friday may 30

today i woke up to a voice mail from someone named nadine, who addressed me as “paul” and informed me that my father had been released from toronto east general hospital.

thursday may 29

today i was walking down margueretta street at night when i noticed that a sprinkler was running on a lawn up ahead of me. it was hard to make it out in the dark, but it looked like if i kept walking along the sidewalk, i’d end up getting soaked, so i ducked out into the street, making a wide turn while i approached dundas. as i neared the intersection, a group of four jovial people walked toward me, talking and laughing and generally not paying the sort of close attention i was to their surroundings. i briefly considered warning them about the sprinkler, but for all i knew, it wasn’t even reaching the sidewalk, and they were quickly past me anyway. turning onto dundas, the next thing i heard was their laughs turning into screams as they walked directly into the line of fire(/water).

wednesday may 28

today i was at the jays game when the guys sitting in the row behind mine got called out into the concourse to have a "talk" with a stadium employee. while i didn't see them doing anything wrong, they never returned, so presumably they were kicked out for some sort of infraction. on their way out, however, one of them accidentally knocked over a can of beer. slowly but surely, the spilled beer began trickling toward our row, eventually making its way down to the floor where my feet were positioned. a friend asked an usher if he could bring a mop or something else to clean up the mess, which he agreed to do, but he instead disappeared for about 15-20 minutes and eventually returned mopless (but with a handful of all-star ballots). in the end, i just kept my feet off the ground - on the seat in front of me - for the rest of the game, somehow managing to escape the stadium without sticky shoes.

tuesday may 27

today i stopped at the corner store on my way to the blue jays game to grab a bag of chips and decided on the bacon cheeseburger sliders flavour. as i was paying for them, the guy behind the counter did a double-take and then sort of chuckled when he read the label. "figured i'd try them!" i said, and he explained that the store had just gotten that brand/flavour that very day, so he hadn't seen them yet.

emboldened by a little chip-themed small talk, i glanced at the tv behind the counter, which was playing the jays game, and said, "i'm on my way there. guess i'll be a couple innings late!" this prompted him to launch into a mini-spiel about how arriving late to a game can be advantageous, since you can buy tickets outside at a reduced price. as i packed my chips into my bag, i decided not to risk jeopardizing our great rapport by admitting that i already had a ticket and instead agreed that i could be in store for a great deal. "have fun!" my new friend called to me after i thanked him again for the chips, which ended up being terrible.

monday may 26

today i took my first bona-fide cold shower of the year and then finally pulled my electric fan out of the living room closet to set it up in my room, where it will be running for most of the next several months. summer is here, you guys, we did it.

sunday may 25

today i took the subway downtown to meet my friends for lunch. having not yet eaten breakfast, i was pretty hungry and became increasingly aware of that fact when a guy came on the subway carrying a pizza. unsurprisingly, he found a spot right next to me to stand holding that pizza, just flaunting its smell in my face. the only way the next few stops could have been more agonizing is if he'd opened up the box and started eating a slice right there.

saturday may 24

today i went to zanzibar for a friend's bachelor party. while i would've preferred to remain a wallflower for the night, i was predictably approached every five minutes or so by a different dancer trying to whisk me off to a private room (in this respect, the club's motto of "the girls never stop" is very apropos). most of the time i felt a bit sheepish about shooing them away, but there was one who seemed a little too eager to endear herself to my american friends, talking about how much toronto and its weather sucks, as if it's that much different from chicago's (where they're from). didn't feel too bad about telling her "i'm good" -- toronto's great and it was 25 and sunny today, girl, get your head right.

friday may 23

today i struggled my way through usher's "climax" in a private karaoke room, missing a few notes and lines and not being sure a couple times if i was even singing in the right key. fortunately, during one instrumental break, i heard someone across the room use the phrase "voice of an angel" in apparent earnest, which gave me a lot of maybe-unwarranted confidence for the home stretch.

thursday may 22

today i bought five new articles of clothing and only tried on one of them before leaving the store(s). as such, i probably shouldn't have been surprised when i got home and realized that one of the shirts had an entirely different (and frankly, sort of off-putting) collar than what i'd expected. oh well, it was only ten dollars.

wednesday may 21

today i went to the yonge-dundas cineplex to see godzilla in imax 3d. when showtime rolled around, only one trailer played before the movie, for a tom cruise action thriller called edge of tomorrow. i had to look up that title just now because when the trailer itself was playing, all that my fellow movie-goers and i could focus on was the fact that the images on the screen looked blurry and awful with or without our 3d glasses on, prompting many worried murmurs from around the theatre about the glasses not working. fortunately, after the preview ended, the "put on your glasses now" instruction popped up, and things were fine from that point on. the experience did raise two questions, however:

1. why show that trailer at all if it's going to look terrible?
2. what would we have done if it had been a problem with the glasses? for instance, what if they'd handed out the wrong ones (say, non-imax 3d glasses)? would everyone start frantically yelling at the theatre workers to stop the movie? would there be a lengthy delay while they sorted things out? would the theatre's normally rigid schedule of showtimes be thrown into disarray by such a delay? it was enough to make me wish the glasses hadn't worked, just so i could've seen how the situation played out.

tuesday may 20

today i sent a text message to a friend in which i wrote "i'm on my frasier crane" instead of just saying "i'm listening" and i immediately felt a lot of shame about it.

monday may 19

today i watched as a couple friends attempted to set up a charcoal barbecue outside a church across the street. while i initially assumed that wary passersby would look to shut down the entire operation, it practically turned into a community event instead, with several onlookers offering advice and one woman who referred to herself as a "fire lady" running some kindling over from her house to help get things started.

sunday may 18

today i went into a convenience store with the express purpose of buying the most unique brand/flavour of chips i could find in the place, and walked out with this bag:

saturday may 17

today i ran a couple errands and was caught off guard by how many strangers talked to me in the streets. whether it was people asking for money, people being weirdos, or the lady outside dufferin mall calling me "sweetie," four or five different strangers addressed me in less than an hour. although i originally believed everyone was just being unusually outgoing, it occurred to me after the fact that i didn't have headphones on while running today's errands, as i normally do. so maybe people are talking to me all the time and i just never notice it.

friday may 16

today i was at duffy's watching the end of the clippers/thunder game when the band who had been playing at the front of the bar finished their set. after they came off the stage, there was a brief silence in the bar that lasted until one guy sitting behind me yelled out, "it's so quiet in here!" and started playing daft punk's "one more time" on his phone until the bartender turned on some music.

thursday may 15

today i decided to watch jeopardy! since the "battles of the decades" was in the finals and i was looking forward to seeing some real heavyweights battle it out. when final jeopardy rolled around, the following answer was presented for the 'academy awards' category:

one of the two movies in the last 30 years, one a drama and one a comedy, to win oscars for best actor and best actress.

although i was sitting by myself in the living room, i mumbled "as good as it gets" out loud, as if somehow the fact that i said it aloud would officially put it on the record as my answer. sure enough, as good as it gets was one of the two solutions, along with silence of the lambs, and neither ken jennings nor brad rutter got it right. gimme dat million.

wednesday may 14

today i debated whether to go out to run a few errands after getting off work. it was supposed to rain in the evening, but according to the weather network, there was only a 40% chance for the next few hours. i went for it, and upon realizing when i got outside that it had already started drizzling, i decided to make my first stop at dufferin mall to buy an umbrella. feeling pretty smug about my on-the-fly thinking, i got outside, opened up my new umbrella, and then proceeded with the rest of my errands. unfortunately, it ended up turning into one of those rainfalls where it really doesn't matter a whole lot if you have an umbrella, because it's raining so hard and it's so windy that your shoes and your pants and half of your jacket are getting soaked anyway. i tried, world.

tuesday may 13

today i was cleaning up some garbage in our living room when i came across a receipt from an old indian-food delivery. one of my friends had placed the order, and i hadn't known all the things i'd been eating at the time, so finding the receipt was a real godsend. before throwing it out, i made note of everything listed on the receipt for future reference.

monday may 12

today i had a friend over to watch game of thrones, and she brought chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream sandwiches with her. i somehow managed to eat mine so quickly that my friend didn't even notice i'd finished until i announced how great it had been. while i explained my rush by pointing out i didn't want to let the ice cream melt, i was actually just so excited about it that, like a child, i couldn't even wait until we started watching the episode.

sunday may 11

today i had a previously futile google search come back to haunt me when i went to christie pits to watch my first maple leafs game of the season. although it was an amazing day and the game itself was exciting and eventful (walkoff win in the 10th!), i had to shift positions about 25 times while sitting on the hill, never finding one that was fully comfortable. here's a photo i found on twitter where you can see me in the distance with one knee weirdly up in the air:

saturday may 10

today i ordered myself a pizza during an extra-long and brutal stretch of work during which i didn't have time to take more than the very occasional two-minute break. because i used one of my rare breaks to answer the door to accept the pizza from the delivery guy, i was unable to get to the bathroom a few minutes later to clean myself off after i somehow spilled barbecue sauce (subbing on the pizza for tomato sauce) on my arm. as such, for the next while, i sat there having to deal with the humiliating fact that my upper and lower left arm kept sticking together thanks to the barbecue sauce stains on the inside of my elbow. my life is a mess.

friday may 9

today i ordered food on just-eat.ca, pre-paying with a credit card. when the delivery guy showed up a little later, i took my food from him, thanked him, watched him walk away, then realized five seconds later i'd forgotten to choose the "tip the driver" option when i placed my order. by this point it was too late to amend that mistake -- i didn't have my wallet on me and would have had to call him back from across the road anyway. the guilt about haven't forgotten to tip, both during my initial online order and when he was standing right in front of me at my door, gnawed at me for about the next hour, and had me wondering for a while if i could ever order again from that same restaurant.

thursday may 8

today i bought new shoelaces for a pair of old nikes whose right shoelace had begun to unravel. even though the new laces only cost about $2.50, i still felt a bit silly investing money into a pair of shoes that i'd been meaning to get rid of for the last year and a half.

wednesday may 7

today i finished reading the flamethrowers less than an hour before my book club was set to meet to discuss it. by cutting it so close, i essentially ruined any chance i had of making dinner before the meeting, so i decided to head out early and eat something quickly along the way. however, a couple minutes after leaving my house, i realized i'd forgotten to wear a sweater under my jacket and that it was kind of chilly, a problem that would only be exacerbated when i was walking home hours later. i headed back home and put on the sweater, by which point i felt like i no longer had time to get any food and just went straight to book club. after briefly considering ordering food at the bar where we met, i felt like i'd rather suffer my hunger in silence than stuff my face while the conversation happened around me.

tuesday may 6

today i made a grocery-shopping trip between 9:00 and 10:00 pm, the last hour that no frills was open. although i go more frequently earlier in the evening, i make the late trip occasionally, and in this case decided to try to make a mental note of whether the experience was better as we approached grocery store's "last call," which meant fewer shoppers in the building but also fewer available cashiers. the deciding factor came when i ended up in line between two separate individuals who were just buying a single bag of chips. okay late grocery shopping, i'm with you -- these are my people.

monday may 5

today i had a dream that i was at a blue jays game in a seat that was so bad i couldn't actually see the action. it wasn't just an obscured view -- i was around some corner, in some nook, so that i was in the building but couldn't see the field. this isn't the first time i've had nearly this exact dream about a sporting event, and now i'm wondering if it's some sort of universal thing like when you dream about your teeth falling out or missing an exam, or if it's just an issue that's specifically plaguing my subconscious.

sunday may 4

today i nearly shed an actual tear at the end of the raptors' one-point game 7 loss to the nets, making me wonder again why i even like sports.

saturday may 3

today i went out to get some clothes dry cleaned for the first time in my life. my plan was to play it cool, like i'd had hundreds of clothes dry cleaned before, so it was a little disheartening when the first words out of my mouth were "you guys do dry cleaning?"

friday may 2

today i got to the 29th level on the "brick breaker" game on my phone after having never previously surpassed level 22. ultimately, i lost the game due to a bug, which made the ball inexplicably fall through a gap that didn't even exist. it made me so upset that i may just never play the game again.

thursday may 1

today i was trying to kill some time and decided to try a new york times crossword in addition to my usual usa today one. however, the fact that the nyt puzzle didn't show your incorrect letters in red as soon you typed them really threw me off my game, making me second-guess and verify every word i entered, and ultimately convincing me that i'm not actually as good at crosswords as i had previously believed.

wednesday april 30

today i watched the raptors game at duffy's across from a guy who was going to great lengths to ensure that everyone in the room recognized that he knew stuff about basketball. near the end of the first quarter, as the raptors brought the ball up the court with a little over 30 seconds left, he began frantically calling for a 2-for-1 opportunity, yelling at greivis vasquez to shoot even when vasquez was 30 feet from the basket with 27 seconds left. after the clock passed 24 seconds, he threw up his hands in disgust, muttering about how dumb the raptors were for missing such a great chance. 10 seconds later, kyle lowry hit a three-pointer.