thursday july 30

today i had my usual thursday morning class taught by alan cross.

wednesday july 29

today i was working late in the production studios on campus when i noticed three guys in the studio adjacent to mine. despite the soundproof doors and windows surrounding each of our studios, i could still occasionally hear bass-heavy beats bumping from their studio, and saw one of the three delivering lines from a notebook into the mic in a very animated way. i'm pretty sure they were recording a rap album and i was very excited about it.

tuesday july 28

today i was needling a friend for not sending me text messages very often, when she decided to send me a retaliatory text that read: "you stupid slut." a phone number mix-up, however, saw her send this message not to my cell phone, but to my parents' home phone, resulting in my dad picking up the phone and hearing a robo-voice call him a "stupid slut."

monday july 27

today i was inspired by a shopper's drug mart visit to concoct a get-rich plan to coincide with the new five-cent fee on plastic bags in ontario. if i worked at such a place, i feel like it would work to add five cents to everyone's bills, charging them for a plastic bag even if they didn't ask for one. if i were a customer and i were to actually read my bill (a large 'if' to begin with) and see that five-cent charge there, there'd be no way i'd go back and ask for that five cents back. i'd feel ridiculous! but as a cashier, if you did that all day.... HUGE MONEY! go for it, cashiers.

sunday july 26

today i exchanged six text messages with a friend who was on the second floor of my house, while i was on the third floor.

saturday july 25

today i attempted to watch a region 2 dvd (garth marenghi's darkplace) that a friend had brought for me from england. although my dvd player was uncooperative, my laptop obliged. its only condition was that i could only change my region preference four times. this initially struck me as a difficult requirement and made me think that i'd have to plan really carefully when exactly to make the changes. it then occurred to me that since buying the laptop over a year ago, i've watched maybe two dvds on it, and it probably wouldn't be a big inconvenience to just have it permanently as a region 2 player.

friday july 24

today i had three or four major errands to run, but had to coordinate them so as not to be stuck out in the rain while doing any. the closest call came when i was debating whether or not to get groceries; after a few minutes of wavering, i decided to just go for it. on my way back home, the rain began to come when i was about 30 seconds from my front porch. a little wet, i wasn't sure if i should be happy to be getting home just as the rain was starting, or annoyed that if i hadn't wasted the time on the decision to begin with, i wouldn't have gotten wet at all!

thursday july 23

today i was in class, with a laptop's display being broadcast on the screen at the front of the classroom for all to see. at one point, the teacher decided to use it to google "BBM" -- in canadian radio, the bureau of broadcast measurement. this acronym has multiple meanings, however, and there were some stifled chuckles around the class when google's first sponsored link that appeared on screen when he tried to find the bureau's website advertised "gay chubby dating: find local gay chubby men near you!"

wednesday july 22

today i brainstormed an idea: toilet paper with celebrities' faces on it. they would most likely be hated celebrities, ones most disliked by the public; ones for whom you'd feel okay about using their likeness as... well, toilet paper. the product would be called... wait for it.... hollywood squares.

tuesday july 21

today i was coming back across the border from port huron to canada. as we approached the border, my friend, remembering having crossed the other way a few days earlier, when an ornery border guard had forced her to roll down the back passenger window, exclaimed "i'll be prepared this time!" and rolled her window down. as we approached the first of the booths and, after a brief stop, continued through it, her face went blank with confusion. i had to inform her that that had, in fact, been the toll booth, and that the border guard was yet to come.

monday july 20

today i was hanging around at a friend's place without him around, waiting until i had to catch a train back home from chicago. with a few hours to kill, i decided that i'd like to play mlb the show '09 on his playstation 3. first, though, i'd have to navigate his myriad remote controls and figure out his tv and entertainment centre setup. i was able to turn on the speakers, the television, and even turn the tv to the appropriate display setting for playing video games. however, i was stymied by the last step: actually turning on the video game system. i never did figure it out and eventually gave up, embarrassed and feeling like i was someone's out-of-touch mom.

sunday july 19

today i approached a pitchfork music festival volunteer to show my id, verifying that i was in fact 21 years old, to acquire a wristband for the day. she studied the driver's license for a minute and then asked me a question i didn't catch. as i asked her to repeat it, i became convinced that she'd asked me some sort of tricky question to confirm when my birthday was, like what my astrological sign was, and that my asking her to repeat it was a sign of my unsureness rather than of my poor hearing. when she repeated herself again, i heard her: "three first names," she said. i looked at her blankly. at this point, she turned the id towards me and pointed to my name. "jonathan. luke. adams. three first names!" finally realizing what she meant, i chuckled and nodded, unsure of why she'd felt the need to point this out in the first place, but glad that i was getting my wristband after all.

saturday july 18

today i claimed a spot, along with two friends, near the stage for the headlining act of the day (the national) at the pitchfork music festival. the spot was pretty prime real estate, about three or four rows from the stage in a crowd of thousands. however, we had to stake out this spot about an hour before the national's set actually began. by the time the wait was over and they actually started playing, my bladder was becoming so uncooperative that i could only last five songs before having to give up my spot and find a bathroom. after i left them, my friends ended up finagling their way backstage and meeting various musicians, while i was probably peeing again. a failure on a variety of levels for me.

friday july 17

today i took the amtrak train from port huron to chicago. the train ended up being nearly three hours late. the longest delay of the ride came near michigan city, when people had spotted train-hoppers hanging off the side of a freight train ahead of us. this incident was made worse by the fact that convicts from a prison escape in the area were still at large, leading to the police swarming the freight train and clearing it out before our train could begin moving again. while the delay was irritating, the general consensus was that the story may have been worth it.

thursday july 16

today i was waiting in the ossington station for the subway when i noticed a couple of guys skateboarding through the station, next to the tracks, while waiting for the train to arrive. for a moment, i was wildly convinced that one of them was going to ollie onto the tracks themselves and grind all the way through the station, before transferring to the outer lip, like they were in tony hawk's pro skater.

wednesday july 15

today i saw an advertisement in the subway station for the movie coraline, which was marketed by promoting the 3d aspect. the image of those cheap, cardboard 3d glasses on the poster prompted me to think that maybe there was a huge invention opportunity here: comfortable, non-disposable 3d glasses. later, curious, i checked google to see if this was already a thing, and found that, predictably, i'd been beaten to it.

tuesday july 14

today i loaded a streaming episode of the big bang theory to watch online while i ate lunch. while multitasking during the credits, my computer froze up, and refused to respond to any sort of troubleshooting measures, eventually turning the screen entirely black. however, the episode kept rolling throughout this predicament, meaning i heard the entire thing happen without actually seeing any of it. when it finished, i wondered if i'd actually end up watching this episode again, or, having heard all the important bits, just skipping over it and watching the next one; i skipped it.

monday july 13

today i read an online parental review of the movie bruno. the laundry list of offensive scenes listed was to be expected, but it made me chuckle to see, mixed in with the truly offensive moments, warnings such as: "paula abdul shows cleavage."

sunday july 12

today i found out that a close friend from when i was 10 years old had passed away. r.i.p. liane, you were the first girl i really had a crush on.

saturday july 11

today i went to h&m, hoping to find a new pair of shorts. instead, one of the first things i came across was a $7 rack, which featured a shirt that i'd paid over $20 for a couple months earlier. this irritated me so much that even though i saw a pair of shorts that i sort of liked, i decided not to pony up the $29.99 for them because who knows how cheap they'd be selling them for next month.

friday july 10

today i spoke in class in the following accents that i had never attempted in public -- or, in some cases, at all -- before: japanese, irish, italian, russian, german, and indian.

thursday july 9

today i was asleep not once but TWICE, at different parts of the day, when friends tried to get in touch with me to hang out. the first time, a phone call woke me up and i salvaged the hangout. the second time, i just missed out altogether. neither instance took place at an hour of the day when i should've reasonably been sleeping.

wednesday july 8

today i received a message from a girl on okcupid. it was the second time she'd instigated a conversation with me and the icebreaker she used was the exact one she'd used four months earlier. i'm beginning to worry that she's like leonard from memento and will just keep periodically messaging me talking about peep show indefinitely, not realizing it's happened before.

tuesday july 7

today i had a radio production class at the q107/edge 102.1 studios for the first time. this event had a damper put on it slightly by the fact that former edge dj martin streek had committed suicide a night earlier. he had been fired from the edge earlier in the year. the mood at the studios was fairly morose and awkward.

monday july 6

today i had a dream in which i was attempting to sell two franz ferdinand tickets outside the show. i found a taker, but after giving him the tickets, he informed me that he could only pay $4 for them. unimpressed, i took the tickets back and said i'd find another buyer, which didn't sit well with him -- he lunged forward with a knife, attempting to stab me. at this point, i woke up in a sweat and the thought flashed across my mind that my subconscious was trying to send me some sort of message, discouraging the idea i'd recently had about buying excess tickets to popular shows and selling them for a profit.

sunday july 5

today i was in the kitchen, when my roommate came in and said "hey." seeing our cat on the kitchen table, she turned to him and exclaimed "heyyyyy!" in a much more excited voice immediately after greeting me, which i found mildly offensive.

saturday july 4

today i was walking home with my roommate when an older man sitting along the sidewalk gestured back in the direction we'd come and asked us if we'd seen the butterfly. unsure of whether to reply to him as if he were a crazy, babbling drunk or a relatively normal human, we chuckled nervously and failed to offer a definitive answer one way or the other. he then launched into a spiel about the beauty of the white butterfly and its relation to love, eventually stopping to confirm: "... you're in love, right?"

friday july 3

today i bought a few beers at the lcbo. after i paid and as i was about to head out, the cashier, who i had not previously thought to be british, said: "cheers, mate." after a moment's hesitation, i replied "cheers," and immediately felt awkward about it, like i was a wannabe brit. when i considered the exchange on my way out of the store though, i realized that this was really the only response available (besides maybe "thanks") and felt better about it.

thursday july 2

today i made myself a big breakfast and realized that i had nothing to watch while i ate it. i rely on the eating/viewing multitasking combo, and, having just finished two tv series and with our cable box not working, i had few options. i ended up taking ghost town off my roommate's dvd shelf and watching a 100-minute movie, despite the fact that my breakfast took about ten minutes to eat.

wednesday july 1

today i was taken to an empty (but fully equipped) bar and given the opportunity to serve myself as many pints as i wanted from an assortment of 15 taps. it was like a fulfillment of the dream of owning a bar, but, with no concern for any customers or turning a profit, even better.

tuesday june 30

today i was walking down a busy street when i passed a guy who laughed and remarked: "what's with the hiked socks, dude?" while he was almost certainly talking to someone else, i had a moment of nervousness when i thought my reluctance to wear shorts in tandem with normal socks (as opposed to ankle socks) was finally being validated by this mocking stranger.