thursday december 3

today i got a call back from a store i'd ordered a gift card from on wednesday.

this was a relief -- during our previous phone conversation, when the employee had read the mailing address back to me, i wasn't 100% sure she'd said the town name right (it's a small town that she very easily could never have heard of). after i'd hung up, i'd debated calling her back to double-check that the address was accurate, but ultimately decide it was probably fine. after all, the postal code, house numbers, and street were right -- it'd probably find its way there.

still, i was relieved that she was now calling back to correct that town name. except, as it turned out, she had the mailing address perfectly correct. it was my credit card number that she'd gotten wrong.

tuesday december 1

today i accompanied my girlfriend to toronto general hospital, where she was scheduled to undergo an mri. not knowing whether or not i'd be allowed to just hang out in the hospital during her mri - given the enhanced covid-19 safety protocols in place - i decided to just wait in the car.

since her appointment was at 1:30 am and the mri ended up taking longer than either of us expected, my decision to wait in the car meant sitting for over 90 minutes in a dark, otherwise-empty parking lot as i got increasingly colder and imagined scenarios where car-jackers snuck up on me from the nearby alleys. not the relaxing hang i'd envisioned.

wednesday november 25

today i left my house for the first time in 10 days after spending the last week and a half working 12-to-18 hour days covering the nba offseason. damn near did a whole 14-day covid quarantine by accident.

sunday november 22

today i (okay, my girlfriend and i) bought a house.

friday october 16

today i ran into a friend while out running errands. i hadn't seen this friend in a while and was surprised to see her in my neighbourhood. but after she asked me, "do you live around here?" i felt as if i couldn't ask the same question myself -- like i had to ask a new, different question to avoid the conversation feeling repetitive. as a result, when i got home and told my girlfriend about the run-in, the first question she asked about the friend was, "does she live around here?" and i had to confess i had no idea.

monday october 12

today i was waiting to cross an intersection when i noticed a pair of friends on the other side of the street. one was a skateboarder trying to land a trick while the other filmed her.

as i stood waiting for the light to change, i watched her attempt and fail the trick twice. but by the time the light eventually did change, she had reset her position and was set to try it again. walking across the street, i realized that - in order to get to my destination, the corner store - i'd pass directly behind her from the cameraman's perspective. like so:

although i made a concerted effort not to even glance at the trick attempt, i heard them both cheering as i reached the other side of the street, which i assume meant that she successfully landed it and that the take was a keeper. so i can only hope that his directorial style favours close-ups rather than wide-angle shots that include disinterested, disheveled passersby.

thursday september 24

today i used toronto transit for the first time since march 9. no better than wearing long pants.

tuesday september 22

today i was taking my usual morning walk through the neighbourhood when i approached an intersection where, with school having resumed, a crossing guard was working. this wasn't a heavily-trafficked intersection and - as far as i could tell - there were no schools in the immediate vicinity. as i approached, there were maybe one or two adult pedestrians in sight and no cars around.

nonetheless, as i approached the corner, the crossing guard walked into the road and put her stop sign up, as if i needed help to cross the street. i understand that this is her job, but the experience left me with the same feeling i get after using a public bathroom where an attendant is working -- this is something i've done thousands of times on my own, and the fact that you're helping me do it feels unnecessary and awkward for both of us.

at least in this case i only had to mumble an awkward "thanks" instead of worrying about whether or not to tip her.

friday september 18

today i played a couple sets of tennis while two middle-school kids played on the court next to mine. while it seemed like they were both having a good time, i felt a little bad when i heard the following exchange:

kid 1: "okay, that's 14 games to 0."

kid 2: "i told you we can stop keeping track!"

sunday september 13

today i was skyping with my parents and brother when i glanced down at my phone and saw two messages from my girlfriend, who was in the next room. the first was a link to a tweet about a toronto strip club being tied to seven cases of covid-19, while the second just read "show them."

confused about why she'd want me to show my parents this story, which didn't seem to align with their interests, i realized after a few seconds that she'd sent the messages a few minutes apart -- the second one had been sent after she'd heard me tell my family about my new tennis bag.

tuesday september 8

today i wore long pants for the first time since may. didn't love it, to be honest.

saturday september 5

today i talked for 40 minutes on zoom with an 11-year-old who aspires to work in sports and viewed me as an "expert" in the field. i now understand imposter syndrome.

wednesday september 2

today i listened as the narrator of the audiobook i was listening to pronounced the word "shone" (as in "shone a light") like "shown." this was - somewhat improbably, in my opinion - the third consecutive audiobook i'd listened to which had used the word "shone." it was also the third consecutive narrator to pronounce it as "shown."

having pronounced it all my life as "shawn," i was now prepared to accept that either i'd been wrong all along or this was yet another difference in u.s./canadian english that i'd never noticed until now.

monday august 24

today i noticed for maybe the third or fourth time within the last couple weeks that my right sock had gotten incredibly dirty around the ball of the foot over the course of the day. curious about what might be causing this, i grabbed my most-used pair of shoes and inspected the inside of the right one to see if there might be something in the shoe causing my socks to get dirty.

as it turned out, a brief look at the inside and outside of the shoe revealed that there was a pretty obvious hole which went straight through the sole. that provided a simple explanation for my dirty socks, though it didn't explain how i'd failed to notice during my last several 45-minute morning walks that my sock was basically touching ground.

friday august 14

today i left my house at around 7:50am, intent on putting a few items - including about 10 empty beer cans that i'd put in a separate bag - into our recycling bin before it was emptied later in the day. as i reached the sidewalk, i noticed that the kid i'd met yesterday was just one house over, sifting through my neighbour's recycling bin.

as previously noted, i would've preferred for the usual neighbourhood collectors to end up with my empties, but i recognized there was no avoiding the kid this time, so when he excitedly asked, "do you have some?" i said yes and handed him the bag.

as i put the rest of my recycling into the bin, he said "headed to work, huh?" despite the fact that i was wearing a t-shirt, athletic shorts, and my ridiculous adidas headband, with my tennis racquet jutting out of my bag. i dunno about this kid, man.

thursday august 13

today i was bringing our recycling and compost bins to the curb when a kid - maybe 12 years old? - stopped his bike about 10 feet away from me. we proceeded to have the following conversation:

him: "can i ask you a question?"

me: "uh, sure."

him: "do you drink beer?"

me (immediately assuming he's going to ask me to buy him beer and looking for the best way to shut down this conversation): "no, not really."

as it turned out, he was simply interested in collecting empties. after he wheedled it out of me that i do, in fact, drink beer, i agreed to leave my cans outside for him rather than throwing them all in the recycling bin at the end of the week. to be honest though, i'm still rooting for the veteran neighbourhood collectors to beat him to the punch.

saturday august 8

today i woke up to find more than 30 emails in my inbox, a significant increase over the three or four i might typically receive overnight. while the first two of the 30+ messages were standard stuff, the rest - all of which had arrived in the last half-hour and which continued to stream in as i blearily tried to figure out what was going on - were along these lines:

after a few minutes, i realized that - for some reason - an old work-related email address, which still forwarded messages to my primary personal email account, had been used by someone named "asa" to sign up for interracialcupid.com, latinamericancupid.com, and militarycupid.com, all of which are apparently real sites dating sites.

since i never trust the "unsubscribe" button on emails from sites i'm not familiar with, i spent several touch-and-go minutes trying to log into the old work email account (obviously i'd forgotten the password) and was eventually able to get in, change the password, and turn off the forwarding option. it was a relief to stop the emails, but i wish asa all the best in his/her/their search for love.

saturday july 25

today i had rogers' 'your world this week' tv channel (channel 1; essentially the tv guide channel) on in the background and happened to notice an interview with an actress they identified as "amanda sayfried." i was pretty sure that wasn't how amanda seyfried spelled her name, but figured it was more likely that i just never knew the spelling than it was that they'd made such an obvious mistake. a few minutes later, however, during an interview segment with "olando bloom," i reconsidered that position.

saturday july 18

today i finished roma, approximately two-and-a-half weeks after i started it, having watched it here and there in five- or 10-minute increments, sometimes not returning to it for multiple days at a time. just the way alfonso cuarón intended.

monday july 13

today i passed a house that had a hand-made poster attached to its front door, clearly drawn by a child, with the message "all lives matter" written on it. if that were my child, i simply would have told them that the poster wasn't fridge-worthy, let alone front-door-worthy, and would have had them start over.

tuesday july 7

today i added the 'ctv life' channel to my cable package at a rate of $7/month for the sole purpose of being able to live-view an episode of wedding-themed reality show 'where to i do?' starring my friends.

tuesday june 30

today i was walking down davenport road when i saw a sign attached to a street lamp that read "PAINT IT BLACK!" in big letters. having seen a number of signs and posters related to black lives matter and defunding the police in the area lately, i was curious to read the smaller text on this one to see what its message was. however, upon getting closer, i saw that it continued "... or green, or blue (etc.)" and realized that it was actually just an advertisement for a painting service.

friday june 26

today i continued to enjoy the comments made by a banned commenter on my basketball website, whose previous contributions had revolved around calling the coronavirus a hoax and black lives matter a terrorist organization. despite my having banned him, he was still submitting comments, which were being immediately redirected to a spam folder and consisted mostly of increasingly offbeat personal attacks. his contribution today: "luke adams wears a bathing suit in the shower."

thursday june 25

today i was excited to find a big box containing my new, recently-ordered tennis racquet on my front step. after getting it out of its packaging and showing it to my girlfriend, she commented on the head size, pointing out that it looked noticeably smaller than my old racquet. "you didn't buy a kid's racquet, did you?" she asked.

although i had spent hours researching racquets before having ultimately landed on this one and was very confident i didn't actually buy a child-size one, her comment still elicited a few seconds of panic in me, which i assuaged by making sure there was no mention of children on the various labels still attached to the racquet and by doing a little more googling to confirm that smaller head sizes do, in fact, improve a player's control.

saturday june 20

today i was in my bathroom when i noticed a small, motionless spider in the corner of the room, seemingly dead -- its legs were all tucked up close to its body in an unnatural way. however, when i looked over a minute later, the spider was up and moving, making me wonder what had been going on when i first saw it. during a subsequent google search, i came across the following information:

During hibernation, spiders tuck in their legs and their metabolic rates slow to help them survive. This means they don't burn as many calories and can survive without eating, living in a sleeplike state until cold weather ends. The same tucked-in position may indicate a sleeping spider. A spider lying on his back or in an awkward position with legs tucked is generally dead.

sleeping spider. pretty cool.

sunday may 31

today i wrote to toronto's budget committee and my city councillor urging them to defund the toronto police. here are a couple helpful templates if you're interested in doing the same:

link
link 2

wednesday may 27

today i went to bulk barn to pick up a curbside order my girlfriend had placed. when i arrived, one of the employees found the bag with all our stuff in it, dumped it out on the counter, then rang through the items one at a time.

when she eventually announced the price and asked for payment, there was still a small bag of sugar sitting on the counter, right next to where everything else had been piled. not being familiar with every item in our order and assuming that the cashier wouldn't have intentionally left that sugar there if it was part of it, i tapped my card and prepared to leave. but before i did, just to confirm, i gestured toward the sugar and asked, "was that... separate?" she looked at it and replied, "oh god, i didn't even see it there."

after paying for the sugar separately and leaving, i was little embarrassed for both of us -- her for somehow not seeing it and me for not assuming it was part of my order and saying something before paying for the rest. i mean, it's not like it had flown several feet away when she first dumped out the bag. it was literally touching everything else.

tuesday may 26

today i was home when our delivery order from country boys produce arrived. i texted my girlfriend, who was visiting a friend on a walk, to let her know it was here. however, because i mistakenly thought the name of the place was "country boy" (rather than country boys), the start of my message read, "country boy here," which came off sounding more like a casual greeting in which i was referring to myself as "country boy."

saturday may 23

today i noticed a wasp inside my house. after a struggle that was frankly more protracted than it needed to be due to my decision to only use a single small sheet of paper towel (and my poor aim with that paper towel), i killed it.

moments later, i noticed a second wasp on the other side of the house. deciding i'd had enough death for today, i instead opted to trap this one using a drinking glass and a sheet of paper, eventually setting it free outside. this process was, of course, even more drawn out than my previous battle, but was ultimately successful. taking this pacifist approach with the second wasp left me feeling much better about myself, though i couldn't help but imagine the first one looking down from wasp heaven being like "wtf, man?"

thursday may 21

today i made myself a sandwich for lunch. a couple hours later, i looked at the remainder of the loaf of bread and noticed that nearly all of the slices had dots of mold along the bottom.

realizing i had no idea if the two slices i'd eaten were also moldy, but assuming it was a very real possibility, i spent the rest of the day retroactively being just absolutely disgusted with myself and mad at the local bakery for what was apparently a very brief "best before" window.

friday may 15

today i spent 10 minutes reading a twitter thread about how the adjective "quite" has opposite meanings in north america and england, a fact i'd never known before.

wednesday may 13

today i asked my girlfriend what her three favourite chip flavours are and was stunned and thrilled to confirm that our top-three lists are exactly the same (miss vickie's balsamic vinegar & sweet onion, ruffles all dressed, lays ketchup).

monday may 11

today i read an article that weighed whether jim dale or stephen fry is the better harry potter audiobook narrator. having never read the books before, i decided to take advantage of some extra free time during the pandemic to finally do so. however, with no easy access to the books, i opted for the audiobooks instead.

inexplicably, i waited until i was almost done the third book in the series to do my homework on the two different narrators. in doing so today, i was dismayed to learn that jim dale, the one i chose, is viewed as more whimsical, while fry's narration is considered to have more gravitas. i love gravitas! but after becoming so accustomed to dale's style after three books that i can immediately identify which character he's voicing, i just don't think i can justify switching mid-stream.

friday may 8

today i went to send a friend a link in google chat, pasting it and hitting enter all in one motion so that i didn't realize until it was too late that i'd sent the wrong link. this resulted in a split-second of horror as i realized i hadn't actually copied the link i'd meant to send and had essentially just played clipboard roulette with whatever text i'd previously copied. it was a real relief when i saw the link i'd mistakenly sent instead was just a harmless story about masai ujiri's draft history.

wednesday may 6

today i unplugged the power cord for my girlfriend's laptop temporarily, plugging it back in after about an hour when i finished using the outlet. hours later, when she went to turn her computer on and found it dead, we realized i'd mistakenly plugged in our stand mixer instead -- its power cord was right next to the one for her laptop and looked nearly identical.

while i felt a little bad about the mixup, the worst part came about 10 minutes later, when i heard her log onto a zoom call and describe my mistake in detail to her co-workers to explain why she was late to the meeting. everyone had a real good laugh at my expense, joking about how at least the stand mixer was good to go.

sunday may 3

today i was woken up extremely early by a combination of the neighbours upstairs playing a piano and my girlfriend angrily vowing to do something about it. our upstairs neighbours are always up and making noise incredibly early, but this piano and the accompanying floor stomps (pedals?) were new.

within about two minutes, we were dressed and had gone outside to knock on their door and register our concerns. while i'd suggested maybe giving it a few more minutes so we could think of exactly what we were going to say and so i could wake up a bit more, my girlfriend shut down that idea, retorting that it was actually good that i still looked half-asleep, since it was proof they'd woken me up with the noise. the neighbours were very apologetic, so maybe she was right.

friday may 1

today i was walking along a sidewalk in my neighbourhood when a child - maybe four or five years old - began running toward me. as someone who appreciates and abides by social-distancing rules, i was prepared to take action if necessary to ensure that he didn't get too close. still, i was relieved when his parents just started absolutely screaming "STOP!" at him, even if the urgency in their voices made me feel like i was some sort of widely-recognizable pedo.

thursday april 30

today i had five different people come to my house to drop things off or pick them up. it sort of felt like living in one of those sitcom apartments where people are just constantly dropping in whenever they feel like to hang out, except that no one could actually come inside.

monday april 27

today i had to extend my usual work shift by 10 minutes to finish up everything i needed to, since hearing alice deejay's "better off alone" on a spotify playlist with 30 minutes left in my day had prompted me to watch electric circus youtubes for the next half-hour.

sunday april 26

today i watched furious 7 as part of my ongoing efforts to become a 'fast guy'. upon finishing the movie, i wished i'd somehow not known about paul walker's death, since i feel as if - without that knowledge - the kayfabe-breaking ending would have come off as some of the most surreal moments ever put on film.

thursday april 23

today i caught a minute or two of the very end of an episode of family feud, which featured a fast-money question that asked 100 people to name something a woman owns that has a strap. when steve harvey announced that the contestant's answer - a bra - earned a score of 51, my girlfriend earnestly said, "wow, that was probably the number one answer."

monday april 20

today i asked my girlfriend to teach me how to use a hairpin.

friday april 17

today i received an email from an acquaintance that was sent to me and one other person (a stranger). the level of familiarity in the email - which expressed excitement for an upcoming tv show that i had no reason to be excited about - clearly indicated it wasn't meant to be sent to me, which i thought the other two people on the thread would realize in short order. instead, they sent two additional reply-all messages to discuss the upcoming show. each time i received another one of these messages, i weighed whether i should say something to alert them that they were sending them to the wrong person, or if i should keep assuming they'd figure it out. i still haven't said anything, and now i feel like they're waiting for me to contribute to the thread with my thoughts on the show's trailer.

tuesday april 14

today i played crash team racing nitro-fueled with my girlfriend, who got so upset after doing poorly in two or three races in a row that she heatedly demanded i "email them" (presumably the game designers?) for an explanation.

monday april 13

today i was relieved to receive an email from iracing.com which said, "we were unable to process your subscription renewal." although i never actually subscribed to the site, a luke adams from kentucky did and mistakenly(?) used my email address during his registration. the monthly auto-renew confirmation emails i'd previously received were from an automated/unmonitored iracing.com email address, and it wasn't as if my credit card was being charged, so i'd decided the simplest course of action was to ignore those messages. but it'll be nice not to get them at all anymore.

sunday april 12

today i watched training day (2001) for the first time. watching it was not unlike recently seeing the first fast and the furious for the first time -- in each case, i felt as if i'd gotten to know the movie so well over the years from jokes, tweets, memes, and off-hand comments that i didn't expect to watch it for the first time and be like, "wait, this is what happens in this movie?"

thursday april 9

today i was called out by my girlfriend for wearing a "fully stained outfit" (separate food stains on my shirt and pants) when we were about to join a zoom session.

tuesday april 7

today i was thinking about going to bed when i began to hear a persistent - and unsettling - scraping noise that seemed to be coming from the unfinished utility closet off of our bathroom. fearing the worst, i scanned my office for some sort of weapon before i went to investigate, ultimately settling for a cardboard box that i hoped could be thrown over anything that might have found its way into the closet.

after going into the bathroom, closing the door behind me, and steeling myself for a confrontation, i swung open the closet and watched in horror as some sort of mouse-rat creature beneath the floor drain clawed at the grate in an apparent attempt to get up through it. it kept at it for several seconds even as i got nearer and tentatively attempted to bang my box against the floor to scare it away.

after the creature finally headed back underground, i quickly went and grabbed an old bowl that fit more comfortably atop the grate. while i was comforted that the thing's potential point of entry seemed to be cut off and that the sound didn't start up again, it was another two hours before i could actually fall asleep.

monday april 6

today i celebrated my birthday at home. while it certainly wasn't the first time i'd ever done that, it was the first time since reaching adulthood that i'd been able to do it without feeling a little bad about not having made grander plans.

sunday april 5

today i watched my girlfriend tear up with joy when our goodfood delivery arrived on time after not showing up at all last week.

monday march 30

today i got a text message from a beer delivery guy letting me know he was 10 minutes away from my house. in my reply, i asked if there was any non-cash method i could use to tip him, to which he answered, "you can send an e-transfer but it's really not necessary!"

when he arrived at the door, i thanked him and asked him to text me his email address for an e-transfer, to which he once again replied that it wasn't necessary.

i felt as if i was in a "no, i insist"-type standoff and that i could get him to accept a tip if i kept pushing. after all, if he was really opposed to it, he wouldn't have mentioned the e-transfer option in the first place. but i was in an awkward spot -- the only way to actually get him that tip would be to text him back (after he'd already left my house) and to insist for a third time that he give me his personal email address.

after going back and forth on it, i ultimately decided that it wasn't worth it just to give him $10, but i came out of the encounter feeling annoyed that non-contact tipping options aren't more widely available during these times. give me this option on your websites, toronto breweries.

sunday march 29

today i was asked if i have any one "thing" that i've gotten way more into during this self-isolation period. although i didn't have a good answer at the time, i ended up accidentally watching the first three fast and the furious movies later in the day and am now figuring out how i'm going to watch the remaining six. so i guess maybe "get really into the 'fast' franchise" is a leading early candidate for "thing."

wednesday march 25

today i earnestly said the following answers out loud while watching jeopardy:

• "sigmund and roy" instead of "siegfried and roy"
• "marie curie" instead of "montessori"
• "old yeller" instead of "old faithful"

sunday march 22

today i was in the midst of excitedly telling my girlfriend about a spreadsheet i was making to track toronto breweries' new same-day delivery deals when she interrupted me to accuse me of "loving the lockdown."

friday march 20

today i ordered takeout from love chix for dinner. having not yet visited a restaurant since social-distancing rules were established, i was unsure exactly how to proceed when i arrived. should i maintain a six-foot distance from the employee? would i need to handle their terminal when paying? would he hand the food to me, or set it down and let me pick it up myself to avoid accidental hand touching?

the process ended up being fairly smooth, but i was still going to such lengths to be cautious that it sort of felt like the seinfeld scene where you see the regimented way they order from the soup nazi.

tuesday march 17

today i went for a walk after work. it seemed like a good and healthy idea, since the sun was out and it'd be one of the few times i left the house this week during this time of social distancing.

however, based on the route i took and the way i dressed, i found myself being pounded much of the way by a nasty, colder-than-expected wind that made my ears and whole head ache. by the time i got home 20 minutes later, i was extremely relieved to be back in the house where i'd spend the other 23 hours and 40 minutes today.

saturday march 14

today i saw that the two library books i'd activated holds on (in the hopes that i could pick them up before my social distancing began/continued) had arrived at my local branch. unfortunately, it happened just after the city had announced that libraries would be closed through at least april 6. at least i shouldn't be at risk of missing the new, extended pickup window.

friday march 13

today i asked my girlfriend if we could do an elbow bump, since i'd never done one before and felt like it was the right time to get some practice.

monday march 9

today i made a reservation for my parents, my girlfriend, and myself at lucia, committing to returning to the restaurant for the first time since losing a pair of winter gloves there in december.

after mistakenly leaving them there after a friday dinner, i called the restaurant on saturday and they confirmed that they had in fact found a pair of grey gloves. relieved not to have lost them for good after only wearing them about three times, i stopped by the restaurant later on saturday evening to pick them up and thanked them profusely when they handed me a pair of grey gloves.

it was about 10 seconds later, when i had left the restaurant and went to put them on, that i realized these weren't my gloves. they were the same colour, but unlike mine, which had full fingers, these ones had half-fingers, making me feel like a 'home alone' villain.

at that point, i made a snap decision to just keep them. after all, if they'd found more than one pair of lost gloves, they probably wouldn't just have randomly handed me one of them. in the following weeks though, i second-guessed that decision. what if someone had mistakenly taken my pair and wanted these fingerless things back, returning to lucia themselves to explain the mistake? should i have ducked back in and explained the situation? would they have insisted they keep the gloves that weren't actually mine?

anyway i've been wearing the replacement gloves off and on for the last three months. they're admittedly pretty good for outdoor texting.

saturday march 7

today i teared up a little while playing the end of the spider-man ps4 game. men, it's okay to show your emotions, like me.

wednesday march 4

today i left my house for the first time since last thursday. this wasn't me being overly cautious about coronavirus or anything -- just a reflection of how uneventful my life is at the moment. think i may have picked a questionable time to start blogging again.

sunday march 1

today i was expecting a co-worker to drop off a laptop at my place at 4:15pm. at 4:14pm, my doorbell rang and i got up to answer it.

as i approached the front door, i could see him setting something on the ground outside, then turning around and walking away, which i was not expecting at all. my co-worker was just going to leave the laptop sitting outside, not sticking around to say hi or to even confirm that i got it? truly bizarre behaviour.

i quickly walked up to the door and swung it open to make sure i caught him before he was gone, realizing as he heard me and turned around that this was actually the delivery guy who was dropping off my goodfood box for the week. my co-worker arrived three minutes later and, as expected, stuck around for a chat rather than just nicky-nine-doorsing me.

thursday february 27

today i went to pick up a package at the canada post counter in shoppers drug mart. when i arrived and told the employee my name, handing her the pickup notice that had been left in my mailbox, she enthusiastically exclaimed, "i've been waiting for you!"

this was a little surprising, but in my head it made sense -- my package was a big, heavy one. maybe she'd been looking forward to getting rid of it.

"oh yeah??" i replied as she headed to the back to find my package. as i stood there, waiting for her to come back and explain further why she'd been eagerly anticipating my arrival, i glanced to my left and realized a canada post truck driver had shown up for his end-of-day stop-in, and she'd definitely been talking to him, not me.

tuesday february 25

today i decided to resume blogging. not every day, but every now and then, when something good(??) happens.

after making this decision, i recalled that i still had a bunch of draft entries from march 2016 that i never published. for some reason, i decided to re-read these to see if any would still be worth posting, which meant i got to relive these two moments of embarrassment that i hadn't though about in years and would have been happy to have forgotten entirely:

---

tuesday march 22, 2016
today i went scrolling through a friend's instagram feed in search of an old photo from a year or two ago that i was in. on my way back through her photos, i ended up accidentally liking one of them from about nine months ago. mortified, i sat there frozen for a few seconds before clicking it again to unlike it. if it had just been a matter of me liking a random photo from months ago, it would be bad enough, but the fact that it was a selfie made it exponentially worse, since i expected that if/when she saw my like, she'd immediately assume i was sitting there jerking off to this old photo of her. to top it off, she ended up not even having taken the photo i was originally looking for — i found it on another friend’s instagram.

---

sunday april 3, 2016
today i went to duffy’s for the blue jays home opener. when our server came to get my drink order, we had the following conversation:

me: "are there any drinks specials today?"
her: "cool."
me (confused): "sorry, i asked if there are any drink specials today?"
her: "yeah. cool."
me: "..."
her: "cool beer."
me: "oh, haha, okay, i’ll have one of those then."
me (thinking): she couldn’t have said "cool beer" or "cool is only five bucks" to begin with instead of just saying "cool" like some sort of agent of chaos?