Odds & ends

• Feeling decidedly like a slug lately. Must get out of the office cubicle/off the sofa more often. :p
• Case in point: Spent three hours this morning watching the Diamond Jubilee celebrations on TV as the Queen floated down the River Thames through the city of London on a beautifully decorated barge, accompanied by other members of the Royal Family and surrounded by a flotilla of 1,000+ boats (including a -- what else? -- canoe from Canada, paddled by a bunch of modern day voyageurs festooned in tuques and sashes). It was quite the spectacle, done up only as the British can do. Too bad it rained, but as one spectactor interviewed pointed out, that only served to make it seem all the more British. Long may she reign! : )
• On the other hand, I feel like I deserved a lazy weekend. Busy week at work (newly married boss is now on her honeymoon), capped off by a torrentially rainy Friday. I foolishly wore capris & sandals to work. Shortly after lunch, we started hearing that Union Station -- the hub of the city's considerable passenger rail, commuter rail & bus and subway traffic -- was flooding -- and then that the flooding had spread into the concourse level of one of the adjacent office towers we pass through en route to & from work every day. We also heard that some of the flooding appeared to be (gulp) raw sewage. Downtown Toronto is one big construction site right now, including major work being done at Union Station, so it was not unfathomable that something could have gone wrong. Then we heard that nearly all the downtown subway stations had been shut down. Fortunately, the commuter trains continued to run.  Dh & I took an alternate route through the underground PATH that got us almost all the way to Union Station. We did not go inside, but made our way up to our platform from an entrance at street level. By then, the rain had mostly stopped, and while the ground was wet (and the stench in the air confirmed the probability that sewage was involved :p ), at least we were not sloshing through inches of water (& worse), as I had feared. Whew!! We got home at the usual time, but I was exhausted, half asleep on the couch by 8:30, & in bed by 9:30.
• I was not at the Eaton Centre downtown yesterday, but the news of the shooting there last night was enough to make me feel stressed & tired all over again. One of my online U.S. friends messaged me, "Do you shop at that mall?"  Ummm, yeah, ALL THE TIME. It is a five-minute walk through the PATH from my office, & I often (at least once every week or so) head up there on my lunch hour. The Eaton Centre is not the biggest mall in Canada anymore, but it's still probably the best-known. It's always teeming with mobs of teenagers and tourists. Growing up on the Prairies, we all knew the Toronto Eaton Centre and it was the first place I wanted to go when I finally made it to Toronto in the early 1980s. 
• Today was the annual memorial butterfly release and picnic (now a "garden party") for the pregnancy loss support group we were involved with for more than 10 years. This year, we did not go. It's only the second time we have missed the picnic, and the first time in many years. I'm not sure any or many of our friends went, either -- one had e-mailed a bunch of us a few weeks ago, asking if anyone was going, & got a lukewarm response. There have been some changes since the upheaval that took place last summer/fall, but I still feel sad about everything that happened.
• The Globe & Mail had an article in Friday's paper titled "The clock is ticking: Female fertility declines earlier than you think." I thought it was a pretty good article. As usual, however, beware the comments...!