question

As you know, Allan and I work on the weekends. He works Friday, Saturday and Sunday; I work Friday, Sunday and Monday, but am trying and hoping to have my Monday changed to Saturday.

In New York, we both worked Saturdays and Sundays, and Allan worked all the Monday holidays, like Memorial Day and Labor Day. Here, because our salaries are lower, we had to add the third day. These are long days, 12 or 13 hours, so on days we work, we really only work.

Working the three-day week is very important to us - it's what enables us to pursue our writing careers, and write what we want. (And damn, do we ever miss the two-day week!) And the three-day week usually means weekends.

In New York, a 24/7 city, this was never a problem. We'd miss the occasional event that we might have wanted to attend, but generally, with five days and nights to work with, we could do anything we wanted.

But is working weekends going to be a problem in Toronto?

Theatre has weekday performances, so that's fine. And there are weekday baseball games, also not a problem. But I recently checked into three concerts I'd like to see, and they were all on Saturday nights. Afro-Cuban All Stars, Saturday, November 4. Los Lobos, Saturday, November 11. Sonny Rollins, Saturday, May 5. Is this a coincidence, or is it typical?

I guess I only noticed this now that baseball season is over. I can't remember if this happened last winter, or maybe all our money was going to fixing up the house.

Of course festivals and street fairs are on weekends, but I've seen enough of those for one lifetime. I've long-ago stopped caring about walkathons or charity events that are usually on Sundays. If there's the odd event that I feel I must attend, we can arrange some time off - although we have to use that very sparingly, because of travel.

But it never occurred to me that live music might only be on weekends. This would not be good.