friday january 30

today i was walking down the street to the dufferin mall when i was stopped by a woman alongside a truck parked on the road. "can you give me a push?" she asked me. "i don't know if it'll help, but i can't get out of here." her truck was, indeed, pretty well stuck in the snow, so i said sure and positioned myself behind the truck, ready to push. as i was getting into position, another guy walking past noticed and asked "you pushing?" i said yes i was, and he too, got in place to help out. it was a nice moment, and felt like the community was really coming together to help a woman in need. regrettably, the pushing didn't help, and we both had places to be, so 30 seconds later, we wished her good luck and went our separate ways.

thursday january 29

today i had a dream in which a throng of reality-tv hopefuls packed bloor street to audition for four different reality shows, including one where guys tried to win a girl's heart by also winning over her dad, one where convicts tried out for a statewide prison football team, and project runway canada. this throng of people held up traffic, and threatened to make me late for work (this included a montage in which i made a mad dash through the streets while "money" by the game played in the background). when i got to work, before starting my 9-5 shift, i was offered multiple vodka shots (to "get the day started") by my grandmother, who i don't recall ever seeing have a drink.

wednesday january 28

today i left class at 4:20, and headed for the bus stop, intending to get home as quickly as possible after a long day at school. i didn't actually make it home until three hours later.

tuesday january 27

today i was walking along bloor street when i noticed two or three cops gathered on a street corner, talking to a black guy, their police car parked on the street. as i passed by them, i heard one exclaim, rather jovially, "i'd like to bring your stupid ass in!!"

monday january 26

today i received a telephone call from the t-booth store in dufferin mall, informing me that my broken cell phone was ready to be picked up (though it was, in fact, still broken). as such, i had to return the phone that they'd loaned me while they sent mine in for repairs. i had just gotten this loaner phone back a day earlier, after having lost it a week earlier and only getting it back through some extreme good luck and the kindness of others. while it was a relief to not have to pay for losing this temporary replacement, the fact that i had to return it only one day after our joyous reunion was pretty sad.

sunday january 25

today i was standing in a very busy 'express' line at no frills with a few groceries, waiting to check out, when an older lady randomly stepped into line about three spots in front of me. having already waited about five minutes, and with about ten more people now lined up behind me, this seemed wrong, even if she did just have one carton of juice. a few seconds passed, as the two gay guys in front of me suddenly realized what had happened. they immediately began loudly making comments to her. "did you grow up in a barn, lady?!" one yelled, while the other threw the word "bitch" around a lot. they made an ally of the woman in front of them, who'd been usurped in line. by the time the cutter had gotten to the front of the line, the cries of protest were so strong from all sides that the cashier had to turn her away, pointing out that others had been waiting far longer than her and she had to be fair. the woman stood there aimlessly for another minute or so before storming off and muttering profanities at the guys in front of me, who triumphantly waved after her and exclaimed "sorry princess!!"

saturday january 24

today i came across the movie being john malkovich on television in the evening. after watching it for a while, i decided to check to see who was hosting saturday night live. incredibly, the episode was a repeat of the recent one hosted by john malkovich. even more incredibly, toward the end of the snl episode, while browsing through the guide to see what was on next, we came across dangerous liaisons, another malkovich film which snl parodied in its final skit. malkovich malkovich malkovich!!

friday january 23

today i had a dream in which i got annoyed with actor don cheadle for trying to sell me a ron gardenhire toronto blue jays jersey, when i knew that gardenhire had never played for or coached the blue jays.

thursday january 22

today i earned my first laugh from the class in my radio seminar, when we were discussing obama's inauguration and i joked that, following his speech, i half-expected him to break out five loaves of bread and two fish and feed the 1.4 million attendees. biblical humour. i'll take it.

wednesday january 21

today i tossed our christmas tree off of the second floor balcony. it felt briefly like i was on muchmusic in the 1990s.

tuesday january 20

today i went to school to buy a textbook i needed; it was sold out. on my way home, i stopped at the dufferin mall t-booth store, to see if my cell phone had been fixed yet; it hadn't. in all, the trip took over two hours, and accomplished nothing. good thing it was only -14 degrees out!!

monday january 19

today i resorted to another edition of "another thing i did on these days"...

wednesday january 7
today i had to go to campus for the first time, for a brief orientation session. accustomed to always taking the subway eastbound from my stop at ossington, i entered the terminal and automatically headed for that side, without thinking. with a train parked at the station, ready to depart, i quickly grabbed it just in time, then realized approximately three seconds later that i needed to go westbound to get to school. i briefly considered taking the subway for two or three stops, so as not to let my fellow public transit-goers in the packed car guess that i was, in fact, going the wrong way by accident. fortunately, i quickly realized this idea was ridiculous and got off at the next stop, throwing that unseen judgment to the wind!!

saturday january 10
today i was at a bar, when they inexplicably began playing darude's "sandstorm," a song fairly inconsistent with most of the other selections during the night. it was at this point that i received a phone call from some friends, who were unable to hear me over the pounding techno beats of darude. some time later i called them back and, at one point in the conversation, when they inquired as to my whereabouts, i was unable to tell them even the name of the bar i was at, having just tagged along with friends. it was only later that i realized that the combination of the background music and my apparent reluctance to reveal the bar i was at sort of made it seem like i was secretly at a gay club looking to pick up or something.

wednesday january 14
today i woke up slightly after 6:00 am in order to make the earliest class i've had in my academic life. when i checked the weather online before leaving the house, it informed me that the temperature was -21, and "felt like" -30. i blame these two factors for my being so out of it that i left the house and walked for about 20 seconds down the sidewalk towards the subway before realizing that i was not, in fact, wearing my backpack with all my supplies and notes in it.

wednesday january 14
today i was sitting in class, in between taking notes, when a classmate sitting beside me nudged me and asked if she could borrow my pen. i, of course, let her borrow it to take a few notes. when she asked at the end of the class to grab it for another quick second, she embarrassingly explained that she'd left hers in the library. wanting to appear affable and friendly, i casually said, "oh no problem, i should've brought an extra one!" immediately i realized that the way i'd strung words together made it nearly impossible to hear the "i" and made it seem as if i'd been lecturing her on the importance of always being prepared.

saturday january 17
today i used the phrase "drop a deuce" casually in conversation for the firs time in my life. another check mark on the 'things to do before i die' list.

sunday january 18

today i waited for a subway late in the evening, coming back to toronto after taking a late greyhound bus from london. while i was standing there waiting, i heard a voice nearby start ranting angrily. i quickly glanced to my right and saw an intense-looking latino guy pacing near the phone booth, saying things like "this is the ONE guy i'm not gonna let off the hook for this shit!" and "i'm gonna fuck him up if i have to" and, when his phone call went unanswered, "yeah, turn your phone off like a pussy!" not wanting to get caught up in the middle of what i immediately imagined was some sort of situation straight out of the wire, i tried to maintain a a casual demeanor; i didn't want to look like i was trying consciously to ignore him, but also didn't want to encourage him by acknowledging his rants, even when he hissed "i'm so fucking furious right now, guy" and i was the only "guy" in the area.

saturday january 17

today i ordered a single pizza that cost over $40.

friday january 16

today i left my light switched on when i went to bed, in the hopes that the power outage that had started at 10 pm on thursday night would end sometime shortly after i fell asleep and that the lights coming back on would wake me up. when i woke up, it was 10:00 am, my light was still not on, and i was freezing cold. our power didn't come back on until nearly 12 hours later, 24 hours after the initial outage. i was long gone by this point, but still... not impressed, city of toronto.

thursday january 15

today i had my first session of a class in which we're meant to improve our public speaking skills. in the first of two exercises of the day, we were implored to get up and "tell everyone about ourselves." given the often unfortunate first letter of my last name, i went first, with little time to prepare and no previous examples to get an idea of what we were expected to say. in the second exercise, we were to practice "ad-libbing." the instructor asked a question ("who was the biggest influence on your life and why") to the person at the front of the class, then proceeded to ask the same question to the next nine, giving them a chance to prepare material and make it not so much an ad-lib. when he came to me, he posed a new question to discuss ("what was your favourite toy growing up") for the only time during the session, rendering my carefully prepared words on my life's influences moot. the remaining 20+ people behind me also received my question. the upshot was that for two of the three times someone was actually put on the spot to talk with no time to prepare, i was that person. i felt like this was a personal attack on me, and it has resulted in it being my least-anticipated class to return to next week.

wednesday january 14

today i was in class when, a few minutes in, the teacher decided to introduce an icebreaking excerise: we were required to describe something "good or new" that had happened to us in the last 24 hours. for a brief second i felt a little nervous about being put on the spot like this, but i quickly realized that this exercise was, essentially, something i'd done 792 days in a row on this very site. i ended up just using what i would have used here!!

tuesday january 13

today i made my first semi-lengthy small talk with someone in my radio broadcasting program that started this week. we talked for two or three minutes while waiting outside our next class. when we went in, there were only about four people in the class so far. he went in first and sat down. unsure of whether it'd be weird if i sat down right next to him, after only a couple minutes of perfunctory chatting, when there were so few people in the room, i sat elsewhere. i still have no friends.

monday january 12

today i was at the laundromat, reading a book while i waited for my drying to finish. an older man who had loaded up a couple of the 'double-load' washers got my attention and began mumbling questions about why his washing wasn't starting, even after he'd loaded up the machines with quarters. being unfamiliar with the double-load washers, i had no idea what the problem was, but didn't want to just blow him off entirely. as such, i spent a solid five or ten seconds standing there studying the machine, looking for a solution, until finally another nearby guy came over and pointed out that the door handles hadn't been closed and locked all the way. it's possible that i would still be there, pretending to attempt to figure out the problem, if he hadn't bailed me out.

sunday january 11

today i watched the golden globes with my roommates. each of us were intermittently making jokes or sarcastic observations about various celebrities or awards, and generally enjoying ourselves. after anna paquin won a globe for her role in true blood, i jokingly remarked, "well, hopefully this will inspire more actresses to show their breasts in the future!" and was met with dead silence, leaving me feeling awkward and fairly lecherous.

saturday january 10

today i went to a toronto show at which four bands were playing. when we arrived, we were surprised to find that three of the bands had already played, but we stuck around to see the last one. while we waited, the venue was filled with music that sounded truly awful, inspiring comments about what it reminded us of (the consensus: whale noises). this music just kept going and going, leaving us to wonder how long exactly we'd have to wait for the final band to play. finally, it came to a merciful end, at which point the venue began clearing out, and we were informed by someone that the whale noises had, in fact, been the final performance.

friday january 9

today i borrowed a roommate's monthly ttc pass and required a coaching on which direction to hold and slide it before actually using it, so it looked entirely natural and comfortable when i reached the subway station. it was a huge success.

thursday january 8

today i received the following private message from "maisha hoque" on windows live:

"hi luke yr not 23 yrs old or am i talkin 2 the rong person that has excatly the same name as my boyfriend
jus makin sur do ya no me mashxx ansa me bac wiv a yes or no "

i didn't even know you could get private messages on windows live. not an e-mail. not an msn message. a private windows live message. what.

wednesday january 7

today i was sitting on the bus, listening to the guy and girl behind me arguing about whether the act of loving someone was a conscious choice or not. finally, in a frustrated attempt to prove her point, the girl asked him: "so, could i just choose to fall in love with that man there??" since they were sitting right behind me, and i was sitting next to a girl, i was dying to know if i was the "man" she was gesturing at, and was tempted to turn around and say something like "can if you wanna!!" i didn't turn around.

tuesday january 6

today i went to the nearby cibc bank machine to withdraw some money. after inserting my bank card, the machine prompted me to select my language. i clicked the button marked 'english' and waited. nothing happened. i pressed it again, harder this time. still nothing. after trying one last time with no results, i reluctantly pressed the 'francais' button across from it. the machine beeped approval and continued on to the next step. for the rest of the transaction, i was fairly worried that my lack of french knowledge would result in my doing something disastrous with my money, but the process turned out to be surprisingly simple, despite my having to select a couple options i would've preferred not to, to avoid having to use the machine's one broken button.

monday january 5

today i opened up and began using a new tube of toothpaste. upon opening it, i realized what i had not realized when buying it: that it was significantly bigger than my usual tubes. its large size made me feel as if it was toothpaste for a giant, and that i needed to be at least a foot or two taller for it to be in proper proportion to me.

sunday january 4

today i was told by my mother that i looked "half-rocked" in a photograph taken of me on new year's eve.

saturday january 3

today i was home alone for the second straight day. though i knew that one roommate was in new york for the weekend, i only had a vague idea, a hypotheseis really, about where the other one was. the boredom, sickness, and solitude finally got to me in one paranoid moment in the evening, when i became convinced that this second roommate had actually passed out and died in her room; i was sure that i just hadn't noticed, having not even knocked on her door at all to see if she was in there, that i'd lived in the house for over 24 hours with this dead body as if nothing was wrong, and that i'd be forced to live with my inaction and guilt forever. i immediately went to her room and confirmed that it was empty and that i was, in fact, crazy, but it was a pretty terrifying 20 seconds.

friday january 2

today i was, regrettably, forced to dip back into the "another thing i did on these days" well early, as my actual day consisted entirely of lounging around, feeling sick and sorry for myself.

sunday december 28
today i wore, for the first time, my new pair of jeans that i'd received for christmas. the jeans i'd asked for were the exact same style, size, and brand as my already existing favourite pair, meaning that even though it was my first time wearing them, it felt entirely familiar. it was wonderful.

tuesday december 30
today i went to my local lcbo to buy some drinks. i brought a previously-used lcbo bag with me, remembering an incident in which the grumpy female cashier there had looked unimpressed when i said i needed a new bag. this time around, she was the only cashier working, so i was excited about the prospect of impressing her with my preparation and turning that frown upside down. after barely acknowledging my bag, however, she lectured me to "watch the bottom" of it, to make sure nothing fell out. one of these days, i'll get her approval.

wednesday december 31
today i had a nightmare in which i suddenly realized that my last 10 or so 'one thing i did today' entries began with something besides "today i" and that i had to go back and edit them all before anyone noticed.

thursday january 1

today i showered about an hour after waking up, then promptly changed back into pajamas, knowing there that was no chance i'd leave the house for the rest of the day. the usual new year's day.

wednesday december 31

today i was asked to lend a friend a certain t-shirt that i owned, and was offered his underwear as collateral. although his effort to take off this underwear while standing and still wearing pants was admittedly impressive, it didn't make the prospect of accepting the deal any more appealing.