20 on my Canadian citizenship test, and I'm still waiting for an invitation to the oath ceremony, although IRCC strikes may have impacted the timing on that. My social calendar has been nicely busy for the last month, and as the weather warms up, it'll get busier. There's plenty to look forward to as summer rolls in. There's been some sad times too, but heaps of my friends have banded together to support me during those times, and for that, I'm truly thankful.
Posted by Jeremy at 2:40am on Wednesday May 10, 2023 :: 0 comments :: 