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.