saturday august 23

today i took the subway to bloor and yonge to drop off some books for donation at the reference library. i only had to walk a block north of bloor from the station, but many of my fellow ttc-goers had to get onto shuttle buses, since a portion of the yonge line was closed. as i walked out to the street away from those shuttles, a ton of people headed in the same direction as me, and i overheard one ttc employee say incredulously to another, "where are they all going?" in a tone which suggested she thought many of us probably wanted to get on the shuttles and were going the wrong way. while that may have been the case for some people, i was tempted to turn around and clarify my destination, just so she didn't think i was one of those sheep.

friday august 22

today i was sitting in the 500 level next to a family of four at the blue jays game when they got up and walked out to the concourse. "i'm afraid of heights, man, this is freaking me out," the dad said to me as he passed by, and i sort of chuckled, thinking that he was joking. that was in the third inning though, and they never came back.

thursday august 21

today i realized for the first time that the name of the band buckcherry - the creators of smash hits like "lit up" - is a play on the name chuck berry.

wednesday august 20

today i received the first knock on my door that has happened since i moved into my new place, from a delivery guy dropping off a desk i'd ordered online. while i was happy to get the desk, it arrived while i was working out, and i was a bit embarrassed that the delivery guy saw the yoga mat on my floor and the jillian michaels video playing on my tv.

tuesday august 19

today i was at an improv show, the kind of show where they ask the audience for a suggestion at the start. in this case, one of the groups asked those of us in the audience to yell out our favourite character from friends. while normally i'm not the type of person to participate in this part of the show, i (almost instinctively) called out "gunther!" they used someone else's suggestion instead -- boring old ross.

monday august 18

today i went to the library to print off a couple pages. now that i have no printer and am relying on the library to do all my printing, i decided i should be prepared for when it would happen again, and asked the librarian to throw $1.50 on my library card -- the equivalent of 10 pages, even though i only needed two today. after using one of the computers to send my job through, i headed to the printer, only to find that instead of $1.50 on my card, there was $0. a little irritated, i headed back to the front desk to ask the librarian who had helped me before what the deal was, and she responded as if she had no idea who i was or when she had previously spoken to me. "this was maybe five minutes ago," i said in disbelief, to which she replied, "and you talked to me?" just out here making real strong first impressions.

sunday august 17

today i wrestled with the following trivia question, paraphrased to the best of my recollection:

this word represents:
1. a company that was founded in 1984 and initially produced laserdiscs
2. a standard for making a judgment or a decision."

after a few minutes of consideration, we had no good ideas, and someone else on my trivia team just wrote down an answer. although i didn't have a better one, i figured there was no way his answer could possibly right, and said "i'm not sure that word meets either criteria." "did you say criterion?" he asked, and while i initially thought he was just rightly correcting my misuse of the plural, i quickly realized that "criterion" - as he was pointing out - was actually a pretty good answer to the question, and turned out to be the right one.

saturday august 16

today i was walking home at about 2 am and approached bloor and lansdowne, where a group of three or four police offers were arresting a man standing right outside ali baba's. "we've got victims and a bunch of witnesses that put you at the spot!" one officer said to the suspect as he was handcuffed. with no desire to say "excuse me" and push past the group, the incident pretty much curtailed any thoughts i may have head about stopping in for a late-night shawarma.

friday august 15

today i went to freezone karaoke in koreatown to meet up with some friends to sing some songs. when i walked in, i wasn't sure which room my friends were in, so i approached the front desk and said "i'm looking for, uh..." during the second that i hesitated, the girl behind the desk interjected and said "amanda?" which was indeed who i was looking for. the way she jumped in with the right name so quickly - combined with a few sightings of other groups i saw throughout the night while buying beers and making bathroom trips - made me feel pretty certain that we were the only white people in the building.

thursday august 14

today i was at the bank and decided to double-check to see whether my address had been updated in td’s system — i’d had it changed over the phone through visa but wasn’t sure if that extended to the bank records as well. as it turns out, the change had been made, but whoever had written in my new street had done so as “landsbound” rather than “lansdowne,” so i’m glad i asked.

wednesday august 13

today i planned to meet a friend at tallboys at 9 pm, but had to run a couple errands near yonge and dundas beforehand. rather than coming back home between the errands and tallboys, i decided to head straight to the bar from downtown, which required estimating how long it would take me to get downtown, run my errands, and then get up to tallboys. predictably, my estimation was off by a few minutes, but it still looked like i was only going to be 5-10 minutes late -- that is, until i got on the subway at yonge to head west to ossington, and immediately heard an announcement that due to a power outage, westbound trains were turning around at st. george. i ended up arriving at tallboys nearly a half hour late.

tuesday august 12

today i scheduled an appointment to get my first tattoo.

monday august 11

today i agreed to a two-year contract extension at my job, so you can catch me hanging out on twitter all day and writing about sports through 2016.

sunday august 10

today i was at the blue jays game, and when the 10th inning ended a little before 5:00 pm, i said to my friend - half-jokingly and half-seriously - that i was starting to worry about being late for my 7:30 trivia night. "you still have two hours!" she said dismissively. of course, i was ultimately proven right, when the game lasted nine more innings, set records for the blue jays' longest game ever by innings (19) and time (6:37), and made me miss the entire first round of trivia.

saturday august 9

today i sold one of three tickets i had to the blue jays game, intending to use the other two when i went with a friend. the tickets ranged from seats 1-3, so i intentionally sold #3 in order to retain control of the aisle. still, before going to the game, i played out the following scenario in my head: we show up late, guy who bought my ticket is sitting in the aisle seat instead of #3, guy refuses to move, i have to play my trump card of "i know you have seat 3, i'm the guy who sold it to you!" and then we sit in unspoken lingering hostility for the rest of the game. in fact, almost every single one of these things actually did happen when we showed up, except that the guy sitting in our seats initially objected to moving because he thought he'd bought seat 2. ultimately though, he brought out his ticket, realized it was for seat 3, and moved over without incident, which was a relief, since i was happier not to have to reveal that i'd been the one to sell him that ticket well above face value.

friday august 8

today i saw two friends in one of the crowd shots of the blue jays television broadcast just a couple hours after i'd "liked" a facebook photo of themselves they'd posted from the game. while i was happy for them for making it onto tv, i felt like the sighting would have been more exciting for me personally if i hadn't known they were there and unexpectedly saw two familiar faces pop up in front of me.

thursday august 7

today i prepared to take all my recycling out to the curb once i got home from the blue jays game. i was looking forward to it, since i still had a bunch of broken-down boxes from my move sitting around my new place, and it would be nice to get rid of them. unfortunately, by the time i got home from the game sometime after 11 pm, the recycling on my street had already been collected, much earlier than i was expecting. i guess now that i'm a major street, i can expect it to be picked up more punctually on thursday night than when i lived on margueretta and they typically came by sometime during friday afternoon.

wednesday august 6

today i made a beer store purchase that came to $14.10. after throwing down a $20 bill, i went to dig around in my wallet for a dime, but found that my change pouch was empty (i'd thrown all my leftover quarters, nickels, and dimes in a tip jar last night when i was without any bigger coins). before i even finished apologizing to the cashier for not having that extra 10 cents, the guy behind me in line announced, "i have a dime" and handed it to me. while i didn't want to be too profuse in my thanks for 10 cents, i was pretty impressed not just that he gave me the money but also that he seemed so prepared for such a situation.

tuesday august 5

today i spoke to my next-door neighbour wayne for the fourth time in four days. i've now spoken to wayne four times as often as i talked to my next-door neighbours during the four years i spent at my last place.

monday august 4

today i went to walmart for the second time in the span of three days, checking out with too many items to use the express lane for the second consecutive visit. over the course of my two trips, i'd gotten very immersed in the process of buying new tools, appliances, and household items for my new apartment, becoming way too excited when i finally tracked down a specific item i needed. i also was really looking forward to getting home and using every single thing i'd bought, though in some cases (ie. my new toaster) such use was more practical and desirable than in other cases (ie. my new toilet plunger).

sunday august 3

today i decided to head back to my old house to clean my room and take care of a couple loose ends. knowing that a rogers technician was due at my new apartment between 2-4pm to set up my internet and cable, i walked over to my old place around noon. about three minutes after i arrived, i received a call from the rogers guy telling me that he was running ahead of schedule and could come by now to install everything. wow what luck! after walking all the way back home to meet him, i waited around for 15 minutes for him to show up out front. nothing. finally, he called me, wanting to know where i was. as it turns out, when i called to correct my address yesterday, they fixed one digit and somehow changed another, so now he was 200 numbers away from my address rather than the mere 10 he would have been had i not called at all. he ended up finding his way to my place and finishing the job anyway, because he was a pro, but... c'mon, rogers.

saturday august 2

today i got an automated call from rogers to confirm a sunday morning appointment to set up the internet and cable at my new apartment. unfortunately, the robo-voice delivering the details was a little off on my address, having swapped a 4 for a 3 in the house number. i called rogers back to make sure they had the correct address, but somehow altering one digit meant they had to push back my appointment from the 8-10am window to the 2-4pm window, which left me pretty miffed. even if they had to cancel my initial appointment and create a new one as a result of their typo, how would there not still be an opening between 8-10? what would the technician who had been supposed to go five doors down be doing instead during that time now?? c'mon, rogers.

friday august 1

today i put my old basketball out to the curb for garbage pick up. it's a good ball, but it had been used so often on outdoor courts that it was literally coming apart at the seams and had gotten all ratty and disgusting. still, i was sad to see it go. as luck would have it, i happened to be coming out of my house when the garbage collectors came by, and i stood watching from my front porch as one of the guys picked up the ball and started dribbling it around on the sidewalk and street. after a few seconds, the other guy came over and they played a little mock one-on-one, with one trying to dribble it past the other -- the guy with the ball was having trouble dribbling between his legs because his garbageman pants were too baggy, but they seemed to be having a lot of fun anyway. it was a great send-off for a ball that's served me well for the last couple years.

thursday july 31

today i was doing some packing in preparation for my move when i came across this cool 17-year-old: