friday january 22

today i scrolled through twitter on my phone as i watched the raptors game on tv, unsuccessfully searching for a tweet i'd seen earlier in the day. while focusing on the tv, i felt my browsing finger inadvertently touch the screen and quickly looked down, worried that i might have accidentally liked a tweet that was unworthy of it.

as it turned out, i hadn't liked or retweeted anything, but i had selected the least-popular response in a "promoted" poll.

already dreading what the advertisers are gonna do with this information.

sunday january 17

today i looked at the mission: impossible ii trivia page on imdb. there were some genuinely interesting facts on there, including, for instance, that the song metallica had written for the movie was the one to leak early on napster, directly leading to the band's court case against the music-sharing service.

interspersed with these occasionally interesting bits of trivia, however, were a series of "facts" that might as well have been added by tom cruise's pr team and seemed designed to make him sound like a real alpha at director john woo's expense. while it may very well be true that cruise insisted on doing almost all of his own stunts and woo was nervous about it, the constant reiteration of this point and the weird editorializing ("woo admired cruise's courage," reads one piece of trivia) were jarring.

another item, which insisted that - contrary to published reports at the time - cruise was actually not acting like a "high-maintenance diva" by instructing extras not to make eye contact with him, and that those "star-struck" extras were simply ruining the shot, was also extremely suspect.

wednesday january 13

today i was watching jeopardy when "two middle names" was announced as a first-round category, prompting the following exchange between me and my girlfriend, who was across the room and didn't hear the category name properly:

me: "hey, it's you" (she has two middle names)

her (without any hesitation): "beautiful manes??"

monday january 11

today i had a baffling live chat with a rogers representative named sasha, who - after learning that i was using firefox as my browser - gave me a lengthy spiel about how 64% of people on the internet use google chrome, explaining that they simply couldn't prioritize the less-than-5% of their customer base that use firefox.

after explaining that my question had nothing to do with my browser and that i simply wanted to see if i could add starz to my existing hbo/crave package, sasha said: "what happens, when you say 'starz' in the remore (sic), then click 'ok' to subscribe?"

it became clear to me at this point that sasha thought my rogers equipment was far more advanced than it actually is. still, even though i was 99.9% sure i didn't have any sort of voice-controlled remote, i half-heartedly said "starz" into it and felt pretty dumb when, obviously, nothing happened.

thursday december 3

today i got a call back from a store i'd ordered a gift card from on wednesday.

this was a relief -- during our previous phone conversation, when the employee had read the mailing address back to me, i wasn't 100% sure she'd said the town name right (it's a small town that she very easily could never have heard of). after i'd hung up, i'd debated calling her back to double-check that the address was accurate, but ultimately decide it was probably fine. after all, the postal code, house numbers, and street were right -- it'd probably find its way there.

still, i was relieved that she was now calling back to correct that town name. except, as it turned out, she had the mailing address perfectly correct. it was my credit card number that she'd gotten wrong.

tuesday december 1

today i accompanied my girlfriend to toronto general hospital, where she was scheduled to undergo an mri. not knowing whether or not i'd be allowed to just hang out in the hospital during her mri - given the enhanced covid-19 safety protocols in place - i decided to just wait in the car.

since her appointment was at 1:30 am and the mri ended up taking longer than either of us expected, my decision to wait in the car meant sitting for over 90 minutes in a dark, otherwise-empty parking lot as i got increasingly colder and imagined scenarios where car-jackers snuck up on me from the nearby alleys. not the relaxing hang i'd envisioned.

wednesday november 25

today i left my house for the first time in 10 days after spending the last week and a half working 12-to-18 hour days covering the nba offseason. damn near did a whole 14-day covid quarantine by accident.

sunday november 22

today i (okay, my girlfriend and i) bought a house.

friday october 16

today i ran into a friend while out running errands. i hadn't seen this friend in a while and was surprised to see her in my neighbourhood. but after she asked me, "do you live around here?" i felt as if i couldn't ask the same question myself -- like i had to ask a new, different question to avoid the conversation feeling repetitive. as a result, when i got home and told my girlfriend about the run-in, the first question she asked about the friend was, "does she live around here?" and i had to confess i had no idea.

monday october 12

today i was waiting to cross an intersection when i noticed a pair of friends on the other side of the street. one was a skateboarder trying to land a trick while the other filmed her.

as i stood waiting for the light to change, i watched her attempt and fail the trick twice. but by the time the light eventually did change, she had reset her position and was set to try it again. walking across the street, i realized that - in order to get to my destination, the corner store - i'd pass directly behind her from the cameraman's perspective. like so:

although i made a concerted effort not to even glance at the trick attempt, i heard them both cheering as i reached the other side of the street, which i assume meant that she successfully landed it and that the take was a keeper. so i can only hope that his directorial style favours close-ups rather than wide-angle shots that include disinterested, disheveled passersby.

thursday september 24

today i used toronto transit for the first time since march 9. no better than wearing long pants.

tuesday september 22

today i was taking my usual morning walk through the neighbourhood when i approached an intersection where, with school having resumed, a crossing guard was working. this wasn't a heavily-trafficked intersection and - as far as i could tell - there were no schools in the immediate vicinity. as i approached, there were maybe one or two adult pedestrians in sight and no cars around.

nonetheless, as i approached the corner, the crossing guard walked into the road and put her stop sign up, as if i needed help to cross the street. i understand that this is her job, but the experience left me with the same feeling i get after using a public bathroom where an attendant is working -- this is something i've done thousands of times on my own, and the fact that you're helping me do it feels unnecessary and awkward for both of us.

at least in this case i only had to mumble an awkward "thanks" instead of worrying about whether or not to tip her.

friday september 18

today i played a couple sets of tennis while two middle-school kids played on the court next to mine. while it seemed like they were both having a good time, i felt a little bad when i heard the following exchange:

kid 1: "okay, that's 14 games to 0."

kid 2: "i told you we can stop keeping track!"

sunday september 13

today i was skyping with my parents and brother when i glanced down at my phone and saw two messages from my girlfriend, who was in the next room. the first was a link to a tweet about a toronto strip club being tied to seven cases of covid-19, while the second just read "show them."

confused about why she'd want me to show my parents this story, which didn't seem to align with their interests, i realized after a few seconds that she'd sent the messages a few minutes apart -- the second one had been sent after she'd heard me tell my family about my new tennis bag.

tuesday september 8

today i wore long pants for the first time since may. didn't love it, to be honest.

saturday september 5

today i talked for 40 minutes on zoom with an 11-year-old who aspires to work in sports and viewed me as an "expert" in the field. i now understand imposter syndrome.

wednesday september 2

today i listened as the narrator of the audiobook i was listening to pronounced the word "shone" (as in "shone a light") like "shown." this was - somewhat improbably, in my opinion - the third consecutive audiobook i'd listened to which had used the word "shone." it was also the third consecutive narrator to pronounce it as "shown."

having pronounced it all my life as "shawn," i was now prepared to accept that either i'd been wrong all along or this was yet another difference in u.s./canadian english that i'd never noticed until now.

monday august 24

today i noticed for maybe the third or fourth time within the last couple weeks that my right sock had gotten incredibly dirty around the ball of the foot over the course of the day. curious about what might be causing this, i grabbed my most-used pair of shoes and inspected the inside of the right one to see if there might be something in the shoe causing my socks to get dirty.

as it turned out, a brief look at the inside and outside of the shoe revealed that there was a pretty obvious hole which went straight through the sole. that provided a simple explanation for my dirty socks, though it didn't explain how i'd failed to notice during my last several 45-minute morning walks that my sock was basically touching ground.

friday august 14

today i left my house at around 7:50am, intent on putting a few items - including about 10 empty beer cans that i'd put in a separate bag - into our recycling bin before it was emptied later in the day. as i reached the sidewalk, i noticed that the kid i'd met yesterday was just one house over, sifting through my neighbour's recycling bin.

as previously noted, i would've preferred for the usual neighbourhood collectors to end up with my empties, but i recognized there was no avoiding the kid this time, so when he excitedly asked, "do you have some?" i said yes and handed him the bag.

as i put the rest of my recycling into the bin, he said "headed to work, huh?" despite the fact that i was wearing a t-shirt, athletic shorts, and my ridiculous adidas headband, with my tennis racquet jutting out of my bag. i dunno about this kid, man.

thursday august 13

today i was bringing our recycling and compost bins to the curb when a kid - maybe 12 years old? - stopped his bike about 10 feet away from me. we proceeded to have the following conversation:

him: "can i ask you a question?"

me: "uh, sure."

him: "do you drink beer?"

me (immediately assuming he's going to ask me to buy him beer and looking for the best way to shut down this conversation): "no, not really."

as it turned out, he was simply interested in collecting empties. after he wheedled it out of me that i do, in fact, drink beer, i agreed to leave my cans outside for him rather than throwing them all in the recycling bin at the end of the week. to be honest though, i'm still rooting for the veteran neighbourhood collectors to beat him to the punch.