saturday march 29

today i decided to get food from the mexican place down the street for the first time. placing my take-out order resulted in a mix of excitement (about the possibility of finding a new, conveniently-located restaurant to add to my rotation of semi-regular dinner spots), regret (for not trying it earlier), and nervousness (in case i liked it too much and started eating burritos three times a week). ultimately, everything worked out great -- the employee i talked to on the phone called me "man," which i liked, and the food itself was satisfactory but not so amazing that i have to eat more of it immediately. the only thing that went wrong was that i ordered way too many churros, but i mean really that was one of those good problems.

friday march 28

today i received free drinks and money in exchange for forcing people to listen to my favourite songs, so i guess i understand now why everyone is a dj.

thursday march 27

today i was reading the latest update on the entourage movie when i realized there were people who were genuinely looking forward to it because they think it'll be good or something. i feel like it's imperative, for the entourage movie more than any other film ever created, that there are separate screenings when it comes out: some for people who want to watch it like any other movie, and some for people who want to make jokes through the entire thing and do shots when johnny drama says "baby bro."

wednesday march 26

today i was shopping at no frills when i saw that bags of the "loads" chips were on sale for a $1. i exercised a modicum of restraint and only bought two bags, but there was a moment where i was legitimately considering taking advantage of the limit of eight per person.

tuesday march 25

today i decided to sit down and make myself use some amazon.com gift card money that had been on my account for a while. there was nothing in particular i wanted to buy, and it's not like amazon.com gift cards expire, but it still felt like i should figure it out -- who knows how long it would be before i needed to order something from amazon. after browsing more than two dozen categories on the site, including kindles, luggage, and men's grooming, i ended up just ordering six books. books from amazon. like it's 2001 or something.

monday march 24

today i bought a carton of eggs for the second day in a row. i didn't realize/remember i'd already bought eggs on sunday until i got home and saw them in my fridge. i decided to store the two identical cartons in different spots in the fridge in an effort to not make myself feel too dumb about it.

sunday march 23

today i initially misidentified a clip of "suffragette city" at trivia as being from the album appetite for destruction, before quickly correcting myself and naming the right album. i assume the "city" title made me subconsciously think of "paradise city" at first, resulting in the initial misstep. it was an odd thing for my brain to do, but a few hours earlier i'd woken up from a dream in which i'd broken a shovel in two over someone's head and was about to stab them with the remaining wooden shard, so it was a weird day all around for my subconscious.

saturday march 22

today i had just walked through the sliding doors at the beer store when an old man thrusted a beer can in my direction and said something. i pulled off my headphones to see what he was saying, but all i heard was "BEER?" i nervously chuckled and indicated no thanks, i'm good. that seemed to perplex him, and he continued to hold the beer outstretched -- when i tried to walk by him, he asked what sounded, through a thick accent, like "THIS BEER?" trying to figure out what he wanted, i wondered if he might be blind, or at least have horrible eyesight. he seemed to be holding pretty steady eye contact with me, but why would he need to be asking me about the beer if he could see it? "yeah, it's uh, harp," i replied, referring to the kind of beer he was holding. "IS BEER?" he asked. "yep, harp lager," i said. this seemed to satisfy him, and he shut down his line of questioning, turning to walk toward the front counter and buy his single harp tall can. meanwhile, i put my headphones back in, feeling proud of myself for once again nailing a social interaction and helping people wherever i go.

friday march 21

today i stopped at pizzaiolo for a quick slice with my brother when his bus arrived in toronto. the place was fairly dead, so after we ordered and sat down, the only noise in the room was coming from the television on the wall, which was showing titanic with the sound on and everything. the guy working there was so into it that he came out from behind the counter and stood in the middle of the room for a few minutes so he could see the tv.

thursday march 20

today i played a little too much of the game 2048. i initially hadn't been that enamoured of it, since i was under the impression that the goal was just to get the highest score you could. however, when i realized that the goal was (as the name suggests) to create a 2048 tile, and that you would "win" when that goal was achieved, i became determined to earn that win. it took me a few more tries than i would've liked -- after staring at the giant numbers on the game board for 20 minutes at a time, the rest of the text on my computer and phone looked abnormally tiny by comparison, and even when i wasn't playing, my imagination would run wild with nightmare scenarios where i gave up the corner. still, by the end of the day, mission accomplished:

wednesday march 19

today i was very conscious of the fact that i was wearing a mismatched pair of socks. i thought about it several times over the course of the day despite the fact that they were both plain black socks and the only difference was a slightly different pattern at the top of the ankle part.

tuesday march 18

today i saw all three justin trudeau attack ads over the course of the leafs game. while they were all pretty bad, the one that stuck with me was the one that showed a clip of trudeau's comment about legalizing marijuana. it was followed up with a voiceover that said "IMAGINE selling marijuana just like cigarettes and alcohol!" over top of this image:

i guess i'm just unclear about what the stance on cigarettes and alcohol is here. do tories not think those things are bad for you? do they think it's fine that those things are more accessible to kids (by virtue of being in stores, i guess)? i'm not really overly invested in legalizing weed, but saying "IMAGINE selling this drug in stores just like these other two arguably more harmful drugs!" actually sounds awfully logical to me.

monday march 17

today i bought a pear at the grocery store for the first time in my life.

sunday march 16

today i went pretty wild on a bag of ketchup chips while watching the leafs game in the afternoon. a little while later, before i headed out for the night, i was looking at myself in the bathroom mirror and noticed that there was a ketchup chip crumb in my hair. while i obviously took it out immediately, it wasn't hard to imagine leaving the house with it in there, prompting someone to look at my hair and say "it looks like you've got something...." and me to pick it out and say "oh yeah this is a ketchup chip."

saturday march 15

today i was getting on the subway behind a woman with a dog. as we stepped on the car, one of the dog's paws slipped in the space between the platform and the subway, briefly causing him to lose his balance before he made it onto the car. obviously there are "mind the gap" signs everywhere, but dogs can't read.

friday march 14

today i watched the end of the raptors game at hurricanes with a friend and stuck around for a little while afterward. once the sound for the game was turned off, the bar opted for an all-90s-rock playlist, which i was really feeling. while most of the selections were fairly predictable (soundgarden, pearl jam, smashing pumpkins, etc.), my favourite pick was collective soul's "heavy." hearing that one brought me right back to 1999, when 13-year-old me bought dosage only having heard "heavy" (the lead single) on the radio. i still remember how i excited i was by how much better those sweet guitar riffs sounded on cd.

thursday march 13

today i distractedly ordered pizza from just-eat.ca and was dismayed to discover, when it showed up, that i'd accidentally clicked "pineapple" in the alphabetical drop-down list of topping instead of "pepperoni." the only consolation was that i'd be trying to create a sort of half-hearted meat-lovers pizza, so the other topping was ham, which ended up creating a fairly classic combo. in fact, i'm not entirely convinced the pizza place didn't change my "pepperoni" to "pineapple" themselves, thinking "this is probably what he meant to click."

wednesday march 12

today i had my power go out around 1:00pm. it created an unfortunate situation for me, because i swamped with work and simply saying "well, power's out, can't do it!" wasn't an option. on the other hand, i finally noticed at this point that there was some sort of apocalyptic blizzard happening outside, so i didn't really want to walk to a coffee shop or library, where i don't like working anyway. i decided to make myself a quick lunch in the hopes that the decision would be made for me while i ate, and sure enough, after about 10 minutes, the power came back on. no decisions for me today, thanks very much.

tuesday march 11

today i referred to my tweetdeck feed as “the stuff of nightmares” at 4:00pm when nfl free agency started. despite the fact that my website's twitter account is only following about 160 people, i'm pretty sure our feed was moving at a rate of about 50 tweets per minute for let's say a good 10 or 15 minutes when free agency began. i kept trying to click on tweetdeck links and they’d already be halfway down the page by the time i finished my click. just awful.

monday march 10

today i stopped by duffy's to watch a little of the leafs game, arriving just as the second period was getting underway. as the period progressed, i realized that the guy playing live music at the front of the bar hadn't stopped for even a single second. like, i understand not bothering with between-song banter, but "between songs" wasn't even a thing here -- it was just constant, uninterrupted guitar riffs even as he transitioned from one song to the next. no chances to politely clap, even. although i enjoyed his selection of covers (new york dolls, the seeds, velvet underground, etc.), it wasn't until he played a bit of "sister ray" that i realized that was the exact song the whole set reminded me of. just nonstop unrelenting guitar chords, forever and ever and ever. he played through the entire second period.

sunday march 9

today i was waiting for trust to come on stage at adelaide hall, listening to the girl behind me complain about things. while i was sort of with her when she whined about the venue (bizarrely set up) and drinks ($8 for an old style pilsner!), i couldn't help but smirk when she talked about having been there for over two hours waiting for the headliner. some of are so committed to not wasting time standing and waiting at shows that we obsessively check the twitter accounts for the band, venue, and promoter all day leading up to the show. and sometimes that obsessiveness pays off and you know to show up at 11:45 for a "doors at 9:00" show.

saturday march 8

today i sat in front of a group of kids - i'd say they were between 17 and 20 years old - while taking a streetcar down spadina. they discussed where to get off the streetcar, where they could get weed, and one loudly told an unnecessarily long story about an uncomfortable subway encounter he'd had recently ("we were waiting at pape for five minutes with nothing to say!"). when the group of friends got off the streetcar at college, two other people sitting behind me promptly began making fun of them. after some riffing about one of the kids' haircuts, one of the guys said "fucking kids, man," prompting his buddy to wistfully remember when they were that age. "i was cooler than that, man," said the first guy, and the second guy replied, "i wasn't, but i didn't act like that!" eventually, the pair got up and walked by me to get off the streetcar, and to be honest i didn't think they looked any cooler than the first group. had no one to talk to about it though.

friday march 7

today i brought home take-out food and groceries. although there were some groceries i needed to put in the fridge, i decided i'd wait until after eating my food, so the food was still as hot as possible. after bringing everything upstairs though, i realized i'd forgotten to bring a drink up with me, so i headed downstairs to the kitchen, poured a glass of water, and returned to my room upstairs.

however, as i sat down to eat, i realized i didn't have a fork. i briefly considered using a teriyaki chicken plastic fork that was still sitting on my desk, but decided no i won't live like this, and headed back downstairs to get a real fork.

SOMEHOW, though, during the 20 seconds it took to go downstairs and come back up, i forgot what i'd gone down for, and ended up doing something else entirely. meaning i got back to my room, realized i still had no fork, and angrily returned downstairs to get one.

by the time i finally started eating, i'd come upstairs four times, and so much time had passed that i could've easily just unpacked my groceries if i'd planned things a little better.

thursday march 6

today i came downstairs in the evening and noticed that one of my roommates had put the recycling by the front entrance, ready to take outside and put to the street for friday morning's pickup. taking the compost and garbage or recycling out to the street has evolved into one of those chores i do most of the time, but it occurred to me as i looked at the recycling bag that i hadn't done it in three weeks. the only reason i wouldn't do it is if i didn't leave the house at all during the evening, so that meant i hadn't left the house even once for three consecutive thursdays. pretty sobering realization about the state of my social life these days.

wednesday march 5

today i had the pleasure of working from home while the heat in our house was off for what seemed like nearly 24 hours. my room is typically fairly cold, but it was on another level (a lower level) today. although i eventually contacted the landlord to inquire about the heat, my first thought was that i ought to go out and buy a thermometer in order to quantify my struggle. it couldn't have been more than 11 or 12 degrees in my room, if that.

tuesday march 4

today i debated whether or not i'd change my name if another "luke adams" commits some unspeakable crime, becomes infamous, and ruins the name for the rest of us. while i decided i'd make my final decision if and when the time comes, it seems like such a scenario would present a good opportunity to switch to my actual first name.

monday march 3

today i made a joke about the 300 sequel to my roommate while we were watching the leafs game. a few minutes later, a movie trailer came on and i mockingly said "oh, here we go!" thinking that it was an ad for that 300 sequel. however, within a couple seconds, i realized it was actually the trailer for noah. while it was a little embarrassing to have said "here we go" and then not explained or followed up on the comment at all, i feel like it was a real indictment of the two movies, which look like they were filmed using the same three filters.

sunday march 2

today i disclosed my fear of sinkholes for the first time, admitting that every time i pass by an under-construction segment of road or sidewalk, i imagine what would happen if the earth suddenly opened up. there's probably not even a real correlation between road construction and sinkholes, but it's easier to only be concerned about it in those situations than to think about it all the time.

saturday march 1

today i grabbed lunch at the teriyaki experience in dufferin mall. for the first time, it occurred to me that they only ever give me a plastic fork when i ask for my food "to go." where do think i'll be taking it that i won't be able to provide myself with a real fork? it's not like this is picnic weather. not to mention the fact that if i were just eating in the mall, i'd be expected to pick up my own plastic fork from their stack of 'em. can't the same system apply to to-go orders? i'll take it if i need it, you guys, stop pushing.

friday february 28

today i sat down to play a game of nba2k in my living room and noticed that my roommate had left a two-thirds-full bag of jalapeno popper ruffles on the table. i'd been making an effort to eat a bit healthier this month, plus i knew if i took a handful of chips, i'd need to immediately clean my hands before using the ps3 controller again. still, i hadn't eaten dinner yet and they were right there. i thought i did pretty well to limit myself to three handfuls over the course of the game.

thursday february 27

today i was planning on running a couple errands that would've involved 40+ minutes of walking around. once i saw it was going to be another one of those -25 degree nights though, i decided, citing yolo, that i'd much rather stay in all evening. that's the great thing about yolo. some people might think "it's not like i'm gonna die running these errands, so why not just go for it? you only live once!" i prefer to think "why purposely do something you hate when you could wait two days and run these errands when it's all the way up to 0 degrees? you only live once, so let's not be a dummy about this."