wednesday may 19

today i bought a big bag of ketchup chips in preparation for an evening mini-marathon of the final four episodes of the sopranos. i popped open the chips when i started watching the first of the series' last four episodes and got sick of them at about its 20-minute mark, ultimately going foodless for the last three and a half eps.

tuesday may 18

today i was sitting at the blue jays game when the guys behind me started talking about baseball video games. one opined that there should be a feature in the newest video games that let you sit in the stands and watch a game being played. even in a world where the sims is one of the most popular video games, this wish struck me as insanely lazy and unnecessary.

monday may 17

today i had a dream that i went to a music/video store in hopes of buying an r. kelly album. they had sold out of the one i wanted, but as i browsed the "r. kelly" section, i noticed new chapters of trapped in the closet had been released!! when i awoke from the dream, the first thing i did was hit wikipedia to see if there'd been any updates regarding trapped, to see if my dreams were trying to tell me something. there hadn't been, and they weren't.

sunday may 16

today i went grocery shopping and attempted to buy hamburgers for the bbq we were hosting in the evening. at the grocery store, i surveyed the burger section up and down, confused by all the options available to me and unsure which one to choose. at one point, i ultimately even had to decide between one box labeled "barbecue" and another labeled "bbq." i chose "bbq" and it wasn't until much later in the day, when the box had been flipped over, that i found out barbecue was just the french version of bbq. this would've saved me a few seconds of angst at the grocery store.

saturday may 15

today i had my roommate take my ticket from last night's blue jays game to pizza pizza, in hopes of securing the free slice of pizza i'd won when the jays struck out seven batters in the game. when she got there, however, she was informed that pizza pizza wouldn't be accepting friday's tickets until monday. i'd gotten so excited though about the prospect of eating pizza today that i ended up going back to the restaurant later and just buying an entire pizza. maybe that was their plan all along.

friday may 14

today i was walking past a schoolyard during recess when i saw a boy kick a rubbery, soccer-sized ball directly into a girl's face. this was immediately followed by a loud "ohhhhhhh!" from most of the kids on the field that had seen it happen. a crowd formed around the victim of the errant kick to see if she was all right, and i'm happy to report that she probably was.

thursday may 13

today i did a massive clean-up of my room. the high point of this project was finding a $20 u.s. bill that i'd been sent over a year ago, as my cut of the prize money for finishing third in a 2008 fantasy baseball league. having forgotten entirely that i'd never spent the cash, the discovery was exciting, although i sort of wish i'd converted it to canadian currency a year ago, when it would've been worth more.

wednesday may 12

today i got really excited while looking at a friend's last.fm page, since many of the bands atop her recent charts were ones that i liked, and ones she must have heard about from me. about three seconds later, i realized i wasn't on her page at all, but was on my own page, looking at my own charts.

tuesday may 11

today i left my house at about 8:50 pm to head to my friend's place to watch lost. as i walked down my front steps, the old italian woman who lives next door approached me on the sidewalk, yelling to get my attention. she was holding her television remote control in her hand and didn't appear to be dressed for the rainy, five-degree weather (no jacket!). she frantically started gesturing at her remote and speaking to me in broken english. after a few seconds of this, i threw up my hands in question, unable to understand exactly what she was saying to me. seeing my confusion, she exclaimed "come on!" and waved me into her house.

upon entering her home, i was led into the living room, where she once again attempted to demonstrate the problems she was having with her remote control. she would enter a channel number, the channel wouldn't change, and she would exclaim "same!" figuring i had a handle on what the problem was now, i fiddled with the remote for about 20 seconds until i figured out how to get the channels changing again. it was hard to tell if she was totally satisfied with my work, but nonetheless she thanked me and i said goodbye, continuing on to my friend's place, just in time for lost.

the entire exchange left me with a lot of questions: had she just been wandering along the sidewalk in hopes that someone would come along to help her? had i fixed the problem, or was there another issue i wasn't understanding? and was she really frantic to watch lost at 9:00 too, and worried she wouldn't be able to change the channel in time??

monday may 10

today i decided to log in and check out an opportunity that had recently opened for me. i'd been approved to write for demand studios, a company that pays freelance writers to write "how to" articles. i figured at worst it could be an easy occasional source of extra income, but the site's list of possible assignments changed my mind. after browsing through approximately 200 assignment titles, i didn't see a single one that i was remotely qualified to write. favourites included:

• how to recover & clean the carpet of a 125 gallon truck mount
• how to repair a GE spacemaker dryer
• how to become a singer in greece
• how to start a small business in nigeria
• how to build a glass waterfall
• how to start a non-emergency transportation business

ultimately, i decided that the research required for me to write on ANY of these subjects would probably not be worth it for $15 per article.

sunday may 9

today i played euchre with my family and did NOT let my mother win. happy mother's day!

saturday may 8

today i asked a friend if he'd heard any good albums lately, to which he immediately and definitively replied "nope." after a few awkward moments processing this unusually standoffish response, we realized that he hadn't quite heard my question properly. he thought i was asking if he'd heard a band that went by the moniker any good albums lately.

friday may 7

today i walked to the subway station to take the ttc to the greyhound station, where i planned to take a bus home to london. a few seconds after i left my house, it began to rain, which was annoying, but knowing i didn't have much outdoor walking to do, i didn't mind. upon arriving at the subway station, i paid my fare and went to board the first eastbound train that came. however, as soon as i stepped on board, an announcement played, asking everyone to unload and wait for the next train. five minutes later, when the next train arrived, the same thing happened. at this point i was starting to get nervous about making it to the greyhound station on time, and this concern only grew when i noticed an announcement scrolling along the television in the station, suggesting that it could be a 15-minute wait before the next boardable train arrived. this news prompted me to leave the station, having spent three dollars to stand on the subway platform for 15 minutes, and attempt to find a cab outside (where the rain had picked up). after a few unsuccessful, wet minutes, i ultimately decided to go back home, go back to bed, and take a bus later in the day. no regrets.

thursday may 6

today i went to the bank to deposit a cheque. before i could do so, the teller asked to see some form of identification to confirm my full name. when i handed her my driver's license, she looked up at me and made a comment about how i looked much better with short hair (currently) than longer hair (as seen in my driver's license photo). this resulted in my spending the next ten minutes attempting to figure out if she'd been flirting with me or not.

wednesday may 5

today i received a text from a friend inviting me to an event happening tomorrow night. the invitation was mostly a formality, since he already knew i wanted to come, so i decided to have a little fun with my reply. i sent back a text that read simply "no thanks," before sending a second text a minute later that read "just kidding, sounds good. i'm game." unbeknownst to me until hours later, he only received the first of the two texts, and spent the rest of the day thinking that i was just sort of a jerk.

tuesday may 4

today i was hanging out at my house when my roommate arrived home, telling a great story about how she'd just witnessed two policemen tackling someone to the ground outside the nearby lcbo. it sounded like the perfect sort of anecdote that i'd use for this blog, and i was a bit jealous that she'd seen it instead of me. i even considered quickly heading down to the corner to see if i could catch the tail end of the altercation, but assumed i wouldn't make it in time.

monday may 3

today i thought i saw a guy walking down the street wearing 3-d glasses, but they turned out to just be really ugly sunglasses.

sunday may 2

today i entered the kitchen, the morning after a small party at our house that i had mostly not attended. noticing a near-empty box of breton garden vegetable crackers, i looked in my food cupboard and confirmed that the crackers had in fact been mine. rather than being perturbed that food had been pulled out of my closet to help fed the guests, i was mostly amused; i'd forgotten that the half-eaten box of crackers was in there, having bought it over a year ago.

saturday may 1

today i was standing in line outside a bar when i was asked by a group of friends if i wouldn't mind taking their photo. a girl handed me her iphone, instructing me how to take the picture, but i still struggled slightly with it. when i finally managed to take what i thought was a nice photo, she immediately said "i think your finger was in it...." and asked me to take another one. she appeared disappointed with the second result as well, but seemed to recognize that asking me to take a third would be overstepping her bounds.

friday april 30

today i made my third consecutive trip to the lcbo in which i was complimented by an employee for bringing along a no-longer-manufactured cardboard tallboy-carrier. it's gotten to the point now where i have a prepared shtick to fall back on, and specific comments and jokes to make, because i know their praise is coming.