friday february 5

today i went to use the bathroom at spirits bar and grill. having sat in a booth seat that made it sort of awkward to get out, i’d put off the bathroom visit for a little while, and really needed to go by the time i got to a urinal.

as i was standing there, i noticed a sign above the urinal that read: "caution please! the handle is leaking and may splash when flushing." not wanting to deal with this possibility, i resolved not to flush the urinal when i finished, or at least to wait until i could easily jump away from the splash zone. however, halfway through my pee, much to my dismay, the urinal suddenly auto-flushed. the handle initially seemed fine following this flush, but sure enough, a couple seconds later, little drops of water began spurting out of the handle toward my shirt, leaving me to try to lean away from the leak while continuing a pee that would have already been finished if i hadn’t put it off for so long. what a nightmare.

thursday february 4

today i went to the blue jays’ state of the franchise event - rebranded this year as "the leadoff" - for the fourth consecutive years as a season ticket holder. for the first time, i felt like i’d truly "figured out" the evening, arriving just in time for the doors to open, making the most of the hour of free food and beer, snagging a table to stand at so i didn’t have to walk around trying to eat food with one hand while holding a drink with the other, and then leaving about 10 minutes into the never-revelatory panel/q&a portion of the night.

wednesday february 3

today i liked a friend’s facebook comment on my wall from seven years ago, having seen it again thanks to facebook’s memories/on this day feature. although the comment hadn’t gotten any likes or comments when it was initially posted, my like today presumably showed up on some friends’ feeds, creating a chain reaction that resulted in it getting nine more likes besides mine, seven years after the fact. not sure how many of those friends even noticed how old it was.

tuesday february 2

today i went to bed at about 9:00 pm, intending to nap for three hours and then get up and work for three or four hours, figuring there’d be far fewer distractions during those morning hours when no one was online. when my alarm went off at midnight though, i hit snooze, then proceeded to either hit snooze or move the alarm back 30-60 minutes at a time, until it was 7:45 am and i’d just ended up sleeping through the entire night instead.

monday february 1

today i planned to meet a friend for drinks. in the afternoon, i asked if we could meet a little later in the evening, citing my need to get groceries and get some work done, though actually my top priority was squeezing in a post-work nap. having not heard from my friend for a few hours by the time i finished work, i assumed a later meet-up time would be fine, and settled in for the nap, setting my alarm for 6:55 pm.

moments later, before i'd fallen asleep, i received a text message from my friend, who apparently hadn’t seen my facebook message from earlier, asking if we could meet at 7:00 pm. giving up on my dream of napping, i said sure, got up, showered, took care of a couple things, and then walked over to three speed to meet her. halfway there, i heard an odd, faint melody playing, and realized it was coming from my pocket, where my phone alarm from my planned nap was going off. a real reminder of what could have been.

sunday january 31

today i went to clean a section of my shower using a vinegar solution and ended up spilling vinegar all over the place. pretty concerned that my bathroom will never not smell like vinegar again.

saturday january 30

today i placed a domino’s order from my girlfriend’s place. following along with the live progress tracker, we saw after about 25 minutes that the order was out for delivery, but after about another 15-20 minutes passed, there was no sign of - or word from - the delivery guy. concerned that perhaps he had missed the instructions about calling us when he arrived, i went down to the entrance of the condo building to make sure he wasn’t futilely waiting there.

when i got to the building lobby, i didn’t see anyone out front, but decided to stick around for a few minutes just in case — no point in going up and down if his arrival was imminent. a minute later, i saw a girl get out of a car across the street and come up to the entrance of the building, where i let her in. as we both stood there in between the building entrance and the door to the lobby, i became increasingly convinced that there was a possibility she was the domino’s delivery person. she had a ton of bags and packages with her, had just got off the phone before she entered the building, and had said she was waiting to meet someone.

not wanting to stand there indefinitely if it turned out that the person she was waiting to meet was me, i finally broke the silence by saying, "sorry, who are you waiting for?" confused, she looked at me and then back toward the lobby (which was out of sight from where i was standing) and said, "uh, it’s fine, he’s right here," gesturing to a guy who was walking up to the door to let her in.

in retrospect, it was quite obvious that she wasn’t the delivery person — none of the bags or packages she was holding were remotely pizza-shaped. so, in an effort to try to avoid creating awkwardness with someone who might be delivering my food, i had in fact been extremely awkward to someone who was just waiting for her boyfriend to let her in, with my "who are you waiting for?" question making me look like a nosy resident who was a little too concerned with building security. never talk to anyone, that’s the lesson here.

friday january 29

today i called visa to activate a new credit card. before i keyed in visa's phone number, i opened up my most recent bank statement, with the intent of going into the call fully prepared to prove my identity. in the past, i’d been asked to name the amount of a recent deposit into my account, and was totally caught off guard, not able to remember the exact amount of my pay cheques and offering only vague details.

for the first time ever though, the process for activating my credit card didn’t involve talking to a human at all. after just entering a couple numbers into my phone, including my date of birth (child’s play compared to deposit amounts), the automated voice let me know my card had now been activated. i hung up pretty disappointed that it was so easy.

thursday january 28

today i was leaving the walmart at dufferin mall through the outdoor exit, and as usual, a cavalcade of grocery carts had piled up just outside the entrance, making it tricky to navigate through them. as i tried to sneak through one gap, i was blocked by a woman who was taking a huge box out of her cart in preparation for grabbing a taxi. the box looked heavy and awkward — some sort of electronics product, i think.

as she struggled to remove the box from her cart, i went to push the cart out of the way, thinking this would be helpful for both of us — i’d get my opening to escape the walmart entrance, and she’d be able to hoist the box up and out of the cart, since it looked like the box was getting sort caught on the side of the cart when she tried to lift it. although this made sense to me in the moment, i soon realized that it would have made way more sense if i’d simply helped her lift the box, rather than moving the object she may have been using for leverage.

while it ended up working out fine, i’m not entirely sure how she felt about my move. i mean, she definitely said something to me, to which i replied, "no problem," but i had headphones on and didn’t really hear what she said. it could have been "thanks." it could have been "uh, could you not?" it could have been anything, really. there are a lot of possibilities that make my "no problem" seem like a perfectly acceptable answer, and just as many possibilities that make it seem like a sarcastic, dick-ish rejoinder.

wednesday january 27

today i went to wise bar to meet up with my book club. there are five of us in the club and the table we sat at had enough room to comfortably seat two on either side, even though there were technically enough chairs for three on either side, as this blogto photo shows:

having arrived third, i ended up in the middle seat on one side of the table, and when the fifth member arrived, he sat next to me, making me the only one at the table sitting between two people. as such, it was a big relief when he asked a minute later if he should swing around to the end of the table, a question to which i immediately replied "yeah." the head of the table probably isn’t the most comfortable seat and it sort of puts you in the way of all the foot traffic coming through the bar, but it’s only fair if you show up last that you should have to deal with that and i should be able to move my elbows around without worrying about hitting anyone.

tuesday january 26

today i saw the animated charlie kaufman film anomalisa. while i was bracing to be hit hard by the film’s themes/message/etc., the thing that instead stuck with me most as i left the theatre was how accurately and realistically it detailed the minutiae of hotels.

monday january 25

today i did a grocery shop and bought a bunch of things i’d need to make a penne pasta dish later in the evening. while i was in the grocery store, i stopped and did a mental inventory to make sure i had everything for it — pasta sauce, meat, vegetables, parmesan cheese, etc. it wasn’t until a few hours later, after i’d already prepared nearly every aspect of the dish, that i went into my cupboard and realized that i’d forgotten to buy the actual pasta.

fortunately, i still had some leftover spaghetti in cupboard, which i used in place of the penne, but the exercise ultimately just proved why it’s not worth putting more than meatballs in a spaghetti dish — real hard to pick up small vegetables along with a forkful of spaghetti.

sunday january 24

today i ordered a meatball sub from subway and was way too chill about it when the sandwich artist realized halfway through the process that he’d made the sandwich on nine-grain bread instead of italian. probably could’ve gotten a free mini big of ketchup doritos or something out of it if i’d been a little more upset about his mistake.

saturday january 23

today i was reading fifteen dogs at my girlfriend’s place when she (a real dog lover) insisted on taking the book and reading to me from it. the first paragraph she read involved one of the dogs being mounted by all the other members of the pack, then trying to fight back by mounting one of them himself, which led to a power struggle that resulted in two of the other dogs attacking him and "leaving him half-dead by the side of the pond." it was at this point that she gave the book back to me and showed no further interest in reading it.

friday january 22

today i went to see the first screening for a short film that a friend had written. the film heavily focused on issues related to rape culture, so even though it was very well done, it wasn’t exactly a crowd-pleaser or a laugh-a-minute riot. as such, when i found my friend after the screening to congratulate her, i sort of wish i’d just stuck to my initial "that was great" compliment rather than also adding "i really liked it," which was meant to show that my praise was genuine but in retrospect felt a bit creepy.

thursday january 21

today i came across a thread on a friend’s facebook wall joking about how the blue jays losing munenori kawasaki meant losing a "mascot," which was followed by a discussion of classic jays mascots that had been replaced over the years. no one involved in this discussion mentioned my favourite mascot, domer, a turtle who is technically associated with skydome rather than the jays themselves. domer made an appearance during the 2014 season for the skydome’s 25th anniversary, and stole the show — one especially hilarious gag involved the "world’s fastest grounds crew" at the dome, with domer trying to help them but only making it about eight steps onto the field (he’s a turtle) before they finished and ran back off the field past him.

anyway, remembering my fondness for domer, i decided to do a little research to see if i could find out when he stopped doing regular appearances at the dome (i assumed it was sometime around when it became the rogers centre). during my hunt for this information, i happened to stumble upon one site that cited the illustrator who created domer back in the 1980s. incredibly, this illustrator happened to be the dad of one of my good friends, shocking and impressing me to such an extent that i immediately sent that friend a text message full of incredulous expletives about my discovery.

wednesday january 20

today i realized for the first time that a friend who i follow on twitter doesn’t follow me back. this discovery was an odd one, since i recalled him @-mentioning me in a tweet last month when he asked several friends what their favourite albums of 2015 were. in fairness, it did explain why he never acknowledged the great list of my 2015 favs that i tweeted at him in response from my locked account.

tuesday january 19

today i decided to re-attach the hood to my winter coat. when i started wearing the coat several weeks ago, it was still warm enough out that i’d decided to take the hood off, since i didn’t need it, but the declining january temperatures have made me miss it a couple times within the last week or so.

i’d been reluctant to tackle this mini-project, since i’d been thinking that the hood had been attached to the coat by a ton of little buttons that would be a hassle to do back up, but when i picked it up today i saw that it was just a zipper attachment. thinking to myself that this should be an incredibly easy task that would take about five seconds, i was predictably punished by fate for my hubris, as the teeth of the zipper immediately came apart behind the zipper "slider" as i tried to zip it up. due to the weird, curved angle of the hood’s zipper, it ended up taking me upwards of five minutes to fix the problem and finally get the hood back onto my coat. i knew it would be a hassle.

monday january 18

today i saw people on facebook tagging their friends in the comments of a post about an apartment rental becoming available, and debated with myself for about the 60th time whether or not i should let them know that people who aren’t friends with the original poster can’t see that person’s friends-only posts, even if they’re tagged in the comments. didn’t do it though. probably will never do it.

sunday january 17

today i brought my christmas gift card to the beer store again after forgetting to use it last time. it was almost a certainty that i would have forgotten to use it again today, if not for the fact that while i was waiting in line to pay i happened to look at a display of available gift cards on the front counter and thought, "oh yeah, i have one of those!"

saturday january 16

today i got together with seven friends to re-watch game 5 of the blue jays/rangers alds from three months ago in its entirety. it managed to be even better than all the times i’ve re-watched the seventh inning over and over by myself.

friday january 15

today i went to the mall to buy a few things, including dish sponges. i could’ve gone to any number of stores to splurge on some nice sponges, but instead ended up in the dollar store, looking at a package of 10 sponges for $1.25 and thinking to myself, "why am i still so determined to live like a student with $100 to his name rather than the successful urban professional i am?" ultimately though, the voice that won out was the one that thought, "i might as well just buy them. i can always get new ones if they’re garbage. but i’m sure they’ll be fine."