tuesday may 19

today i bought sara hennessy’s new comedy album trouble in saradise, and was looking forward to giving it a listen on my way home from the blue jays game. about five minutes into the album, i got on the spadina streetcar and found myself sitting at the very back near a middle-aged guy who seemed to be holding court with friends and strangers alike. while it wasn’t clear to me who exactly he knew before getting on the streetcar, he quickly became friends with practically everyone sitting in the back few seats, getting strangers to take off their headphones, having conversations with them, and giving and receiving some big laughs.

not wanting to derail my album-listening plan, i turned the volume up a notch or two, avoided eye contact with everyone, and didn’t let myself get sucked into the camaraderie going on around me, despite the fact that everyone else seemed to be into it. while i don’t think the guy ever actually addressed me or tried to get me to take off my headphones and join the discussion, i recognized the irony that would have resulted if he had. "no thank you sir, i’m the one jerk sitting back here who doesn’t want to join in on your fun time and have some laughs -- i’m trying to listen to a comedy album here."

monday may 18

today i told my co-workers at the rogers centre that my "dream" jays game "is one where no one talks to me." it was an attempt to convey the fact that people generally only talk to you during the game if something goes wrong, or if they want you to do something out of the ordinary, but i think it probably just made me sound extremely antisocial.

sunday may 17

today i went to christie pits to watch the maple leafs game and sat about 30 feet behind a family that included two young children (a boy and a girl probably between 3-6) and a dog. the dog was on the leash for most of the game, but at some point that apparently became tiresome -- for the last couple innings, the little boy and little girl instead took turns putting one another on the leash, with one of them leading the way while the other one followed behind, crawling around on all fours.

saturday may 16

today i had dinner with my parents and tried to avoid ordering anything too spicy for my dad, who isn’t a fan of anything hot. somehow though, he ended up eating a hot pepper that he thought was something else, and - after drinking water for the next five minutes - called it the hottest thing he’d ever eaten.

friday may 15

today i was leaving a friend’s birthday party at unlovable and had to sort of push my way through a crowd to reach the front door. before i was quite home free, i tried to squeeze past a couple dancing girls and misjudged how much room i had, running into one of the girls and knocking her off balance. i profusely apologized and made my way out, embarrassed, but noticed that my friend who had been following me outside had started laughing.

as it turned out, according to my friend, the girl i ran into had apparently been the one who, earlier in the night, wouldn’t stop talking during a comedian’s set. like, the entire bar was silent except for the comedian and this girl, who appeared to have no regard for comedy etiquette. at the time i thought, "what the hell is wrong with her?" and wished someone would tell her to shut up. so the fact that she was the one i barrelled over on my way outside actually felt… not great, but certainly not as bad as it initially had.

thursday may 14

today i went to see the second city show how to kill a comedian. after the show ended, my girlfriend and i went to our respective bathrooms before heading out. rather than waiting for her right outside the second-floor bathroom, i headed down to the main-floor lobby after i finished up, waiting for her there. while we hadn’t agreed upon a meeting place beforehand, i figured she’d come downstairs once she came out and didn’t see me on the second floor, since i'm much more likely to be the first one out of the bathroom. instead, she waited on the second floor for me, worried that maybe i had a setback following monday’s bug, while i waited downstairs. this waiting went on for at least a good five minutes before i walked back upstairs to find her. maybe longer. just some excellent communication.

wednesday may 13

today i intended to head to wal-mart after work to pick up a couple of household items that i needed. however, what i really wanted to do while i ran these errands was listen to the latest edition of grantland’s "watch the thrones" podcast, so when i saw it hadn’t been uploaded yet by the time i planned to leave, i decided the errands could wait until another day, opting to stay home instead.

tuesday may 12

today i was getting off the streetcar at spadina station when i noticed some sort of altercation happening at the front entrance of the car. from what i could see, a guy was afraid to get off the streetcar because there were two other guys waiting for him on the platform, threatening and promising to "fuck him up" as payback for some sort of unknown transgression (i mean, it was known to them but not to me). the driver seemed to be on the verge of contacting police, while the guys on the platform told the driver that it had nothing to do with him, that they didn’t want to cause a scene on his streetcar, and that they just wanted the guy to get off instead of staying next to the driver "like a little bitch."

while the incident was causing most people - especially families - to turn around and get off the car at the back door, the lack of a lineup at the front was too appealing for me to pass up, so as this stand-off continued, i said "excuse me" and pushed my way past everyone involved. dunno how things ended for them but i just barely caught the connecting subway.

monday may 11

today i spent the majority of the night awake, sick, throwing up a total of 12 teams in the wee hours of the morning. it had been a while since i’d vomited, so i’d sort of forgotten how awful it is. but whatever bug i had today seemed even worse than past ones, resulting in a particularly violent projectile form of vomiting and making me feel like the guy from hot chip’s "i feel better" video (1:51, 2:04, 2:14, etc.) each time i threw up.

sunday may 10

today i found myself standing outside the elevator at the rogers centre next to duane ward, one of my favourite blue jays from the team’s world series years. it was the just the two of us, and the elevator was taking forever to arrive, so i figured i ought to say something. having just sat under a closed roof all game, i noticed - looking out the window - that the weather outside seemed fine despite the ominous forecast, and remarked, "huh, figured it’d be raining!" duane replied, "nah, it’s just hotter than fuck out there." we agreed it would be a sweaty walk home.

saturday may 9

today i stuck around after the blue jays game for a little while, killing time in the press box while i waited to meet a couple friends. as i waited, i witnessed - for the first time - the usual jr. jays saturday post-game spectacle of kids who were at the game getting to run around the bases on the field. i’d previously assumed that maybe a couple hundred kids participated in this, but by the looks of it, that number must have been in the thousands. it was a seemingly never-ending parade of children going around the bases. at one point, i even thought, "are they all just circling back and continually running the bases over and over again? that’s the only way there could be this many kids here." but i don’t think that was the case. there were just a lot of kids on the field. real nightmare fuel.

friday may 8

today i was greeted with this in my walkway as i left my house:

i can only assume since it was a tiny lil' dead mouse rather than a rat, it wasn't intended as some sort of "stop snitching" message, and was just a bit of bad luck for me and the mouse.

thursday may 7

today i was meeting a few friends, including one from out of town, at bar neon. i arrived about 20-25 minutes after our agreed-upon time, kicking myself as i walked in for being a bad friend. as it turned out though, i was the first one besides my out-of-town friend to arrive, which made me feel better about my tardiness and more free to judge everyone else who showed up even later.

an hour later though, i really cemented my bad-friend rep for the night — before going to the bathroom (and then inside to the bar), i asked if anyone wanted a drink, since service to our patio table had been sporadic. i got a couple yes’s, but then on my way to the bathroom i thought i saw our server head to our table, so i ended up returning to the table a few minutes later with only my own beer. turned out i’d been wrong about the server, which made me feel a little bad about showing up with just my own beer.

wednesday may 6

today i walked from st. andrew subway station to the rogers centre, passing - as usual - a man dressed in a spider-man costume a couple hundred feet from the stadium. today, as i passed him, he was cradling a grown woman in his arms while she held a selfie stick, taking a photo of the two of them.

tuesday may 5

today i was about to go to bed when i noticed a little fly buzzing around my living room. while i could’ve easily gone into my bedroom, shut the door, and been done with it, it somehow felt important that i deal with this fly before i slept. so as it flew across the room, i lunged at it, clapped my hands on it, saw it fall to the ground, and was so fired up that i got it on my first try that i did a ric flair "wooo!" and strutted around the room.

monday may 4

today i was showering and went to open a new bottle of body wash. as soon as i opened it, before i’d even squeezed any out, i was met by an unfamiliar smell, and studied the bottle in surprise — apparently i’d accidentally selected the slightly-darker-blue "pure rain" option rather than "original." gonna be a long, unfamiliar-smelling few weeks.

sunday may 3

today i was in the men's bathroom at tallboys when i noticed that the walls were almost entirely pristine, or at least free of graffiti, a rarity for the bathroom of a toronto bar. presumably, any graffiti that had been there previously had been painted over, but at least there was one new message on the wall, the only one anywhere in the room for now. this was it:

saturday may 2

today i ran into my upstairs neighbour connor on lansdowne, two weeks after we'd had a sort of weird interaction as i left my house. while i would've liked to have made a better impression this time, i was pretty burnt out after three straight days of covering the nfl draft, which resulted in our conversation playing out like this:

him: "hey man."
me: "hey, how's it going?"
him: "good, you?"
me (using the same cadence i would've if i'd replied "good!"): "you!"

friday may 1

today i bought a platter of four dips at no frills, instead of my usual single container of hummus or spinach dip. in addition to those two dips, i also had one corner for roasted red pepper hummus and one for asiago artichoke dip. it was like i was hosting a party but i was the only one invited. loved it.

thursday april 30

today i was walking down queen street when i noticed, maybe 20 feet in front of me, a guy who looked like he was trying to stop passers-by, presumably asking them - directly or indirectly - for money. i was already running late, and even if i hadn't been, i'm not an overly friendly pedestrian, so as i walked toward him and saw him approaching me, i said "sorry" before he even had a chance to say anything. after i'd passed him, i heard him echoing my "sorry" in an imitation of me, adding "hadn't even asked him for directions or anything!" in retrospect, i have to admit this was a totally fair observation and criticism.

wednesday april 29

today i was eating some chicken nuggets and somehow managed to spill barbecue sauce all over my pyjama pants. it was gross, but i felt better after changing into real clothes. of course, two hours after doing so, i made spaghetti and managed to splash little drops of pasta sauce all over my shirt. a really bad day overall for me and sauce.

tuesday april 28

today i had a conversation with my next-door neighbour wayne about working at the rogers centre for blue jays games. as it turns out, it’s something we have in common — he delivers food to the stadium. he told me a story about walking through the orioles clubhouse and accidentally elbowing one of the players in the back of the head when the player leaned back in his seat. the guy went 0 for 4 that day, according to wayne, who later went on to complain about "the fuckin’ rays" and to observe that everyone hates clay buchholz.

monday april 27

today i went to sleep at about 9:30 pm, setting my alarm for about midnight, intending to get up and do some work during the hours when i’m most productive (1-4 am), before going back to bed. what followed was a night full of me hitting the snooze button on my alarm, or pushing it back by an hour or two. i ended up getting out of bed at about 7:45 am, only a little earlier than i would’ve woken up on a normal day — i’d been woken up by my alarm probably 10 different times during the night, and never felt quite compelled to get up.

sunday april 26

today i went to the gladstone library to pick up a hold, and was greeted with a locked door. according to the hours posted on the front window, the library not only didn’t open until 1:30 pm, but those sunday hours were "seasonal." walking away from the library empty-handed, i wondered what exactly constituted "seasonal" hours for a library. obviously, for an on-campus library, it would make sense if seasonal meant that it wasn’t open on sundays in the summer, but this was just a plain old public library — would the same rules apply? were those even the rules? this wasn’t as obvious case as, say, an ice cream shop. anyway, i came back a little after 1:30 and it was open. something to keep an eye on going forward, i guess. maybe i'll look it up.

saturday april 25

today i was about to take the ttc home from queen and jarvis, when i realized i had plenty of podcasts to catch up on and decided to walk home instead. not only was i happy that my new-ish shoes remained comfortable over the course of the 6+ kilometre walk, but i also couldn’t have asked for a more pleasant temperature — with a light jacket, it was warm enough, especially in the sun, that i wasn’t cold, but cool enough that i wasn’t sweating by the time i got home. april 25th, truly the perfect date.

friday april 24

today i saw a sports bar do two things i'd never seen a sports bar do:

1. take reservations for a major game (in this case, game 3 of raptors/wizards);
2. turn someone away at the door due to capacity issues, even though there was empty seat next to me that i was saving for her.

you crazy for this one, contender.

thursday april 23

today i was talking to my parents on skype when they asked if i’d received the birthday gift my brother sent me earlier in the month. "huh," i thought (and also said). "i don’t think i ever did get that, i wonder what happened." later in the evening, i sent my brother a message to ask if he had the right address for me, or if something might’ve happened to the gift en route, to which he replied that the ups website indicated i signed for the package two weeks ago.

confused, i thought back to that day and immediately realized what had happened — i’d received a ups package containing a blue jays gift card that i’d assumed was from the team itself, as part of my season ticket package. instead, it had been from my brother, and i just hadn’t thanked him - or even realized it was from him - since then.

wednesday april 22

today i got home after working my eighth blue jays game in 10 games - to go along with my full-time job - and was excited to just relax and watch the latest episode of mad men. i threw a frozen pizza in the oven, and after pulling it out 14 minutes later, i was so eager that i didn’t let it sit for three minutes to cool down before i started into it. on the very first bite, some sort of sauce/cheese combination landed on the outside of my lower lip and burned a chunk of it right off before i could pull my mouth away. i’ve never felt so betrayed by a food in my entire life. it really hurt, in every sense of the word.