one thing i did today: 2006-2011

today i decided to retire one thing i did today for good. i'm sorry, you guys. i thought i'd come back fresh and ready to go after my hiatus, but all the break did was reinforce that i'm just not as interested as i once was in keeping this thing going.

thank you to everyone that read and/or commented over the last five years. if it weren't for you guys, i undoubtedly would've called a day a lot earlier than i did. knowing that people (including plenty who don't even know me!) were consistently reading and enjoying the site was really awesome, and i don't feel good at all about quitting on you here.

BUT know that the fact i'm retiring the blog doesn't mean i'm retiring from the observational humour game in general. you can follow me on twitter at @jlukeadams or (for extremely infrequent sports observations) @Adams_Luke. plus, there's that "random one thing i did today" button on the right sidebar that lets you revisit one of my 1700+ entries at random. so that's some consolation... right? are we cool?

thanks again everyone. stay positive.

monday october 10

today i took an earlier post-holiday bus than usual from london to toronto, arriving back in the city around 1:00 pm. an hour later, i walked out of my house and was met by an overwhelming smell of gas, along with fire trucks and police cars parked in the middle of the street. apparently there'd been a big gas leak two houses down. the fire department apparently got it under control, which was good because let me tell you, i would've been pretty annoyed if i'd come back to toronto early only to be right next door to some sort of explosion.

sunday october 9

today i was bantering with my parents, describing a big mistake i'd just made. inexplicably, i summed up the conversation by declaring that it had been a "big boner" on my part. there was a long pause before my mom said, "i thought that word meant something else" and i awkwardly explained that i was referring to its "traditional" meaning.

saturday october 8

today i went to my friend's dad's place to watch the first game of the alcs with the two of them. he lived in an apartment building, one that required me to buzz up to be let in. this process always make me a little anxious. what if i key in the wrong buzzer number? what if the exchange over the little microphone doesn't go smoothly? what if the buzzer number is different than the apartment number? in this case, my anxiety was totally warranted -- when i buzzed up, a voice answered, "[muffled] headquarters." thinking i'd somehow inadvertently buzzed "building headquarters" or the front lobby or something, i stumbled over my name before the door was unlocked. it wasn't until later that i found out it was my friend's dad, having jokingly identified his apartment as "detroit tigers headquarters."

friday october 7

today i turned down my coworkers' lunch invitation. five of them were checking out a chinese place down the street, and while i initially declined because i was feeling sick, by the time noon rolled around, i wasn't feeling too bad. at that point, i only continued to decline the invite because i'd become attached the idea of getting a solid 45 minutes of reading done over lunch. what a nerd.

thursday october 6

today i suffered through a cold at work, popping buckley's cold and sinus pills intermittently and wishing i could've taken a sick day. unfortunately, i used a sick day just a week and a half ago on a morning when i woke up after having only slept for three hours, and didn't want to use another one again so soon.

wednesday october 5

today i had a friend share a story with me about the time she suffered a concussion at a strip club after getting kicked in the head by a stripper. we've known each other for five years and this somehow had never come up before. i have no idea why. it's probably the best thing she's ever told me.

tuesday october 4

today i had a lucille bluth moment ("how much could a banana cost? ten dollars?") when, like a nerd, i went to a bookstore to buy clash of kings. having not actually bought a new book in maybe years, i was pleasantly surprised to see that it only cost $9.99. that's like a cent per page, you guys!

monday october 3

today i went to puck 'n wings with a couple coworkers. one of the two only comes out occasionally for lunch, and after the leggy, attractive server took our order, he commented, "whoa, never seen HER here before." i helpfully told him that she only works mondays, then immediately realized that when she'd walked away from our table, she'd only gone about three feet behind me, and was standing there entering our orders into the computer. the only hope i have that she doesn't think a creep is that maybe, way up there, she couldn't hear me. seriously, she's like 7'8". her legs just don't end.

sunday october 2

today i was walking home from a friend's house after watching breaking bad. as i walked along the sidewalk, i noticed a big black dog trotting along ahead of me. i was moving faster than he was, so i overtook him within 30 seconds or so, and then watched nervously as he trailed at my heels for about the next 20 feet, before taking off across the street. what are you supposed to do when you see a dog wandering the streets on his own? corral him and go door-to-door in search of his owner? pretend you don't see him? assume he knows what he's doing? ask him "hey where are your parents big guy"? the encounter made me feel anxious and guilty the rest of the way home.

saturday october 1

today i had a lengthy internal debate about whether or not to go to a friend's birthday bonfire. while a trip to the beer store took me practically across the street from the dufferin grove party, i felt very strongly that i didn't want my clothes and bedroom to smell like smoke for the next three days. eventually, i decided to go, then attempted to avoid the side effects by standing as far away from the fire as i could without seeming weird about it. two hours later, i left very cold and, of course, smelling very much like smoke.

hiatus

today i decided to officially take a break. it was gonna be an uphill battle to catch up on over a month's worth of entries, and i was already feeling guilty about having to flood your rss feeds with vague recollections from weeks ago.

so, after posting one thing i did for 1,705 straight days (more than four and a half years), i'm taking a little time off.

i'll be back and better than ever (actual daily updates!) on october 1st.

friday july 15

today i googled "what to put on a meatball sub."

thursday july 14

today i received an excited text message from a friend about the fact that the blue jays' eight-run first inning even involved a "bonk." not knowing what the heck this meant, i ignored the text until much, much later, when i found out that it had been a hilarious misspelling of "balk."

wednesday july 13

today i was walking through the produce section of no frills when i heard a guy on the phone ask someone on the other end of the line exactly how many berries he should buy: "telling me to get you a lot of berries is like telling a banker to give you a lot of cash," he said.

tuesday july 12

today i was sitting on the subway on my way to work when a guy sat down next to me and started fanning himself with a newspaper. i thought this was a little rude. it was already a perfectly reasonable temperature on the air-conditioned subway, particularly if, like me, you've been on it for a half-hour already. i mean, sure, fine, if you're sitting by yourself, fan away. but the breeze from his makeshift fan was giving me a chill. good thing it only went one for a single stop.

monday july 11

today i was walking home along margueretta when an asian girl stopped me and asked, with some confusion, how to get to 468 margueretta. i could immediately see why she was confused: my section of the street ends at bloor, around 340 margueretta. it then continues north of bloor, but only after you walk a half-block east. i could have easily explained this to someone who spoke fluent english, but, sadly, this girl didn't. still, i did my best, with a lot of pointing and gesturing, and when she eventually thanked me and walked off toward her destination, i was at least 40% sure she'd make it.

sunday july 10

today i spent a solid 20 minutes at the laundromat watching a show called splat-a-lot!, which is ytv's version of shows like mxc or wipeout. while i felt a little weird watching adult commentators mock a bunch of children as they tumbled and fell (often in slow motion replay), i can't say i wasn't entertained.

saturday july 9

today i got off the college streetcar at about 2:30 am, on my way home. as i walked along college toward my street (margueretta), i noticed a guy on the opposite side of college, across from the margueretta intersection, getting ready to cross. while this wouldn't be a problem at, say, 6:00 pm, nothing is more uncomfortable than walking alongside the only other person on the street late at night. so i made a concerted effort to speed up, hitting margueretta well before this guy crossed the road, and getting a good lead on him. upon getting home, i'd been in the kitchen for about 30 seconds when my front door opened and someone came in. as it turns out, the guy i'd been working so hard to avoid in the street had been my roommate.

friday july 8

today i went to the blue jays box office to pick up tickets i'd ordered online for next weekend's series against the yankees. i handed over my credit card and photo id, and after a few clicks of the mouse and keyboard, the girl at the window handed me a pen and receipt to sign. upon signing, i had my cards returned and she passed me the tickets. this left me with a handful of stuff to put away at once -- the cards into my wallet and then the tickets and wallet into two different pockets. in my struggle to do all this quickly, i didn't realize right away that i was still holding onto the pen that i'd used to sign. "can i get my pen back please?" she asked tersely, about a second after handing over the tickets. embarrassed, i apologized and passed it back through the window, thinking that her tone was a little unnecessary. i just needed a couple seconds to sort everything out, lady. did you actually think i was gonna walk away with your pen?