wednesday august 19

today i arrived at christie pits shortly before the maple leafs’ playoff game against the barrie baycats got underway. having stopped on the way to the park at brock sandwich, i was excited to pull out my crispy chicken sandwich and eat it as soon as i sat down on the hill, but before i could take a bite, a voice over the loudspeaker encouraged everyone to stand up and take off their hats for the national anthem. normally for the playing of "oh canada," i’d stand up and put my hat over my heart, but in this case, the fact that i was holding my sandwich complicated matters. not wanting to risk dropping the sandwich, i put my hat on the ground and stood up with my sandwich over my heart instead. felt real patriotic.

tuesday august 18

today i was washing my hands in my bathroom when i looked in the mirror and noticed a little spider hovering just to the left of my head. i slowly moved my head to the right, and sure enough, it moved right along with me, suggesting that i’d walked into a web. while there may have been more logical ways to react to this, the reaction i chose to have was to karate chop the air between my head and the spider. somehow, this worked perfectly, knocking the spider harmlessly down to the floor, where i was able to dispose of it.

monday august 17

today i had a dream that one of my longtime friends was running for political office and i had to decide whether it made sense to try to delete all of our past correspondence from the internet and my hard drive in case there was something incriminating in there that might cost him votes.

sunday august 16

today i was eating lunch with a few co-workers in the press box at rogers centre before the blue jays game, when the subject of dodgeball came up. a couple of my co-workers - including one who is a phys-ed teacher during the school year - told some amusing anecdotes about the dangers of dodgeball, while i sat back, smugly, waiting until they were done so i could flash my arm scar and deliver the trump card of dodgeball stories. after i did, one of those co-workers thanked me for waiting until after he told his story to tell mine, since his dodgeball-related injury seemed pretty paltry by comparison.

saturday august 15

today i threw a couple burgers on the grill and ducked in and out of my house, checking periodically on the burgers while i got everything else ready inside. when the burgers were almost done, i brought out the buns to toast them on the barbecue, and while i was standing there waiting for them to finish, my next-door-neighbour wayne popped up a few feet away from me, on his side of the fence.

"hey luke," he said. "you want some tomatoes for those burgers?"

this question caught me off guard, not only because i didn’t see him coming before he started talking, but also because i was confused about how he knew i was cooking burgers. i guess the smell probably gave them away, but i was distracted by the idea that he’d been peering over the fence to try to get a look at what was on the grill. when i was finally able to process the question, i didn’t want to say yes, since him getting me a tomato might not happen quickly, and the burgers were literally about 20 seconds away from being ready. i didn’t want to stand around waiting for tomatoes — i wanted to bring my burgers inside as soon as possible so i could start watching an episode of catastrophe while i ate dinner.

"oh that’s okay, i actually have some tomatoes inside," i replied, probably unconvincingly, since it was a lie. still, i think i saved face when i added that the tomatoes he was growing in his backyard were starting to look pretty good, and i was able to pull away from the conversation and take my burgers inside within 60 seconds or so, which i also viewed as a win. probably will have to try those tomatoes at some point though.

friday august 14

today i received an email from a friend with the subject line "hi i had to lie for the sake of my integrity."

thursday august 13

today i was hanging out with a co-worker before the blue jays game, chatting and keeping an eye on the jumbotron, which was showing a bunch of photographs of fans who had tagged their pics with jays-related hashtags. in the middle of saying something to my co-worker, i abruptly stopped mid-sentence, interrupting myself to point to the jumbotron and say, "that… looks like me." it wasn’t me, of course, but the guy whose selfie was on the jumbotron was such a dead ringer for me that even i could recognize and acknowledge it, and i’m usually the last to agree that anyone looks like me. "wow, he really does," my co-worker replied, before the next photo popped up on the screen. we resumed our previous conversation as if nothing had happened, but i was a little unnerved, knowing that my doppleganger would be somewhere in the stadium for the next three hours.

wednesday august 12

today i decided, after some deliberation, to watch the true detective season 2 finale, even though i had next to no interest in finding out what happened in it -- i’m often a completist to a fault when it comes to watching seasons of tv. about 20 minutes into the episode, i checked to see how much time was left and let out a literal scream of frustration when i saw that the episode was a ridiculous and absolutely unnecessary 87 minutes long and i still had more than an hour of it to get through.

tuesday august 11

today i had a dream in which i’d mistakenly typed "tarp" instead of "turd" in consecutive tweets. obviously, this seems like an implausible typo or autocorrect change, and who knows why i’d be tweeting about turds so much, but that’s how dreams go. anyway, this dream was interrupted by the sound of my phone receiving a text message. since the text arrived just a minute or two before my alarm was scheduled to go off, i got up and checked the message, which was from a friend, offering a correction on a typo in a previous 'one thing i did today' blog entry. the fact that i was having a dream about making typos immediately before receiving an actual typo correction suggests that either my dreams are prophetic, i’d somehow been subconsciously plagued by the real typo, or - the most unlikely scenario - it was just a coincidence.

monday august 10

today i went out for brunch to au pain perdu in montreal for the second consecutive day. my girlfriend and i had made an effort to go to a different restaurant down the street, but the lineup there was too long to wait out. although we both recognized that we should probably be trying a variety of places, since we were only in town for 48 hours, we also both agreed that we’d seen several things on the menu yesterday at au pain perdu that we would gladly have eaten. that observation led us back there, and i think it was the right call -- not only did i make an even better choice of order the second time around, but i got the added bonus of spending a few minutes trying to figure out if the server recognized us.

sunday august 9

today i saw a father and son walking down the street wearing matching slipknot tour t-shirts.

saturday august 8

today i was about an hour into a train ride from toronto to montreal when i heard a child a couple rows behind me declare that it was the "worst train ride ever!" it seemed like it may have been a disappointed reaction to the food selection, but i still thought he was being a little dramatic.

friday august 7

today i wanted to tighten the handles on one of my pots, but couldn’t find a screwdriver to do so. it took me a few minutes - plus a confirmation text message - to remember that i’d lent both of my screwdrivers to a friend several weeks ago. heck, it may have even been months ago. i barely recalled doing it, and there’s no way i ever would’ve remembered doing it until i’d actually needed to use a screwdriver. luckily this wasn’t a screwdriver emergency, but i don’t want to let it get to the point where i’m really worried about those pot handles, since i know the risks there.

thursday august 6

today i was rushing to get to bloor cinema after the jays game and somehow managed to take the bloor subway the wrong direction for a stop, from st. george station to bay station. i’m still not sure how i did it. i was tired, in a hurry, and didn’t look at the signs at st. george, but it still really felt like i was on the right side. oh well, it’s not like i’ve lived in toronto for seven years or anything.

wednesday august 5

today i had to stop at the 24-hour metro at college and ossington on my way home from the jays game to buy groceries, since it was my only real opportunity to restock this week. i bought maybe eight or nine things, and when i was asked by the cashier if i needed any plastic bags, i said that i'd just need one, and i could put the rest of the items in my half-full backpack. however, when he actually started bagging things, he did it all wrong, handing me mostly lighter items for my backpack and using two plastic bags for the rest of my groceries, including one bag that only had a loaf of bread in it. i had to rearrange everything in the parking lot after leaving the store.

tuesday august 4

today i was walking up lansdowne when i saw a car that was second in line in the left-hand turn lane at bloor and lansdowne aggressively pull out into the wrong side of the road to turn left past the car that was first in line. the car that was first in line was a driving-school vehicle, which made me think that the other driver’s move had been really disrespectful — when i encounter those driving-school cars on the road, i generally try not to do anything that will confuse or startle them. on the other hand, maybe this aggressive driver was teaching a valuable lesson about the number of maniacs you’ll encounter when you start driving around in toronto.

monday august 3

today i asked the server at a bar i went to if they had any drink specials for the day. they didn’t, but after i ordered a tall can, she made sure to put a paper cocktail-umbrella in my beer before handing it to me. real special.

sunday august 2

today i met up with my girlfriend after working a blue jays game that featured players and coaches being ejected, the benches emptying, tons of trash-talking, and a dramatic jays win. the game got my adrenaline going so much that when i started telling my girlfriend about it, an hour after it ended, it took me about 10 minutes to realize that i’d been excitedly rambling on like a seven-year-old talking about his favourite movie or something. it was a really good game though.

saturday august 1

today i was working my job at the rogers centre and was asked by the kansas city royals’ production truck before the game to put a sponsor’s ad on their "foxtrax" strike zone graphic after the third inning, then to take it down after the sixth inning. when the third inning ended, i dutifully put up the ad, and about 20 seconds later, got a thank you over my headset from the royals’ truck. "no problem!" i replied. for some reason, something about the way i’d said "no problem" really gnawed at me for the next little while, and i resolved to say "you got it!" after the sixth inning when they thanked me for taking down the sponsor. when the time finally came, i took down the ad and waited, listening to silence on my headset and waiting for them to thank me so that i could say "you got it!" — they never said anything.

friday july 31

today i had the first real conversation with my main-floor housemate connor that i’d had in several weeks — maybe even months. during our discussion, he asked about the temperature in my downstairs apartment, since he controls the air conditioning for the house. after i initially suggested that maybe it was a couple degrees cooler than i’d like, he asked if he should turn the a/c down a little, and i - not wanting to upset any sort of status quo in the house - insisted he should keep it where it was, as long as everyone else was happy with it. it wasn’t until after we spoke that i remembered i’d had my vents mostly closed for the majority of the summer, meaning that the a/c was probably really blasting and i'd definitely be justified in asking him to turn it down.