thursday october 30

today i went grocery shopping. i was in the vegetable section, having just picked out a couple of tomatoes, when my foot knocked up against a tomato that had previously fallen on the floor, sending it skidding a few feet away. the only other person in the area was an elderly lady, so i shot her a "tomatoes on the floor! what are you gonna do!" look, and went to pass her by, when she said "you should put that back." confused at what exactly she meant, i replied "pardon?" and she gestured towards the bin of tomatoes and repeated: "you should put it back in there." half-horrified and half-amused by the notion that i should put a tomato that had been sitting on the floor, kicked around by shoppers, back into the bin for someone else to buy it, i responded, "i don't think anyone will.... want it now...." before she interrupted grouchily: "well you're the one who knocked it over!" i started to explain that it had already been on the ground, but realizing this wouldn't do any good, i gave up and inched away from her and the vegetable section, while i heard her muttering something about people who don't pick up after themselves.

wednesday october 29

today i experienced my first household television power struggle, when the deciding game of the world series aired at the same time as the cw combination of america's next top model and stylista.

tuesday october 28

today i moved to toronto. officially. for good. fyi.

monday october 27

today i found a half sandwich in my pocket with no recollection of how it got there.

sunday october 26

today i had a conversation with my grandfather about downsizing and cutbacks in which he asked, quite seriously: "what i want to know is... when are the robots going to take over?"

saturday october 25

today i went into the phone store in the mall to get some information about different companies' phone plans and contracts. the employee that i talked to was very helpful and gave me a lot of good information and pamphlets. for the entire time that i should have been thinking about what plans would work best for me, though, i was thinking about her braces and trying to remember what a friend had recently told me her made-up term for "adult braces" was. bradults? no, not bradults.

friday october 24

today i was standing on the porch outside a house party when two guys who did not look like the party's target demographic walked up and excitedly asked, in indecipherable accents (east-coast canada meets england?) if it was "juicy in there," before going in.

thursday october 23

today i had my last episode of 'utility men' on chrw, before i move to toronto. the last words i spoke on the show, in the 'end zone' feature, involved halloween costume advice, in which i instructed listeners on how to dress up as a convincing larry johnson, running back of the kansas city chiefs. this advice involved telling people to find a girl at a bar, tell her boyfriend you're going to kill him, then throwing your drink in her face. in hindsight, i regret this 'end zone' -- not because of the offensive nature of my tips, but because i got the details a little wrong.

wednesday october 22

today i had my first casual (or rather: 'dress down') day at work. wearing a nice sweater and jeans in place of my usual dress shirt and pants, i was feeling pretty good about myself upon coming into work. looking good. the first two coworkers i encountered in the morning, however, immediately inquired as to why i wasn't wearing pink, since apparently doing so, in support of the canadian breast cancer foundation was encouraged. though this was quite impractical for me, considering my wardrobe, i felt slightly out of place for the rest of the day, as one of the only people in our office who was not wearing pink.

tuesday october 21

today i was referred to as "butch cassidy" on the radio.

monday october 20

today i was informed by a chatty and opinionated bus-goer at my downtown bus stop that the reason there was still so much construction happening in the streets of london was because "the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, and the left hand isn't even attached to the body."

sunday october 19

today i watched game 7 of the alcs in its entirety, cheering hard for the tampa bay rays to pull off the victory over the played out defending champion boston red sox. at one point, i noticed, with a little disgust, the dvd faith rewarded: the historic season of the 2004 boston red sox on the shelf above my television, and marveled at how a mere four years could entirely invert my opinion of a franchise.

saturday october 18

today i made the decision on what colour to paint my room based entirely on which leftover paint cans we had the most of in the house, without having seen what the colour actually looked like.

friday october 17

today i was walking through my basement with all of the lights off, heading towards the stairs. while i know where everything is down there and don't need the lights, i usually have to feel my way through the last little way, so as not to run into the wall or the punching bag that hangs from the ceiling near the bottom of the stairs. however, as i put my hands out in front of me near where the punching bag should be, they felt nothing but air. i finally reached the stairs and flicked on the light, then looked back and saw no punching bag. apparently it has been gone since my brother, its primary user, left the country a month and a half ago, leaving me feeling very imperceptive about the goings-on in my own house.

thursday october 16

today i went for lunch to a nearby meat shop with a coworker with whom i occasionally eat lunch. he had never been there before, and when he noticed two rotating racks of meat in the back, he recognized one as chicken, but inquired as to what the other one was. "ostrich," the employee behind the counter replied, deadpan. having become something of a 'regular' at this shop now, i knew this employee and knew that the second meat was, obviously, plain old beef; i tried to hide my chuckle as we exchanged a conspiratorial glance. my coworker totally bought into the fib, however, and the employee kept up the ruse for so long and was so convincing (eventually getting him to agree to try some ostrich meat for lunch!!) that for a split second even i doubted what i knew to be true about the identity of the meat.

wednesday october 15

today i was working outside when i was suddenly seemingly surrounded by a smell so unpleasant that it was all i could do not to be overcome with nausea on the spot. i had no idea what the source of this smell was, but the only way i could think to describe it was wet dog mixed with french toast, which was far worse than one or the other on their own.

tuesday october 14

today i was reading a novel that i'd borrowed from the library. when i made the turn from pages 146/147 to pages 148/149, i was greeted with a bright pink sticky note on which someone had written: "you are beautiful."

monday october 13

today i was riding through my grandparents' neighbourhood in the evening with my grandfather when we passed by a couple of young-looking girls (i would estimate 14 or 15 years old). while i thought it looked like they were just hangin' out, minding their own business, my grandfather immediately opined that they looked like "ladies of the night," before conceding, in fairness, that they "probably" weren't.

sunday october 12

today i had a conversation with a friend about the potential to manipulate my blog entries by doing something crazy enough while hanging out with me that i'd be forced to write about it. this conversation meant that, approximately an hour later, as he was being hassled by two police officers, i couldn't help but look upon the encounter, serious as it may have been, with a little bit of skepticism.

saturday october 11

today i stood awkwardly by at a bus stop as the guy next to me, armed with a giant tattoo that read "one love," rapped along in a monotone delivery to the song he was listening to on his ipod. how are you supposed to react to these people that sing or headbang or hum along out loud to their ipods? do they EXPECT you to be laughing at them when they turn around and glance at you or do you have to hide it??

friday october 10

today i literally typed out three potential "one things i did today" before deleting each of them, for fear that they were too dull or i'd written entries too similar in the past. i suppose this is hardly surprising, considering the highlights of my day were: a) receiving two lengthy facebook messages shortly before 5:00, allowing me to kill the last few minutes of my work week by reading them; and b) taking a five-hour nap in the evening.

thursday october 9

today i thoroughly prepared for my radio show, on a variety of topics, ranging from the phillies' lack of pitching depth to the miami dolphins' wildcat offense. when actually on the show and immersed in baseball discussion, however, i realized that i hadn't even considered one of the most important issues: predicting which teams would actually win the mlb championship series. as such, i ended up inventing a prediction in the spur of the moment that i immediately regretted after voicing it.

wednesday october 8

today i received a text message from an unknown number that read: "dear god, the lady reading this is beautiful and i love her. help her live her life to the fullest. send to the females u love!"

tuesday october 7

today i waited after work for my first bus for about 20 minutes instead of the usual 5 or so. silently fuming the entire ride that i was going to miss my transfer bus and get home a half-hour later than usual, i ranted in my head about the ltc and how i wasn't going to miss this stupid city at all. this continued as i eventually got off the first bus and arrived at my transfer stop a minute or two after my second bus should have gone by. after a couple more minutes of waiting and fuming, i was about to take off to another stop to catch a different bus, when my bus came driving down the street, running a few minutes late. in an instant, all was forgiven and a warm affection for the city washed over me. i'll miss you after all, london. because i caught this one bus.

monday october 6

today i was involved in a conversation where someone posed the one word question "forever?" and i instinctively replied "forever-ever." confused at this automatic response at first, i recognized within about 10 seconds that i was quoting outkast's "ms. jackson" and didn't quite know how to feel about the fact that a line from a 7-year-old rap song had so thoroughly permeated my vocabulary.

sunday october 5

today i took the last bus of saturday night, technically the first bus of sunday morning, home. a concern for my health and well-being was all that stopped me from giving in to the urge to earnestly ask one of the drunken, rowdy, purple-shirt wearing homecoming-goers on the bus around me if there was some sort of national douchebag convention in town.

saturday october 4

today i decided to up the stakes in the online pokerstars tournaments i'd been playing, making the leap from $1 to $3 tournaments. high roller. this decision must have angered the poker gods in some way; in the very first $3 tournament i played, i was eliminated in a hand in which i was a 99.7% favourite, according to cardplayer's poker calculator.

friday october 3

today i was at work when a co-worker from the next-door cubicle handed me a couple of birthday cards to sign -- one for a co-worker i knew, and the other for one that i didn't. they'd originally gone around, i assumed, while i was away sick last week, as only about 4 or 5 people of the 25+ in the office had yet to sign them. not knowing where any of these people sat, or, really, who any of them were, i took the cards to our reception desk to let them handle things. in the midst of explaining myself and handing the cards to the receptionist, whose name i also didn't know (in my defense, we have a rotation of like three or four receptionists), i became briefly panicked that the birthday card i'd signed for the unknown co-worker was, in fact, hers. the realization of this very real possibility made me stumble over the last bit of my spiel, though i'd already gotten too far into it to back out. fortunately, judging by her lack of reaction, i think i was okay.

thursday october 2

today i watched the u.s. vice presidential debate for about 15 or 20 minutes before deciding that politics were more entertaining and easier to comprehend on the wire and turning an episode of that on instead.

wednesday october 1

today i was listening to my ipod at work while having my cubicle frequented semi-regularly by a co-worker with whom i was working on a project. the first couple of times she visited, i paused my ipod, causing its screen to light up and display what i was listening to. while neither song (studio b's "i see girls" and of montreal's "an eluardian instance") was overly embarrassing, a combination of the somewhat odd and unknown (to her) song/band/album names and cover art made me feel slightly uncomfortable. when she came back for a third time and i happened to be listening to "gimme head" by julian cope, i decided it'd be best to forgo pausing my music and having her look at my ipod display, and just slipped off my headphones instead.

tuesday september 30

today i got off the bus after work in the pouring rain. my next-door neighbour, an older woman, often takes the same bus as me at the end of the day, and usually her husband picks her up from the bus stop and drives her home, even though the walk is only three or four minutes. while i'm not lazy enough to wish that this would happen for me every day, in this instance i was definitely daydreaming about how nice it would be to get out of the rain -- i had an umbrella, but it's rather small, and my work clothes were still getting splashed and wet. just as i was thinking about this, i noticed my father's car driving up the street. it was like something out of a movie, where the dramatic music swells as the protagonist's fantasy comes true. it was, however, dampened somewhat when he waved and then drove past me, as i realized he was on his way out elsewhere.