saturday may 30

today i clung to the belief established around the start of may, that, with our house lacking any sort of air conditioning, it was important to keep it as cool as possible in preparation for the summer. this resulted in my leaving most of the windows open overnight, despite the fact that the temperature inched down to about 3 or 4 degrees. when i woke up and walked through the house in shorts, i became aware that it was quite cold, and that maybe my assumption that the summer had already arrived was a little premature.

friday may 29

today i was in line to buy a beer at the blue jays game, when, my turn in line about to come up, i realized that my hands were too full -- i was eating a hot dog with one hand, and had my wallet in the other. i shoved the last oversized bite of my hot dog into my mouth to free up that hand to pull money and identification out of my wallet. unfortunately, as soon as i did this, i realized that now my mouth was too full. i got to the front of the line, and had so much food in my mouth that it was physically impossible to tell the girl working there what i wanted. although i tried to chew as quickly as i could, it still took long enough to swallow that she had time to gesture toward the beer selection behind her and joke, "should i just point?"

thursday may 28

today i was losing interest in my radio programming class at school and had tuned out the last minute or two of the lecture, in favour of talking to friends on gmail and facebook chats. it was at this point that my instructor mentioned the band arkells. my ears perked up, thinking that he was talking about the king of r&b, r. kells. it was a disappointing moment of realization when i saw the truth.

wednesday may 27

today i was waiting at the corner of bloor and ossington for the light to change. while i stood there, i witnessed someone walking across the street in the other direction, talking on their cell phone. a car turning right honked at him, seemingly annoyed that his phone conversation resulted in him walking too slowly across the street? in reply, the guy put his phone down, gestured toward the light and yelled into the window of the honking car: "IT'S MINE, ASSHOLE!" (the right of way, presumably).

tuesday may 26

today i had set up an interview with someone from the fan 590. i originally called him before the cavs/magic game started in the evening in the hopes of finishing up our talk early so that i could watch the game. he wasn't ready at that point though, and suggested we do it a couple hours later. a couple hours later, the game was coming down to the wire, but i had to get the interview done; i tried calling him as soon as the game went to timeout with six minutes left, but no luck. a few minutes later though, he called back and we began the interview. over the course of our conversation, the last three minutes or so of the game wound down, as i tried to simultaneously keep track of what was going on and pay attention to what he was saying in response to my questions. thankfully, when we finished talking and i got off the phone, the basketball game had gone into overtime, and i was still able to see the ending. win-win!!

monday may 25

today i noticed an advertisement on a street post at an intersection that my bus to school passes every day. my bus sat at the red light for about 30 seconds, allowing me a chance to read the entire advertisement, which was encouraging competitors to sign up for a "bj competition." assuming that "bj" must be short for something besides the obvious, for it to be advertised so publicly, i kept the website url in mind to check out when i got home. when i did so, i found that the obvious acronym was, in fact, the correct one, and that the site had a hilarious list of rules for its blowjob competition, including: "in the event of a tie a team deep throat blow off shall take place."

sunday may 24

today i saw the tim horton's commercial for their iced coffee for maybe the tenth time. for the first time though, i really thought about the plot: a conference call is taking place between one group in the office and another group (drinking iced coffee) on the golf course. the two guys on the golf course end up stirring the iced coffee loudly and the noise gets mistaken for bad reception. they keep doing it and pretend that the call cuts out. this is pretty much the end of the commercial. i thought about this for the next two minutes or so and couldn't figure out what the point of the advertisement was, except to suggest that tim horton's iced coffee discourages productivity.

saturday may 23

today i hung around home for most of the day, while our neighbour that lives on the floor below us threw a picnic party in our backyard. this party started at around 2:00 pm and lasted approximately 10 hours. this meant that not only was i forced to listen to the awful dance music that they played outside for most of the day, but also that i had to keep an eye on our cat all day. with a no-pets rule in effect for the house, his presence is still a secret, and his habit of sitting in the kitchen and staring out of the giant window into the backyard was problematic with 15 people out there. my forcing him into other sitting spots only resulted in us getting into a couple fights.

friday may 22

today i overheard a guy talking on his phone on the street outside the ossington subway station. his tone was distressed as he told the person on the other end of the line that he wasn't allowed to take a dog on the subway before 6:30 pm, when 'rush hour' was considered over (it was about 4:40 pm at the time). he seemed very upset as he exclaimed that he had to be at work in an hour and didn't know what to do!!

thursday may 21

today i visited the same bar and placed the same order two separate times throughout the night, sitting at a different table with different people.

wednesday may 20

today i became so fed up with the excess of empty tallboy cans piled near the door to our balcony that i decided to put them out with the recycling, forgoing a trip to the beer store to get money in exchange for them. while the actual return on these empties (maybe 75 of them at 10 cents a pop) wouldn't have been huge, the fact that i was willing to throw this profit away for nothing was a strong indication of just how much the mess was bothering me.

tuesday may 19

today i listened to flow 93.5 for a school assignment. about a half hour into my listening, i heard jamie foxx's "blame it." this marked the fifth time i'd listened to flow since moving to toronto, never for more than an hour. each time without fail, however, "blame it" had been played at some point while i listened, a streak i think is pretty impressive even for commercial radio.

monday may 18

today i got on a greyhound bus to head back to toronto from london. by the time i got onto the bus, only aisle seats were available. i followed the couple in front of me in line about halfway through the bus, at which point they asked someone in a window seat if she'd mind moving across the aisle so that the couple could sit together. the window-sitter obliged, but the process took about 20 seconds, with all the luggage moving and organizing. during this time, i stood uncomfortably behind them, waiting to get by, and wishing i'd just taken a seat closer to the front. at this point, since i was staring at the back few rows, waiting to take my seat there, i figured that whoever i eventually sat beside would assume that i'd picked them out specifically, following this extra 20 seconds of study time. when the couple finally got seated, i immediately sat down in the row behind them, trying to avoid eye contact with the guy i sat next to.

sunday may 17

today i went to black's to get my passport photo taken. after the first attempt, the girl taking the photo told me that i had too much glare on my forehead, above my eyebrows; i needed to wipe myself down with a tissue before getting the winning shot. since this comment, all i've been able to notice in most photos of myself are how blinding my forehead is.

saturday may 16

today i was at a get-together at a friend's place, when i made a bathroom visit. upon returning to my chair and sitting down, i realized that i'd left my fly down. in my current seated position, and with 10 or 15 people in the room, there was no way to quickly and subtly zip up, leaving me with the dilemma of how to handle it; i pulled the bottom of my shirt down over top of it while i considered my options. eventually, i decided that i didn't want to wait until my next bathroom trip to fix it. so, when everyone's attention was drawn to the opposite end of the room, i shifted my weight and pretended to do an awkward sort of stretch that allowed me to pull up the zipper. i likely drew even more attention to myself than i would have if i'd just zipped up immediately, but mission accomplished.

friday may 15

today i went out to the dairy queen near my high school, where i used to go before i went out to bars. when i walked in and saw the clientele, mostly kids of about 15 or 16, i was overcome with a feeling that i'd been transported back in time. or at least the realization that i'm getting old. on the plus side, the reese's peanut butter cup blizzard was delicious.

thursday may 14

today i went to the rogers centre with a group of six other people for the blue jays/yankees game. after we stopped at the ticket booth, i was left holding all seven of our tickets. when we got to our entrance gate, i fanned them all out in my hand, letting everyone grab one. as i did this, however, it seemed like the group was distracted by something behind us, and not noticing me. i turned to look, and as i did so, i felt a pressure on the tickets in my hand. thinking it was the wind, which had been strong all day, i tightened my grip on the tickets, fearing that they'd blow away. when i turned back around, i realized that it had, in fact, been one of my friends trying to take a ticket, and i'd created something of an awkward situation, with him not being able to pry one away from my death grip.

wednesday may 13

today i went to my first wednesday class of the semester, with an instructor i hadn't met before. while she was taking attendance at the beginning of class, it came up that one student was away, sick. this led her into a tangent about not showing up to class if you were sick -- she'd rather we stayed home and away from anyone else if we were potentially contagious, rather than feeling obliged to drag ourselves to class. still feeling rather poor, and having felt obliged to drag myself to class, i briefly debated getting up and walking out at this point. i managed, however, to keep my sniffles and coughs to a minimum for the next two hours, pretending i was not, in fact, sick.

tuesday may 12

today i had an unusually long break between classes -- over five hours! figuring it wasn't worth it to spend an hour each way going home and back during this break, i commenced killing time on campus. at about the third or fourth hour, i resorted to watching an episode of the shield on my laptop with headphones on, in one of the public lounge areas. the violent and sometimes sexual nature of the show made me nervous about watching it with others around, and i had to glance over my shoulder to make sure no one was behind me, questioning what the hell i was watching, during a couple of sex scenes. ultimately though, i got through it, and it made me appreciate for the first time how few people were on campus in the summer.

monday may 11

today i came down with a cold so unpleasant that i had no energy to do anything except lie down, cough, and blow my nose. the only silver lining was that, with mondays off this semester, i had no obligation to go to class, or go out at all. sadly, in a bit of an ironic twist, i ended up running out of kleenex, forcing me to lurch out of my house and down the street to shopper's drug mart to buy more. after running this errand, i didn't leave home again.

sunday may 10

today i went with my mother to visit my grandmother for mother's day. i was only in town for about 24 hours, so my grandmother had no idea i was coming. when we arrived, my grandfather went to get her, and i heard him say, "there's a surprise here for you!" to this, she replied excitedly: "is it jordan?!" jordan is my brother.

saturday may 9

today i went to a london diner with two friends. after our waiter came over for the first time, one of my friends told us a story about how rude this waiter had been the last time she'd had him. we vowed to make a better impression, and to win him over by the end of the meal. this turned out to be a more difficult task than we'd imagined, ultimately proving unsuccessful, in my opinion, by the point where he exclaimed "well fuck ya!" to us.

friday may 8

today i came upstairs to my room a little after midnight, when the outcome of the rockets/lakers game had been decided. although it was still rather early, i debated going to bed -- i had nothing in particular to do, and wasn't feeling all that great. at this instant, my internal debate was interrupted by the power in the house going out. when it didn't come back in within the next minute, i realized that our neighbourhood's history of frequent and lengthy outages had made my decision much easier. i went to bed.

thursday may 7

today i was eating a bowl of honey nut cheerios, which i've long referred to as not only my favourite cereal, but one of my favourite foods overall. while halfway through the bowl, i had a stunning realization: i'd enjoyed the apple cinnamon cheerios that i'd bought a week earlier (they were on sale) more than i was currently enjoying the honey nut cheerios. my favourite cereals list, turned upside down!!

wednesday may 6

today i had one goal, which i'd been putting off a few days for no real reason: obtain a toronto library card. it seemed like an attainable goal, one that would make me feel productive without actually putting any pressure on me to do something all that difficult. sadly, i'd forgotten that in order to get a library card, i'd need something (a piece of id or mail) with my current toronto address on it. i had nothing. i ended up crossing the street from the library to the grocery store afterward and doing some shopping there, just so i could still consider my 'productive' outing somewhat salvaged.

tuesday may 5

today i dreamed that i started a new class that, despite not being a music class at all, listed a lil' wayne album atop its "required listening/reading" list. it was one of those dreams that i should've recognized was too good to be true even before i woke up and realized it.

monday may 4

today i sat out on our second floor patio for the first time this summer. after making comments about various passers-by, my roommate and i wondered aloud how quietly we'd need to talk in order to ensure we weren't heard from the street. when a friend came biking up to our front step a half-hour later, i tested out the volume level, and was a little discouraged when she replied enthusiastically to a "hey" that i thought would be too quiet.

sunday may 3

today i saw the thermals at the horseshoe tavern. during "a passing feeling," the front few rows got a little crazy for the first time, and i felt something wet splashing multiple times. my hope that it was water was quickly erased when i was immediately overwhelmed with the smell of beer. who waves a full beer bottle around in the air above their head???

saturday may 2

today i was withdrawing some money from a td atm when i realized that the girl using the one next to me was alice glass of crystal castles. i'd been complaining for a while that my roommates were getting all of the cool toronto run-ins, and this was my first. it was, however, fairly anticlimactic, due to the uncertainty i always have that i'm not just seeing a lookalike, and the uneventful nature of just looking at someone for five seconds.

friday may 1

today i spent far too long debating and deciding what to wear outside at night, with the temperature unexpectedly dropping to 2 degrees and with no real jacket besides my winter one at my disposal. after finally, reluctantly, figuring it out, i ended up not leaving my house.

thursday april 30

today i went to harvey's on campus for the last time this semester. i ordered my usual combo (cheeseburger with onion rings and root beer), which always comes to $7.10. used to this fact by now, i put a $20 bill and a dime on the counter without even listening to the price. the woman working there looked at me like i was crazy, and repeated the price: $7.33. surprised, i threw another quarter onto the counter and pointed out that this combo was usually 23 cents cheaper. "it was until last friday!" she exclaimed, explaining that prices increased slightly. "well this throws off my whole routine!" i joked, and we shared a laugh. although i was disappointed to have to pay more for my food, i was happy to finally share a moment of camaraderie at the harvey's counter, after having frequented the place all semester.