sunday june 29

today i was shown a book entitled why cats paint: a theory of feline aesthetics. while my feelings on the book were mixed, i couldn't help but admire the wonderful title, which operates under the assumption that its reader has already seen plenty of cats painting -- just a common everyday thing of life -- and merely wants to further understand their motivation and inspiration.

saturday june 28

today i was sitting on a bench near hess village in hamilton when a car drove past me with a mattress sitting on its roof. the mattress was not held down by any ropes or straps, but merely held in place by the driver, who had one arm out the window grabbing the mattress while he used the other to steer the vehicle.

friday june 27

today i arrived at the blue jays game at rogers centre in the middle of the second inning and left in the eighth inning. this marked the first time i'd ever gone to a game and either arrived late or left early. i attempted to salvage my standing as a genuine baseball fan late in the game by not participating in 'the wave.'

thursday june 26

today i was caught in what appeared to be the day's only downpour. the two minute walk from alumni hall to ucc left me so unbelievably wet that i don't think it would've been any worse had i literally jumped into a pool while wearing all my clothes. the two-minute soaking didn't completely dry for over four hours.

wednesday june 25

today i had a tobias funke moment when, in lieu of sweeping our porch and deck and garage, i armed myself with the electric blower, and vowed that everything would "get blown."

tuesday june 24

today i read the following anecdote in the 'campus comedy' section of the most recent issue of reader's digest:

when our daughter, carolyn, was in university, my husband called her frequently to make sure she was all right. he liked to phone on saturday night because it was "date night."

one saturday, at about 10:45 pm, he called her room and was relieved when she picked up the phone. "oh honey," he said, "i'm so glad you're back in your dorm."

"dad," replied carolyn, "i'm just getting ready to go out!"

the idea that this anecdote was supposed to be in any way comedic confirmed my continuing suspicion that i am not part of reader's digest's target audience.

monday june 23

today i was asked by my mother if my brother's facebook profile photo looked particularly gay to me.

sunday june 22

today i experienced the biggest disappointment of my day when i watched a significant chunk of air bud: spikes back in the hopes of just once seeing buddy leap up and spike a volleyball over the net with his paw. this never occurred, despite the fact that such a scene is explicitly suggested in the film's title and depicted on the its cover.

saturday june 21

today i attended a family reunion at which i spent most of my socialization energy watching the netherlands/russia soccer game with my brother and my uncle, who i see more than nearly everyone else at the reunion anyway. at the end of the day, i still didn't know most people's names.

friday june 20

today i was sitting on the bus when i thought i spotted a guy on the sidewalk with a snake wrapped casually around his neck. before i could consider how implausible and unlikely this was, my imagination began running wild, speculating about what kind of badass dude i was currently watching in the streets. at that moment, however, he happened to turn around, revealing that the 'snake' was actually just an odd-looking strap to the bag he was carrying.

thursday june 19

today i headed towards downtown, intending to find a place to eat some dinner, when it suddenly occurred to me that i was experiencing a really strong craving to eat at arby's. it was inexplicable and overwhelming, and i decided to succumb to it, excitedly walked in the direction of the downtown arby's. when i finally arrived, i noticed for the first time that the former restaurant was entirely empty and the name had been (sort of) scratched off the building, who knows for how long! the realization that i'd have to find somewhere else to eat was so devastating that i aimlessly wandered into the road and was struck by a car, which luckily was only moving approximately 4 km/h as it attempted to maneuver out of a parking space.

wednesday june 18

today i was overcome by the urge to play online poker for money. nothing crazy, but a few bucks here and there. i logged on to a program/site that i'd played on before, and was dismayed to see that my account had been 'frozen.' after e-mailing the site to find out what the problem was, i received a response that suggested i'd have to phone them and answer five minutes of questions to sort out the problems. it was at this point that i lost the urge to play poker on this site again.

tuesday june 17

today i was walking downtown at the end of my night, debating whether or not to catch a cab to go home or to just walk. this internal debate lasted a little while, and during most of it i was not even walking towards my house, but rather sort of perpendicular to it. eventually, i decided to take a cab. after a couple minutes of silence, the driver mentioned that he'd already passed by me once before i hailed him, prompting me to invent a believable excuse for why i was walking in no particular direction for a while before getting in his cab. the whole thing would've been far less embarrassing if i hadn't been entirely sober.

monday june 16

today i phoned a job agency i'd been to last week to follow up on a potential job opening they'd told me about last week. intending to ask for a certain extension number when i called, to speak to someone named ashley, i was thrown off when the person who answered the phone identified herself as ashley. not wanting to stray from my plan, i plowed ahead and asked to be forwarded to the extension, stumbling over the number before eventually getting it out, to which she replied that that was, indeed, her own extension. at this point, i chuckled and said "oh! right! ashley!" as if i was just realizing now that of course it was her i was talking to already, when in fact i'd been aware of that fact the whole time. all in all, it definitely ranked among my most awkward exchanges of the day.

sunday june 15

today i told a cat that he was my new best friend. he seemed nonplussed.

saturday june 14

today i fed the ducks for the first time since my grandmother used to take me and some bread to springbank park as a child.

friday june 13

today i intended to go downtown to a friend's place to pick up a bag i'd left there a day earlier. one of the things in the bag was my umbrella, and shortly after i left my house to catch the bus downtown, it began to rain. upon getting off the bus, i had a walk of 5-10 minutes ahead of me, and i attempted to make it as fast as possible, since it was still raining softly and i felt like i could erupt into something more at any time. after arriving at the house and securing my umbrella, however, the rain stopped altogether, which was probably for the best, but was slightly disappointing all the same.

thursday june 12

today i walked towards a friend's house, intending to meet up with him to play some pickup basketball at piccadilly park. i walked through this park on the way to his house, and noticed, to my dismay, that two fairly serious ballers were on the court, attempting to make dunks while their car sat next to the net, blaring loud rap music. feeling slightly intimidated by the prospect of coming back to this scene, and potentially being challenged to a 2-on-2 game by these dudes, we elected to forgo piccadilly park in favour of a nearby french immersion public school, where we figured that if anyone were doing any intimidating, it would be us.

wednesday june 11

today i went to the local a&p to buy my dad some cool blue gatorade for his birthday. as i got to the checkout to pay for it, the woman in front of me was finishing up her purchase. the cashier was in the midst of telling her that he'd keyed in the figures wrong, so her receipt would say that he owed her $229 in change, when of course that wasn't true. she laughed and joked that she'd be back for that money, then left the store. turning back to me, the cashier was thereby prompted to talk to me for the duration of my purchase about how great free money would be, and how no one would turn it down, and how he'd really like to get some, and how some people had more than they knew what to do with, and how he wasn't able to buy some things that he'd really like to buy. all the while, i added the occasional "i'll say" or "yeah, for sure" while wishing that i'd gotten in another line.

tuesday june 10

today i got my usual breakfast of a bowl of cereal and a small yogurt from the kitchen and proceeded to eat it. after i finished the cereal, i got up and went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, only to return and notice that i'd forgotten entirely about the yogurt. not wanting to return it to the fridge, i plowed forward and ate it anyway, its flavours of strawberry and vanilla mixing with the mint toothpaste flavour already in my mouth. it wasn't an altogether pleasant breakfast experience, and i ended up just having to brush my teeth again.

monday june 9

today i set my alarm for 6:30 am, in order to wake up in time for my convocation ceremony. having had plenty of sleep the day before, i ended up waking up at 6:00, and being asleep off and on between then and 6:30. during this time, i had a half-awake dream that the reason i was, in fact, waking up so early was because today would be the day when i lip-synced three chapters of r. kelly's trapped in the closet in front of a large live audience. i was nervous, given the fact that i hadn't practiced at all, but still fairly confident that i knew the lyrics and the rhymes well enough to perform them at least adequately, if not fantastically; i was getting pretty excited! when i woke up for good at 6:30 and realized that the big event of the day was just boring old convocation, it cast a bit of a dark cloud over the remainder of the morning.

sunday june 8

today i was at my grandmother's house for dinner when she pulled out an old folder of letters she had written back when she used to babysit my brother and me, in the eighties. here is a sample excerpt, from a week before my fourth birthday:

i like to make the most out of birthdays, so i put a candle on a cupcake and lit it and sang "happy birthday one week from now." then, we put 4 candles on another chocolate cupcake for luke to have for supper and for his parents to light. luke wasn't very sure that his parents would go for the idea of celebrating when it wasn't the right day. "grandma, what will i tell them?" "just tell them that grandma had this silly idea that they could sing to him a week before his birthday (which is NEXT thur.) and i'll wrap you up a little tiny present to open too. your daddy might think i'm crazy but that's okay." i burst out laughing at his reply, "they BOTH WILL think that."

saturday june 7

today i was driving along oxford street when i glanced in my rear-view mirror and noticed that the view looked unusually blurry. thinking i may have just hit a bump in the road or something, i quickly looked again, and sure enough, the cars in the mirror didn't seem nearly as clear as normal. recognizing that i was not, in fact, drunk, i immediately began to worry that my eyesight, one of my prides and joys, had started to fail me and that within months, or even weeks, i'd probably need to start wearing glasses. as i studied the rear-view mirror further though, i realized that it was only blurry about half the time, at which point i realized that the root of the problem was the extraordinarily loud bass of the t.i. song i was currently listening to, which, with the windows down, i hadn't realized was shaking the entire car violently.

friday june 6

today i went downtown in the afternoon. i had to run a few errands, and was looking for jobs, and as such, brought along a backpack with a few things in it so i didn't have to carry everything. when i ended up meeting up with various friends over the course of the afternoon and evening, never getting a chance to go home to drop off the bag, it quickly became a hindrance, making me feel vaguely embarrassed to be wearing it amongst the barney's crowd; the eventual result was that i left it at a friend's house so as not to have to carry it all night -- i'm just still not entirely sure which friend.

thursday june 5

today i watched a game of slo-pitch softball and convinced myself, by the end of the game, that i could play better than anyone else on the field, despite the fact that this was undoubtedly untrue.

wednesday june 4

today i wrote a lengthy dissertation detailing the shortcomings of lil' wayne's tha carter iii, and examining how it could've been better and why it wasn't. it was the most productive thing i did all day.

tuesday june 3

today i attempt to finish watching my first complete nhl game of the season was nearly thwarted when game 5 of the red wings/penguins final went ten minutes into a THIRD overtime. luckily, i was able to force my eyes open long enough to see the happy ending before sleeping approximately 14 hours over the remainder of the day.

monday june 2

today i played pickup basketball at a park with some friends. since i was the only one with a basketball, we ended up having to use mine, which i haven't replaced for years, and has had its grip worn down to nothingness, like the kind of ball you'd see in your elementary school gym. when another more serious baller showed up at the park and shot around with us, he took a shot with my basketball and immediately commented: "how old is this ball, boys?" for the rest of the day, i regretted not replying with a line like "that was actually the ball that m.j. shot to win the '82 championship for north carolina," and instead just saying something boring like "oh, years..."

sunday june 1

today i learned to always bring cash to the green room, lest you end up attempting to use three non-functioning atm's before eventually resorting to a machine down the street that only disperses $50 bills, ultimately taking a half-hour to pay your bill.

saturday may 31

today i learned that if you're at the dance cave and someone asks you if you have a girlfriend, the best thing is to just say yes.