monday march 30

today i was listening to my ipod on the bus and, always trying to be prepared, i was browsing through my songs, trying to find the next album i wanted to listen to, since there were only a couple songs left that i wanted to hear on the current one. i settled on an album, and felt good about the choice. not to mention feeling good about the fact that i'd be able to click 'menu' two songs later and immediately be at the song i wanted to hear. a few seconds later, however, it occurred to me that i didn't want to hear track one on this new album, but that i'd rather start at a later track. i flicked at the ipod wheel to navigate to the end of the album, but at the exact instant my finger rolled over the wheel, the tracklist menu disappeared and returned to the default ipod display. instead of scrolling through the tracklist, then, i ended up turning lil' wayne's "who wanna" to maximum volume and giving myself a minor heart attack.

sunday march 29

today i explained to a third different girl in the span of the last week what the term "mulligan" meant. for my entire life, before this week, i had assumed it was a much more common word than it apparently is.

saturday march 28

today i returned home after having gone out, and attempted to unlock our front door, to no avail. a few days ago, our doors had been fixed, which at first resulted in my thinking that my key no longer worked; the first time i arrived home, post-'fix', i had to get my roommate to let me into the house. i eventually realized that my key was still functioning, but that turning it properly was just a much more difficult task than it previously had been. in this instance, even knowing that the key would eventually work, i fiddled with it for upwards of five or six minutes. with one roommate out of town and the other potentially out for the night, i was on the verge of imagining what it'd be like to spend the night on the porch when the key finally clicked into place.

friday march 27

today i got hungry late at night and decided to walk over to pizza pizza at nearly 2:00 am. sober, i was hoping to get there and back without having to interact with any of the people in the streets who were sure to be drunk. thankfully, the only incident that occurred was a tranny asking me if i had any gum.

thursday march 26

today i brought my laptop to school for my two classes. my battery typically lasts approximately three and a half hours, and i'd be on campus for nearly four and a half. as such, i ended up intermittently putting my computer to sleep for small intervals, in hopes of making it last until the very end of the day. this exercise could've easily been avoided by merely bringing my power cord, but was somehow more entertaining and rewarding than that would've been; like a mini-challenge.

wednesday march 25

today i received an e-mail from my landlord that was written nearly entirely in caps-lock and ended with "PLEASE MAY WE HAVE A TALK WITH YOU." it was the most intimidating message i've gotten in weeks.

tuesday march 24

today i arrived home at about 11:40 am and noticed that a package from japan for my roommate had arrived in the mail. knowing that she'd probably be home and had been anticipating this mail, i was looking forward to seeing her reaction when i gave it to her. i went upstairs and didn't hear her in her room, across the hall from mine. was she still sleeping? i started loudly putting away my school stuff, indicating that i was home and attempting to wake her up if she was asleep, but still no signs of life from across the hall. eventually, i gave up, concluding that maybe she'd gone out, and walked over and gently laid the package outside her door. suddenly, there was a noise inside her room and she yelled "DID I GET MAIL?!" and came rushing out. while i got the reaction that i'd initially wanted, i felt somehow gypped over how it had played out.

monday march 23

today i rode a bus from school to the kipling subway station that was driven by the most horn-happy driver i've ever seen. he leaned on his horn three times during the 20ish-minute ride. the first time came when he was mad that he had to stop and wait in the right lane at a red light behind a lone car that was going straight through (he wanted to turn). the second time came to signal a lane change. the third time happened for no discernible reason.

sunday march 22

today i participated in a fantasy baseball auction that ended up taking four hours and four minutes to complete. before it began and before i found out that the auction could, in fact, be paused, i was debating whether or not i ought to drink any water and risk having to take a bathroom break halfway through, perhaps missing out on a nomination that i'd really regret.

saturday march 21

today i was coming down the stairs and attempted to pull my phone out of my pocket. it slipped out of my hand and fell in epic fashion onto the hardwood floor way below. having had bad luck in the past with dropped phones, i was immediately horrified. i ran to the fallen phone and slid it open. nothing. petrified that i'd broken another phone i yelled "are you SERIOUS?!" and felt like crying. it was at this point i noticed that, on impact, the battery had come out and was now sitting next to our cat's litter box, about two feet away from me. i quickly put it in and, although i had to reset my phone's date and time, everything else was perfectly intact. it was one of the happiest moments of my life.

friday march 20

today i went to dollarama to buy one $1 item, and ended up in line behind someone whose total came to $50.85. imagine how long that many dollarama items took to ring through!!!

thursday march 19

today i brought my laptop to school in order to run a powerpoint file from it, for an in-class presentation. before coming to school, it occurred to me that, with my computer screen being projected on a wall in front of the class for all to see, i wouldn't want anything embarrassing to be visible. only needing to use powerpoint, however, and not needing to get on the internet, i figured that i was in the clear. the presenter before me, however, couldn't connect to the internet with his computer, so when i went up to present, he asked if he could use mine, which was having no internet issues. this meant that the class would see my firefox bookmarks toolbar -- the bar along the top of the browser where i put the sites that i'm visiting all the time. thankfully, when i hooked it up to the projector, the screen resolution automatically adjusted, meaning that only about two-thirds of my go-to bookmarks were actually visible. while there were still one or two embarrassing ones in the mix, i was very thankful that the screen's resizing had pushed 'okcupid' out of the window.

wednesday march 18

today i saw one of the ugliest people i've ever seen in my life in person. i've seen some unattractive people, but this lady made me physically recoil when i saw her. she was so ugly that i somehow felt compelled to look at her a second time, which was just as awful as the first. my morbid fascination with looking back was like those people that just have to watch '2 girls 1 cup' even though they know what they're getting into from the start.

tuesday march 17

today i saw a homeless women along a highway exit with a sign that read "pick up litter for money (not a hooker)."

monday march 16

today i intended to watch one half-hour of television in the evening: how i met your mother at 8:30. when i came down to the living room at 8:30, my roommate was halfway through gossip girl. i took this in stride, and planned to come back down at 11:30 to watch the show on a west-coast feed. at 11:30 i came down, browsed through the guide, and found that himym was only airing at this hour on channels we didn't get. i ended up just downloading it.

sunday march 15

today i woke up before 10:00 am. feeling like i hadn't gotten enough sleep, but unable to sleep anymore, i performed banal morning tasks and browsed the internet for an hour or two until i finally felt like i could go to bed and fall asleep. i did so, i slept until 3:30 pm. it was at this point that i realized i'd forgotten to eat anything during my first wake-up and realized how starving i was. not wanting to miss breakfast, often my favourite meal, i ate it at 4:00 pm, seriously throwing off my eating schedule for the rest of the day.

saturday march 14

today i went to soundscapes with my roommate, each of us intending to buy one ticket for the upcoming dan deacon toronto show. when i was asked how many i wanted, i hesitated and glanced at her, and then said "two" even though we were paying separately. this led to the employee thinking that i wanted two tickets and that she'd get an additional one, and resulted in my having to clarify that i meant "one each." this led to us both paying separately for single tickets at the same time, and him saying "well, i only printed one receipt, you can fight over it." i pretty much made the entire situation as awkward as it possibly could have been.

friday march 13

today i had a dream in which i'd completed a major project that i'd been stressing out about for a while. the presentation was a much bigger success than i anticipated and i even got props from my teacher for it. it was at this point that i woke up, and experienced a truly awful moment of realization when i remembered that in the real world i hadn't actually started this project yet.

thursday march 12

today i was walking down the street about 20 paces behind a mother pushing a stroller with a crying baby inside. the baby was really giving its vocal chords a workout, to the point where it was extremely annoying to be walking behind the two. it looked as if i had three options:

1. stop at a store, kill a couple minutes, then come back out, having given them a bit of a headstart.
2. maintain my same pace and be annoyed until we went our separate ways.
3. speed up, pass them, and pull away from the noise.

given my usual quick walking pace, and the fact that i'd already made all the stops i needed to, i elected to go for option #3. this proved more difficult than i thought, as it turned out the mom was maintaining a pretty fast clip herself -- probably trying to get out of public with the earsore as soon as possible. finally, just as i was gaining significant ground, she paused for a minute to direct baby-talk inside the stroller, allowing me to blow past them both and finally escape the racket.

wednesday march 11

today i wrote a 1000-word paper in less than an hour and a half. having not written more than one or two pages at a time for school in nearly a year, it was a relief to find out that i've still 'got it.'

tuesday march 10

today i was trying to sneak in an extra half-hour of sleep in the morning, when our my roommate's cat kept scratching at the door, hoping either for attention or food. twice in the span of this half-hour, he somehow managed to force open my bedroom door, causing it to slam and wake me up, despite the fact that i was convinced that i'd closed it all the way, until it clicked into place and was impossible to just push open!! i want to know his secret techniques.

monday march 9

today i resorted to "another thing i did on these days":

sunday february 22
today i went to the record store soundscapes to pick up some concert tickets. needing to pay in cash, and not having a clear idea of where the closest banks were, i walked in the opposite direction to start, to a nearby bank (cibc) that wasn't even my own (td). i then walked to soundscapes, and approximately two minutes before arriving there, passed a td that would've been perfectly located for me. this all took place during the only half-hour of the day that was a snowstorm.

thursday march 5
today i arrived back in london for the weekend. with my parents in europe, i had their home to myself, and initially found it hard to adjust to being on my own in the large house. over the course of my first few hours there, i saw a vcr randomly turn on and begin taping a program at a random time (5:13 pm), a light turn itself on, and a myriad of odd noises coming from between floors when i turned on the washing machine.

friday march 6
today i purchased a hot dog from the new york fries concession at silver city while waiting in line for the watchmen. when i returned to the line, i asked who was ready to watch "the weener machiner in action."

sunday march 8
today i spent approximately 20 minutes with friends trying to figure out where we should go for dinner. when we eventually decided, we went to just about the furthest away of all our options, then complained, insulted, and made jokes about it throughout the entire meal.

sunday march 8

today i was driving down the 401 from london to toronto, when my first cd, the meadowlands, finished. i'd put in a few cds at the start of the drive, but couldn't remember which one was where, so i had no idea what was coming up, as i flicked to the next cd. when the first few notes of "like a rolling stone" started to play, i got a little pumped up and increased my speed past the 115-120 km/h range that i'd been at for 98% of the trip. it was at this point that i thought i saw a car turn on its lights from the right shoulder, but convinced myself that between the rain and the traffic, i'd just been seeing things. approximately a minute later, i saw police lights flashing behind me. i was pulled over and given a $220 speeding ticket. the only consolation was that when the officer asked if i knew how fast i'd been going, i nailed my speed (130 km/h) dead on. in retrospect, maybe i should've undershot it a little, so it didn't look like i was making a conscious decision to drive that fast.

saturday march 7

today i listened to lil' wayne's "got money" (feat. t-pain) at full volume, while driving down streets so flooded that waves of water occasionally flew up from both sides when i drove down them, making me feel like i was moses parting the red sea in an suv. it was my most fun driving experience in months.

friday march 6

today i downloaded two items of new music that i was excited about. the first was an ep by the band you love her coz she's dead, who performed on this week's episode of skins, and who i was so enamoured by that i paused the episode about eight seconds into their scene to see who they were. the second was the song "right round" by flo-rida; yesterday i'd seen it advertised in an mtv commercial and everyone i was with agreed that it sucked while i said nothing and secretly stored it away for later. thanks television for helping me find music i love!!!

thursday march 5

today i drove home late at night behind a cop car. it was driving along normally, no flashing lights or sirens, until we approached a red light, at which point he put on his lights, drove through the intersection and then promptly turned them back off. i felt like i'd been personally violated by this action.

wednesday march 4

today i got into an argument about whether one is "racist" if they'd like to hook up with a black girl.

tuesday march 3

today i ordered food with a friend from a local thai restaurant. we each decided to have the phad thai. when she was on the phone, making the order, she asked for "two 22s" (the phad thai was #22 on the menu) and all i could think of for the rest of the conversation was the biggie song with the lyric "said he had beef, asked me if i had my piece / sure do, two .22's in my shoes."

monday march 2

today i bought a monthly metropass for the first time since moving to toronto. initially, i'd been excited about the prospect of finishing class and getting back home before noon, giving myself the whole afternoon to put this metropass to use. it was, after all, a cold day, the kind that i wouldn't want to spend walking around to run errands. after arriving home, however, i ended up lying down and falling asleep for the entire afternoon, reasoning when i woke up at 5:00 pm that i still had a solid four weeks to get my money's worth out of the metropass.

sunday march 1

today i watched most of an old competitive eating fox special called the glutton bowl on gametv. watching this program inspired me to come up with the idea of hosting a hot dog eating competition this summer among my interested friends. it seemed like a really great idea for a unique summertime party. this led to a mostly unsuccessful 10-minute brainstorming session of what my eating nickname would be for this contest. my best ideas ended up being luke "steel stomach" adams, luke "no reversals" adams, and "the weener machiner." back to the drawing board.

saturday february 28

today i took my car to the dufferin mall for the first time, excited about the prospect of not having to walk back and forth, to and from the mall, carrying groceries in the cold. and also being able to load up on as many groceries as i wanted, without worrying about weighing myself down for the walk home. as it turned out, the stress of driving to and from the mall, eventually finding a parking spot, and steering a rickety, overloaded shopping cart through the packed no frills turned out to be maybe even more of a hassle than the usual grocery trip.