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