It Began With A Train Derailment, And It Ends With One, Too

Sorry for not being around. I was up in Barry's Bay visiting my grandmother. More on that in a minute, but first ...

I was coming home on Friday, and noticed that traffic was backed up on the 401 going eastbound. It turns out that it was probably blocked because of a train derailment in Oshawa. I have to laugh a bit. When I first moved to Toronto, I experienced a train derailment (and I was travelling by train) that sent me scurrying to the GO Transit line as an emergency back-up in, wait for it, Oshawa. There's something about those tracks there I figure. I don't know whether to look at this as an omen, a foreshadowing, or not. Is my life truly that off the rails every time I contemplate a move to another city? Weird.

My grandmother is doing OK, and is now out of the hospital. She's on oxygen, though, and family is staying with her at home until she gets back on her feet. When I first visited her in the hospital, she looked so ashen and gray. I really didn't have a lot to say to her, which is about par for the course, and then she accused me of not being lively enough -- of being inside my own head too much. I was a bit offended, though I suppose I have a lot on my mind these days. She shook hands on me on my second visit, even though I had a bit of a cold and she could have gotten sick again. (I had gone to the hospital this time wearing a mask, and she ordered me to take it off. So I did.) Anyhow, it's good to see her doing well, or reasonably so. I guess time will tell how things go.

I'm now a few steps closer to moving back to Ottawa. It looks like that job is looking like it is going to pan out. That's all I'm going to say about that for now.

Not much else is new here. I went out and saw the new Disney/Pixar movie Up on Friday night and nearly blubbered like a baby through it. Maybe it was because I'd just gone through an experience with my grandmother (the movie's about an old man who realizes his dream to fly to South America via a houseful of balloons), but there's a very moving montage sequence near the start of the movie that chronicles, in about five minutes or so, a couple moving through their youth to old age. Suffice to say, I nearly lost it at that point. Such a romantic at heart, I guess. Chalk it up to a stupid Disney/Pixar movie to have me close to being reduced to a mass of blubber.

I also got a few new records on the weekend. I scored a copy of XTC's Beeswax, a collection of B-sides from 1977 to 1982 that I'd been looking for for a long time. I also got the latest compilation from The Vaselines, which is fine at three albums long, and the new Grizzly Bear which I listened to this morning and also liked very much. So all in all, it's been a bit of a productive week.