friday july 30

today i watched the final half-hour of free willy on television. the film, which i probably hadn't watched since about 1994, was much different than i remembered. while i, of course, recalled the iconic image of willy jumping over that kid to freedom, and the michael jackson song that highlighted the soundtrack, that was about the extent of my memories. things i'd forgotten included:

• willy responding to casual conversation with headshakes or nods, like a human.
• willy's overnight road trip.
• michael madsen as the stepdad who comes through in the end.
• any of the actors in the movie.
• that the villains were trying to off willy to collect the insurance policy -- one million dollars.
• that the michael jackson song ("will you be there") didn't even play over the jumping-into-the-ocean scene, but rather during the end credits.

thursday july 29

today i agreed to take an mlbtr shift that began at midnight and went until 4:00 tomorrow morning. in order to make sure i was able to stay awake for the entirety of the shift, i napped twice today. a double nap! it was so intense! what does it mean??

wednesday july 28

today i went to see my new place to check room sizes again and take some measurements, now that we knew we'd be leaving there come september. about three minutes before i left the house, it began to rain for the first time all day, inspiring me to ask my roommate to borrow her metropass. it felt a little weird to take an 18-minute ttc trip for a walk that would've taken maybe 22 minutes, but it was definitely worth it.

tuesday july 27

today i was washing a couple dishes when i saw my roommate about to leave the house. "where you headed?" i asked, only to have her reply entirely drowned out by the running water in the sink. after a split second of internal debate, i said "ah," nodding and pretending i'd heard the response, since i figured her destination probably wasn't of much consequence to me anyway.

monday july 26

today i went to canada's wonderland with a pair of female friends. when we took a break for dinner, discussion turned to the drink prices, and the fact that only 20 cents, or "two dimes," separates small from medium and then medium from large. at this point, i racked my brain trying to figure out how to turn the phrase "two dimes" into a joke/compliment about my present company, but couldn't do it quickly enough. when i chuckled to myself thinking about how clever it would've been if i'd pulled it off, they thought i was laughing at something else. nope, just the jokes in my head!

sunday july 25

today i signed a lease for a new place to live in september. see ya later, ossington!

saturday july 24

today i was walking along harbord street when a woman and child sitting on a stoop stopped me. this was the conversation we had:

her: "are you from around here?"
me (gesturing toward ossington): "yeah i guess so!"
her: "where are we?"
me (slightly confused): "like.... this street?"
her: "yeah."
me: "uh, this is harbord. harbord and ossington is a little ways up there."
her: "what's this intersection?
me (looking at the street sign that's about 30 feet away): "uh, montrose and harbord."
her: "ah okay, thanks. we ordered a pizza!"

at this point, i'm about to smile and walk away, but then her child starts talking to me:

him: "what's 16 up to 40?"
me: "sorry?"
him: "like, you already have 16 and you're going to 40."
me: "uh, you mean 16 plus 40?"
him: "no, like it's been 16 minutes out of 40 minutes."
me (finally understanding): "ohhh, 24!"
him: "thanks!"

as i walked away, i ascertained the following: they ordered a pizza that was going to take 40 minutes to deliver, and it had been 16 so far. during those 16 minutes, they still had no idea where they were. i can only imagine what they told the pizza place on the phone about where to send their dinner.

friday july 23

today i watched two episodes of deadwood in my room while my roommates hosted a party downstairs. i had to turn the volume up slightly louder than usual to drown out all the yelling coming from below me.

thursday july 22

today i went to see a nearby house showing, in search of a new place to live. it was one of the more unusual tours i'd been provided to date, as the following things happened:

• rather than the landlord himself showing up, his son, who wore braces and looked about 19, met me.
• the house's tenant, an old man named mr. clark, was home and watching tv in his living room as we maneuvered around him.
• the tour itself was so whirlwind that i couldn't have spent more than 30 seconds total in the house.
• after being led out to the back balcony area, the kid suggested i just take the fire escape stairs down and let myself out the back alley, like i was some sort of embarrassing one-night stand that he didn't want anyone to see come out the front door.

wednesay july 21

today i was hanging out with some friends at the victory cafe, when two of them headed to the bathroom. although i really needed to use the bathroom too, i decided to wait until they returned to do so, so as not to clear out too much of our table at once. at about the 15-minute mark of this wait, i couldn't take it anymore, and made my way to the bathroom. note for the future: never base your bathroom trips on when two friends will return from the bathroom, in case they decide to have a half-hour heart-to-heart in there.

tuesday july 20

today i was telling one of my friends about major lazer's pitchfork set, expecting to have to share my newfound knowledge about what daggering was. as soon as i mentioned it though, she proved herself to be an expert, even citing a specific comment someone left on a major lazer video that she'd come across during one of her "black holes" of youtube-browsing.

monday july 19

today i checked out of the inn of chicago, where we'd stayed the last three nights. for some reason, the guy that helped me check out made me very uneasy -- although the words coming out of his mouth were helpful and friendly, something about the tone in which he said them seemed unsettling and vaguely threatening. as such, after checking out, when he kept asking things like "mr. adams, do you need a taxi?" and mr. adams, how about some driving directions?" i declined all his offers and left the hotel as quickly as possible. we did need driving directions, it turns out.

sunday july 18

today i was at the final day of the pitchfork music festival, watching major lazer's late afternoon set. about 15 minutes into the performance, a middle-aged hippie-looking guy in front of us turned around and asked my friend and me: "who is this?" it was an odd question, considering the group had already announced their name at least ten times, complete with a call-and-response ("MAJOR..." "...LAZER!"), but my friend told the guy who was on stage. after a beat, the guy asked, "where's here we go magic?" i suggested they were probably on the smaller side stage and pointed him in the right direction, at which point he said thanks and walked off. later, i noticed that here we go magic had started playing nearly 45 minutes earlier, meaning this guy probably missed their set entirely. although i felt bad for him, i had to chuckle at the fact that he'd stood through 15 minutes of major lazer's insane costumed-dancing, daggering, hennessy-swigging set before thinking, "this doesn't seem like here we go magic."

saturday july 17

today i was at the pitchfork music festival in chicago when i saw a woman walk past me. she was carrying two full beers, one in each hand, while precariously balancing her sleeping child on her shoulders.

friday july 16

today i was grilled at the u.s./canada border by a surly border guard. her name, according to her nametag, was stanley.

thursday july 15

today i had a dream in which, for some reason, i was sitting in on what appeared to be some sort of lecture for adult film stars. at one point, i brushed against the "actress" sitting next to me and she commented on how ice-cold my legs were. there's meaning in here somewhere, i think.

wednesday july 14

today i was walking home along roxton road when i heard a child's voice call "hi!" off to my left. i turned to look for the source and saw a girl who looked about two years old sitting on the front step of a house, alongside a nanny or babysitter who looked about my age. except when i first looked over, i only saw the nanny, making me briefly wonder why this fully-grown girl had greeted me in a toddler's voice.

tuesday july 13

today i had a job interview. while the interview itself went fairly well, the part i felt best about after the fact was the brief post-interview conversation, when the interviewer and i had agreed that the new big boi album is awesome.

monday july 12

today i went to bed at 11 pm, setting my alarm for 5 am tomorrow morning, so i could wake up in plenty of time to do last-minute research and preparation for my 10 am job interview. this closely paralleled how i'd studied for exams in university. for some reason, in each case i'd feel very uncomfortable doing my research, then sleeping, then waking up and taking the test. perhaps this is out of some irrational fear that i'll forget everything i learned while i'm sleeping.

sunday july 11

today i saw my pre-tournament prediction come true when spain beat the netherlands to win the world cup. my decision to pick spain was not one i researched heavily, but rather one i'd made shortly after watching this sick passing sequence on youtube last month:

saturday july 10

today i thought about what a fun experiment it would be to mix up the phone numbers and names of everyone in my phone's sim card, so that they no longer matched up. i could then exchange texts and make plans with a friend while having no idea who i was communicating back and forth with. when i showed up for our hang-out, i'd be totally in the dark about who was going to come walking through the door to meet me! i probably won't do this. it was just an idea.

friday july 9

today i sat with three friends in a private box, complete with a curtained entrance, right next to the stage at an aziz ansari show. the fact that i'd completely misinterpreted the seat listing on my ticket and had no idea our seats would be this good made the experience even better, though it also made me suspicious that we'd been mistakenly seated there and would be kicked out by the real ticketholders at some point. this fear lasted well into opener todd barry's set.

thursday july 8

today i decided to embrace the heat wave by drinking an ice-cold smoothie and listening to ccr, while i sat outside in the sun and watched the sweat pool on my arms. it was awesome.

wednesday july 7

today i was taking the crowded streetcar home from the blue jays game when i heard someone behind me say "good game!" i had really only half-heard the guy, in the way you hear something that you aren't really listening to. a couple seconds later though, i felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around. "good game!" the guy said again, apparently directing this assertion at me. "yeah!" i agreed, while silently debating whether i ought to wear my jays t-shirt to games in the future.

tuesday july 6

today i was so hot that i had to move a second fan into my room from our guest room, since it was positioned better to blow air directly on me 24/7.

monday july 5

today i noticed that the world series of poker main event had gotten underway in las vegas. after thinking about it a little, i concluded that if i ever won the lottery, one of the first things i'd do with the money would be to use $10,000 of it to enter that year's wsop main event.

sunday july 4

today i needed to print off four pages worth of tickets for the upcoming aziz ansari show. since i rarely use my printer, i always have to specifically load it with paper anytime i'm printing anything. so, i counted out four sheets, loaded them up, and printed the tickets with no problem. after finishing the job though, i noticed that there was still some paper in the printer tray. i grabbed it and, to my surprise, counted FIVE additional blank pages that had gone unused. so not only had i loaded extra sheets by accident, but they'd somehow totaled NINE rather than four. i have no idea.

saturday july 3

today i walked down to college st. along ossington to pick up a take-out order. during the walk there, i approached dewson st., and a woman who was pulling two small children in one of those plastic toy wagons hit the crosswalk button on the opposite side of the street. since i needed to cross to the other side of ossington at some point, i decided to take advantage of the crosswalk and started walking through the intersection myself. but as we passed each other in the middle of the road, one of the children in the wagon dropped his hat into the street! "uh!" i called back. "i think you dropped something!" already on the other side of the road now, the woman looked back as i picked up the hat and carried it over to her. she thanked me profusely and i felt like i'd done a good deed, but i was also now back where i started, on the original side of the street -- and cars, tired of waiting for us to cross, had resumed passing through the intersection. mildly irritated, i continued walking on my side of the street, deciding to cross at the next light instead.

friday july 2

today i received a voicemail from a friend. normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but for some reason, after the LAST voice message i'd received, my phone had kept the "new voicemail!" logo stuck in the top of my display screen, even though i'd listened to and deleted them all. when i listened to the new voicemail today, that logo finally disappeared. this was a relief, since it had been an annoyance for the last month or so, often pushing the time out of the display screen. i don't know why i never once in the last few weeks just asked a friend to leave me a nonsense voice message to get rid of it. would've been pretty easy.

thursday july 1

today i was working a shift for mlb trade rumors when i came across an article by an mlb.com beat writer in which he mistakenly referred to padres relief pitcher luke gregerson as "luke adams." my theory is that he's been seeing my byline on mlbtr too much.

wednesday june 30

today i watched all 12:37 of a three-song music video by the-dream in which essentially nothing happens.