tuesday april 29

today i was sitting in the laundromat listening to podcasts and kind of zoning out while i waited to move my clothes from the washers to the dryer. suddenly, the lady sitting over to my right started gesturing toward me, then at the window and door, which i was sitting beside. i popped up and turned around, thinking that someone with their hands full of laundry probably needed me to open the door for them, which i quickly did. as i was holding the door open though, i realized that the person outside was actually a friend of mine, who had been passing by and just knocked on the window to get my attention. my total disorientation contributed significantly to ensuring that our ensuing 30-second conversation was a disjointed and awkward one.

monday april 28

today i drank a friend's can of coors light after she left it at my place. when i texted her to tell her as much, i referred to the experience as "paradise by the cold coors light." googling the phrase later out of curiosity, i discovered that i could become the first person on the internet to ever use it, which i'm now doing.

sunday april 27

today i was walking down king street with a couple friends when a girl in a passing car leaned out of her window and yelled "merry christmas!" in our direction. after a beat, she added "... motherfuckers!" glancing around at all the potential targets on the street, i was unsure of who her comment was aimed at, or what it was supposed to mean. i briefly wondered if she'd been making a joke about my friends' colourful sweaters/coats, but they were red and yellow, not red and green. i have to admit it seems like this mystery may never be solved.

saturday april 26

today i was standing at the southeast corner of dundas and ossington a little after 11:00 pm when i was approached by two girls asking if i knew where communist's daughter was. considering we were probably less than 100 feet from the bar, this was a pretty easy one. i told them to cross the street and go about two doors down on the left, prompting one of them ask "is it before the subway?" -- this flummoxed me, since the subway doesn't run anywhere near that area, but seeing my confusion, she quickly added "subway restaurant, i mean." the idea that this girl's internal map revolved, at least in small part, around spots where she could find $5 footlongs put me in a good mood for the rest of the night.

friday april 25

today i was asked by the teller to sign my receipt after i did some banking. the pen i used was a little dried out and didn't work right away, but i just decided to power through my signature rather than scribbling a little on the side to get it going. when i finished signing my name, you could really only see the "l" in my first name and then most of my last name, so i decided to go back and fill in the blanks. starting from the second letter in "luke" though, my usual signature routine was all thrown off, and i essentially ended up just filling in the empty space with shapeless scribbles as if i was working on a colouring book.

thursday april 24

today i put some food in the oven in the afternoon for my roommate. due to the massive size of the dish, i had to stick it on the oven's very bottom shelf, so i followed up to ask whether he wanted to adjust the temperature at all from the original 300 degrees. he said no, and it wasn't until an hour later - when i was in the kitchen and noticed i had "black skinhead" stuck in my head - that i realized i'd missed my chance to reply by saying "okay, i'll keep it 300, like the romans."

wednesday april 23

today i was riding the streetcar down spadina when i heard the girl sitting next to me express to her friend that she didn't mind the fact that the spadina car doesn't go further than king street these days. "i'm usually going west of spadina anyway," she said, pointing east and referring to the fact that the streetcar ends up a block east of king and spadina. i'm not usually one to jump in on other people's conversations, but when her friend didn't correct her, it took some effort for me to just let it slide.

tuesday april 22

today i was waiting to cross an intersection when i overheard a passerby say "vegetable oil is horrible for you! do you want to die??" as far as impassioned rants against cooking oils go, this one seemed pretty alarmist.

monday april 21

today i saw that a friend had asked her facebook friends for recommendations for a family doctor in the west end. i'd been meaning to do this myself, so i figured i'd take advantage of the coincidence and just piggyback the suggestions she got. the only practice mentioned that had a website was queen street medical clinic, which i would have been totally on board with calling and trying. however, i ended up being entirely turned off by the fact that the introductory paragraphs on their website were written in comic sans.

sunday april 20

today i looked up the schedule for the intercounty baseball league's toronto maple leafs, who i knew were set to get their season underway in may. after looking at the early-season dates for the team, i recalled how much trouble my body had enduring full games at the christie pits field last year and decided to look up one more thing, googling "how to sit comfortably on hills." not too much help out there on the subject.

saturday april 19

today i spent longer than i should have debating whether to list my eye colour on my passport renewal application as blue, green, or some sort of blue-green variation (maybe cyan).

friday april 18

today i listened to a cab driver talk for nearly 10 minutes about how the best trait to learn for his job is patience, and how all the people who honk at him and give him the finger are his teachers.

thursday april 17

today i spent five minutes trying to find the spot online where it says whether this is a recycling or garbage pickup week in my neighbourhood. i could've just walked out and had a look at the house or two next to us to see what the neighbours had put out, but i was pretty settled in at my computer and figured it'd be easier this way. obviously it wasn't. finally i gave up and prepared to head out to have a look, only to discover that someone else in my house had already put the recycling out.

wednesday april 16

today i listened to a cab driver talk on the phone in a language i didn't recognize for the duration of my eight-minute ride. the only words he said during his entire conversation that sounded at all familiar to me were "rob ford" (twice).

tuesday april 15

today i found myself needing to address an issue that i thought had been settled a week ago, when my friend who had initially claimed my extra war on drugs ticket had to back out due to a scheduling conflict. here's how i managed to turn what should have been a simple situation into a convoluted mess:

1. decided not to email the guy i'd flaked on a week ago, because i'd seem like a real flip-flopper if i messaged him to say that i had a ticket available after all. and, as we've already established, i care what he thinks of me.
2. posted a facebook message to my friends in the morning asking if anyone wanted the ticket. no one did.
3. published a craigslist ad in the afternoon, which i took down 12 minutes later after it immediately received four replies.
4. emailed the first respondent telling him he could have the ticket, then emailed the second respondent to tell him he was the runner-up and back-up plan if the first guy bailed.
5. became paranoid that one of these four guys was the same person i'd been talking to last week (i never saw his name the first time around) and decided to send text messages to the third and fourth respondents, so that they wouldn't see my name.
6. told the third and fourth respondents that they were each also the first runner-up, and that i'd give them first dibs if the first guy backed out. i honestly don't know why i did this, in retrospect. giving them such a glimmer of false hope is the stuff of supervillains.
7. sent out a tweet which mistakenly suggested i still had a ticket available to sell, prompting a friend who follows me on twitter but not facebook to text me asking for it. had to turn him down and felt guilty about it.
8. planned to meet the original craigslist respondent at the venue at 10:00, then found myself running way late when the the city experienced a power outage that knocked the subway out from jane to st. george. with cabs and shuttle buses in short supply, i decided to just make the 25-30ish-minute walk to lee's palace. 
9. ran into my twitter friend on my way to lee's -- he had been there looking for a scalped ticket, but was walking home after striking out. felt guilty again.
10. showed up at 10:20 to meet the guy who was buying my ticket and had been waiting for me for 20 minutes while the opener played inside.
11. cheerily called "enjoy the show!" after him as he was beelining for the venue door as quickly as possible after making the swap with me.

monday april 14

today i was talking to a friend who was angry about people posting game of thrones spoilers on facebook, and on social media in general. she suggested that those people should have their own private discussion spaces "where they can be dicks" -- without missing a beat, i suggested that sounded like a big "circle jerk," which might have been the best pun i've ever made.

sunday april 13

today i got a text from a friend saying she was watching think like a man on netflix. this text was sent literally about a half-hour after i'd received an email from netflix announcing that think like a man was now available. i immediately imagined my friend having seen that email and going all netsfan.gif at having some amazing sunday afternoon plans fall into her lap.

saturday april 12

today i went to walmart to get a new passport photo. the portrait centre was pretty busy, so i ended up waiting for a few minutes before and after getting my photo taken, just standing around. as it turns out, there was a girl who showed up about 30 seconds after me and was also getting a passport photo taken, so we pretty much did everything one after another throughout the process. as we stood there waiting after getting our pictures taken, i considered turning to her and making some small talk, like "let's make sure we don't get our photos mixed up because i don't think either of us could pass." however, her demeanour was even more no-nonsense than it had been while she got her photo taken, so i ultimately decided it probably wasn't the best idea and waited in silence instead.

friday april 11

today i went to rinse a dish in the sink, but realized that one of my roommates was showering at the time. due to our terrible plumbing, turning on the kitchen tap would result in a few seconds of devastatingly hot or cold water in the shower. as such, i came up with another solution, taking a bowl in the sink that was already soaking, and pouring the water from it into my dish, then back into the bowl, all the while congratulating myself on what an amazing roommate i am.

thursday april 10

today i browsed through my phone's text message history and was slightly disconcerted to see/remember that i'd sent a text that said "si papi."

wednesday april 9

today i had a couple conversations with my section's usher at the blue jays game. during these chats, she revealed that she was disappointed with the lack of fights in her sections over the first week of the season, and really wanted to kick some people out. she even told a story about four teenage boys coming in and heading up to suspiciously high seats -- she was thinking they might be trying to surreptitiously sneak in booze, but it turned out one of them was just far-sighted.

tuesday april 8

today i decided to get proactive about getting rid of my extra ticket to the war on drugs show at lee's palace next tuesday, and replied to a craigslist ad requesting a ticket. however, about 15 minutes after messaging that guy, i decided to send a message to a friend who i thought might want to buy the ticket off me and come to the show. predictably, the craigslist guy replied first and said yes, he absolutely was still looking for an extra ticket, and then my friend replied a little later saying yes, she absolutely wanted to buy the ticket off me and go to the show.

despite the order of replies, i gave my friend dibs and drafted a very contrite message to the craigslist guy, in which i referred to myself as a big dummy for jumping the gun on offering him my ticket. i don't know why i wanted his forgiveness so badly, but when he replied to say "no worries" and "enjoy the show," i nonetheless experienced a pretty strong wave of relief.

monday april 7

today i was having friends over to watch the game of thrones season premiere. i decided to order pizzas ahead of time so that we wouldn't have to do it when my friends showed up and wait around forever for them. i put some thought into the details of my order, browsing three different just-eat.ca options before finding one whose combination of prices and toppings looked appropriate. then, i timed the order so that the standard 45-60 minute delivery time would line up perfectly with when we wanted to start watching the episode.

instead of really nailing the timing though, i became more and more agitated as we waited for the delivery guy to arrive, and eventually even called the restaurant to see what the deal was. finally, after an hour and a half, the pizzas (sans the dipping sauces i'd requested) showed up. i don't want to be one of those guys who only reviews a service when it's bad, and i probably don't have the patience to go back on just-eat and leave a review anyway. but i will NOT be ordering amato again, let me tell you that much.

sunday april 6

today i was flattered to see, upon arriving at the ossington, that there was a "happy birthday luke!" banner hung in my honor behind the bar. in addition to being a really nice gesture, it also gave me the opportunity to pull out the old "take a look at banner!" line when i pointed it out to friends who had yet to see it.

saturday april 5

today i went for a drink at c'est what after the blue jays game, and ended up sitting in a room where a bunch of middle-aged men had just finished what appeared to be an american-league-only fantasy baseball auction. it's pretty rare for my season-ticket-holder friends and i not to be the biggest baseball nerds in a given room, but as we listened to these guys debate whether or not lonnie chisenhall and ryan hanigan were good value buys, it was clear they had us beat.

friday april 4

today i met up with some friends at the horseshoe prior to heading down to the skydome for the blue jays' home opener. before ordering a drink, i decided to hit the bathroom, and realized as i arrived at the urinal that my fly was already open. while i appreciated the fact that i saved myself some effort by not having to unzip it again once i was standing there, i was left wondering whether it's more embarrassing to have someone point out that your fly is down, or to have no one say anything until you're back in the same situation that resulted in it being down in the first place.

thursday april 3

today i was in the throes of an irritating cold, and spent the day blowing my nose every five minutes. unfortunately, about halfway through my work day, i ran out of kleenex, meaning for the rest of the afternoon, i was forced to use paper towels and whatever napkins i had lying around, like some sort of peasant. by the time i got a chance to buy some kleenex in the evening, my nose was more than willing to settle for some cheap two-ply.

wednesday april 2

today i was writing up a blog post in which i was going to include some fictional air-traffic-controller lingo when i realized that i have no idea what air traffic controllers sound like. do they speak conversationally? do they use the nato alphabet? are there certain short-hand phrases they might use a lot? i couldn't even construct a single plausible sentence that might come out of an air traffic controller's mouth.

ultimately, i decided to consult youtube, and found a video called "some funny air traffic control conversations." using this video, i grabbed the first reasonable-sounding sentence i found and appropriated it for my blog post. afterward, however, i had a nagging doubt that the sentence i'd randomly grabbed thinking it was "normal" was actually an example of some funny air traffic controller humour and i'd just never realize it.

tuesday april 1

today i was about to crack an egg into a frying pan when i noticed that the balance felt a little off -- usually i hold the egg right-side up and crack it about two-thirds of the way up, but it felt like i was holding this one upside down. i flipped it the other way around, but it was no better. i ended up standing there for about 10 seconds, turning the egg around to try to find a good cracking angle, until i started to feel ridiculous and just went for it. no shell, same as always.

monday march 31

today i showed up at hurricanes just in time for the first pitch of the blue jays' season. although i was excited when i arrived and eventually had a good time after a few friends showed up, i have to admit the hour i spent sitting and drinking on my own at a four-person table, decked out in my jays shirt and hat while i watched them fall behind 3-0, was a little depressing.

sunday march 30

today i was walking down the sidewalk, approaching my house, when i saw two women who were clearly either buying or pushing something walking up my front steps to ring the doorbell. knowing that if i continued on to my house, i'd run into them on the front porch, i briefly considered walking right by and then circling back once it was clear they'd moved on to the neighbours. still, while this was an appealing thought, it seemed like a plan that could easily backfire. so i gritted my teeth, approached my front door, took their pamphlet, then feigned enthusiasm for a few seconds at their invitation to me and my family to come to the kingdom hall of jehovah's witnesses next month. but no, i won't be among the millions in attendance: