friday december 26

today i brought a chilean cabernet sauvignon to my family’s christmas dinner, and not only did my aunt love it, but she also said that she might like it even more than the wine she considers her "favourite." this seemed like almost unfairly high praise for a wine i’d randomly picked off the shelf at the lcbo without having tried it or having even done any research ahead of time.

thursday december 25

today i went to the movie theatre to see interstellar. three hours later, when it finally ended, the first thing the guy sitting next to me said to his friend was "we should’ve done mushrooms."

wednesday december 24

today i tipped a delivery guy maybe $2 or so more than i normally would’ve since it was christmas eve, and felt really good about myself for a while afterward for spreading so much holiday cheer.

tuesday december 23

today i started and finished my christmas shopping.

monday december 22

today i went to an afternoon screening of the movie birdman, and while i didn’t particularly love the movie, i couldn’t help but think that my somewhat negative reaction was significantly influenced by the super-annoying people sitting in my vicinity. among them: a guy in the row behind me who frequently laughed very loudly at moments that weren’t really laugh-out-loud funny, and the guy in the row in front of me who pulled out his phone three different times and at one point was taking either photos or videos of the movie.

sunday december 21

today i had two different people at a party ask if my partially-covered tattoo was of a chicken.

saturday december 20

today i was paying a cab driver and accidentally dropped a loonie in between the middle armrest and the passenger seat, making it impossible for either of us to reach down and pick it up without some real digging around. when i apologized for it, he said not to worry about it, and said, "well, just know that there's a loonie down there!" immediately, i wondered if maybe i shouldn’t have specified the kind of coin, since i was already feeling like i was under-tipping a little. i didn’t have any toonies on me, but maybe if i hadn’t said anything, he would’ve assumed the best.

friday december 19

today i went to eb games in the dufferin mall to buy a copy of borderlands 2 for ps3, since it’s supposed to be pretty good and also i’d read that there’s a "co-op" mode, which i thought might be a fun thing to do when my brother visits for christmas. while i was standing at the checkout counter waiting for the teenager to ring me through, he asked me if i’d played borderlands: the pre-sequel!, and i said no. he waited a beat, and then asked me if i planned to play it. at this point, for some reason, i thought the simplest thing to do to shut down this line of questioning would be to lie, so i gestured toward the game and said, "actually, this is for my brother." this seemed to disappoint the eb employee, who asked "have you played any of the borderlands series?" when i said no again, he asked with incredulity, "what kind of gamer are you?"

in retrospect, this may have been a rhetorical question, as in: how can you be a gamer if you’ve never played a borderlands game! but his tone suggested he really want to know, so, having already started to establish myself as a non-gamer who was buying this game he knew nothing about as a christmas present, i decided to take it to another level and said, "eh, i mostly just play sports games. kinda boring." having totally misrepresented myself at this point, i left the store feeling like a real jerk for sort of making it seem like i was too mature for these nerd games, rather than just admitting that i hadn’t gotten around to any borderlands games yet.

thursday december 18

today i was using the bathroom at northwood, where one of the two urinals in the men’s bathroom was out of order. standing there using the functional one, i heard a guy behind me start to walk in, then stop and say "whoaaa" before backing out into the hallway. the reaction was the sort of one you’d have if you went to enter a bathroom thinking it was a multi-person facility but then realized at the last minute it only accommodated a single person. of course, in this case, there was an empty stall right beside me, so i don’t know what this guy was thinking waiting outside. maybe just very anti-stall?

wednesday december 17

today i gave a delivery guy two $20 bills and asked for $10 in change. after a few seconds of digging around, he informed me that he only had $20 bills and coins on him. with no viable way for him to make $10 in change, i was forced to return to my room and come up with an alternate solution involving a $5 bill and a bunch of coins. the fact that i was more flexible on the matter than he was seemed like a real failure on his part.

tuesday december 16

today i waited until the very last minute to catch the lansdowne bus — the stop is just across the street from me, but i played it so close that i still had to jog across the street and wave the bus down. after taking the bus to dundas, i ended up having to jog across the street there to catch the streetcar that was sitting at the stop. while the running was a bit more than i would’ve liked, i couldn’t help but feel pretty pleased with myself, having never had a ttc trip more impeccably and efficiently timed.

monday december 15

today i went to my first raptors game of the season, and while it was great to see a conference-leading team take care of business against the clearly inferior orlando magic, i had to admit it was a bit bittersweet to be paying $30+ for a ticket now instead of getting in for $7, like you could even just a year ago.

sunday december 14

today i learned that my grandpa had passed away via an email from my grandma with the subject line "grandpa is now enjoying heaven."

saturday december 13

today i stood in line at walmart listening to a middle-aged guy behind me talk to his friend about the "science oven" scene in american hustle. he was really losing it, unable to control his laughter, as he described the sequence in great length. "what a movie!" he exclaimed when he finally stopped laughing.

friday december 12

today i was mired in the second day of a brutal cold and came to the end of my supply of kleenex. since i wasn’t feeling particularly enthusiastic about leaving the house to buy more, i kept one last tissue off to the side, saving it for a real special occasion, as if it was the last red starburst or something. finally, i geared up to walk down to the corner store to buy some more, treating myself to that final kleenex on my way out. as it turns out though, the corner store has basically no inventory these days for anything except junk food, cigarettes, and lottery tickets, so i returned home empty-handed, and had to rely on paper towel and toilet paper until i went back out and tried again two hours later.

thursday december 11

today i was only half paying attention to the tv on in the background when a commercial piqued my interest with the tagline "this year, give them wings for christmas." obviously, my first reaction was to think, "christmas chicken wings? love it. should i give these to someone or ask for them for myself?" as it turns out though, it was just an advertisement for some dumb, free-fall-simulating wind tunnel.

wednesday december 10

today i realized as i was about to take a nap that when i have no real deadline for waking up, i’ll often just flick my iphone alarm as if i’m spinning the price is right wheel, attempting to get as close to the 59-minute mark as possible without going over.

tuesday december 9

today i was doing dishes when i somehow ended up flinging a spoon across my kitchen counter and stove while i was trying to put it in the dish rack. i was gonna say that the speed at which it flew across the room, away from my outstretched hand, sort of made me feel like i was in the matrix, but i guess in that movie he bent the spoon and didn’t throw it around using telekinesis. anyway, it ended up landing between the oven and the wall, in a space so tight that i spent three minutes trying to wedge it out and couldn’t do it. so, now "there is no spoon" or whatever.

monday december 8

today i received a holiday card in the mail from domino’s pizza. actually, to be fair, the envelope wasn’t technically addressed to luke adams -- not only did it not include my specific apartment number, meaning it theoretically could’ve been for one of my other two housemates, but it was also simply made out to "pizza lover." still, as soon as i saw it, i just knew, "oh, this is for me."

sunday december 7

today i drank three beers at the ossington and realized when i settled up that i wasn’t even 100% sure what i’d been drinking, since i'd had the first one put in front of me when i arrived, and then just said "i’ll have another" twice.

saturday december 6

today i was walking up to the entrance of the dufferin mall when an older man (at least in his 60s) held out a clipboard and asked me if i wanted to sign a petition to save canada post’s door-to-door mail delivery. by the time he’d finished asking, i was already in my usual "no thanks" blow-off mode, but immediately after entering the mall, i started to regret it. it’s not as if i’m opposed to door-to-door delivery, and in glancing at the petition, it looked like it only had one signature at the top of the page. the idea - admittedly concocted in my head - that he’d been out there for a while but hadn’t been able to find anyone to sign his petition besides himself was so sad that i felt pretty guilty for blowing him off for the entire rest of the day.

friday december 5

today i was washing my hands in the bathroom at the ossington, when i heard the guy in the stall say something. since we were the only two people in the room and he hadn’t appeared to be on the phone, i said, "sorry?" to which he replied, "sorry, i was talking to my watch."

thursday december 4

today i went to mayday malone's for the first time, partly out of convenience (i was in the area and wanted to watch the leafs + cowboys/bears) but mostly because i was curious to see what a bar named after ted danson’s cheers character would look like. during my two hours there, i observed that it was actually more cheers-ish than i expected, though that didn’t necessarily feel like a good thing — a bunch of middle-aged men who sit at the bar and seem to know each other, presumably because they drink every day, isn’t quite as charming in real life. also, sitting by myself at a table off to the side, i really sympathized with how all the overlooked extras must have felt.

wednesday december 3

today i was on a subway standing near a girl who appeared to be either mentally ill or on a lot of drugs, or maybe both. at one point, in between shouting nonsense and spitting on the subway-car floor, she muttered "all the pretty girls are dead, blake lively is dead."

tuesday december 2

today i was walking to hurricanes when two joggers passed by me on my left. about 20 seconds later, a couple more went by, and a pedestrian passing me in the other direction said, "who fucking jogs on bloor street?" while i didn’t exactly disagree with the sentiment, it seemed a bit harsh. within the next two minutes though, about 30 more joggers squeezed by me on the sidewalk, clearly all part of some sort of running club, and i realized that he must’ve seen them coming before i did. really came around to his way of thinking.

monday december 1

today i ordered domino’s for lunch, taking advantage of the week-long sale which offered 50% off all pizzas ordered online. on its own, there was nothing wrong with this decision. still, i was slightly embarrassed that, having gone into the week intending to just take advantage of this deal once - MAYBE twice - so as not to be stuffing my face with pizza for seven straight days, i’d chose to place my order at noon on a monday, literally about two hours after the sale had begun.

sunday november 30

today i became obsessed with this tweet, thinking about several times throughout the day, and laughing out loud every single time.

The saddest story of them all. pic.twitter.com/0MvW6wI3hQ
— peppermint papi (@sweatpantspapi) December 1, 2014

saturday november 29

today i went to see the canadian pacific railway’s "holiday train" in belleville, sticking around for a few songs before calling it a day. after getting home, i looked up the band and was treated to the following description from the cpr’s website:

"Canadian power pop rock band Odds achieved wide commercial success in the 1990s. Most recently, Odds got together and performed old and new songs on the Barenaked Ladies' Ships and Dip cruise. A new CD, Cheerleder, was released in 2008. The first single, "My Happy Place," was used during the end credits for the Canadian TV show "Corner Gas.""

friday november 28

today i took a greyhound bus to belleville with the most refreshingly cavalier driver i’ve ever encountered. he appeared to make no effort to help anyone put their bags underneath the bus - or to take them out later - instead gesturing vaguely toward the compartment where you were meant to put them. during his introductory spiel once everyone was on the bus, rather than estimating how late we might run, he said, "take the schedule and crumple it up and throw it out. we get there when we get there," and then sat down. real great stuff.

thursday november 27

today i was walking home when i noticed a loonie on the ground. even though it was pretty wet out, i decided a loonie wasn’t the sort of coin i could just ignore and walk past, so i bent down and picked up the gross thing. the incident made me realize that a loonie was absolutely the smallest piece of currency i would pick up on a wet sidewalk, so get outta here with your quarters. don’t need 'em.
 

wednesday november 26

today i was about to walk past a restaurant when i happened to glance over and notice that everyone sitting at the front table closest to the window had turned around to face the back of the restaurant (away from the sidewalk). curious about whether there was something interesting happening in the restaurant, or maybe on a tv, i looked in on my way past. however, as it turned out, they were all facing that direction because someone was taking a photo of them. i moved quickly to turn my head away and get out of the line of fire, but i saw the flash happen and i think there’s a real possibility that their photo will include me in the background peering through the window at them.