What's that saying? If you can't join 'em, beat 'em.

I made an appointment today at 5 pm for looking at an apartment that's extremely out of my price range, but also extremely conveniently located (and is possibly extremely large). I forgot to ask if they allow pets. I also got weird vibes from the person on the phone. But did I just say "no thank you"? No, I said "sure I'll see you at 5". So now I'm leaving work early to let Sophie out, go look at the apartment, then come back downtown to work a training from 6 pm to 8 pm. Despite this being inconvenient and possibly just a waste of time, I still feel a pull to see it, if only to get me in the mindset for apartment-hunting. I mean, obviously there's some pull since I'm going through all this juggling to make it happen. And who knows, it might be fabulous enough that it's worth finding extra income.

On the train this morning I was thinking about what class to take at Old Town this fall (redeeming my fabulous birthday gift from Lowenstein), and although there's an appeal to picking up a totally new instrument like mandolin or cello, not only is it extremely impractical (I would have to rent the instrument for the class, then once it was over, I wouldn't be able to afford to buy one to put my new knowledge to good use) but also I realized that I was sort of running away from an opportunity to do something seriously I've been talking about for awhile. The obvious class for me to take is the one on sound recording techniques, but I put this block up on it, thinking that was too "practical" and I should do something fun. But the whole reason I wanted to do sound engineering is because it's fun for me. Why did I forget that? It's like my brain put this block up that just because I might want to make it my work and get paid for it, work = bad. This defeats the whole purpose of my campaign to build my life in such a way that I'm not miserable. Also, I'm tired of having such a short attention span and getting involved in something on a superficial level than taking up something new before I give myself a chance to really learn and grow and yes, possibly mess up and fail. Taking on lots of new hobbies might sometimes give the appearance that I'm just a Renaissance Person who needs lots of stimuli, but sometimes it's nothing but a defense mechanism.

So yes, I'm going to take the Recording Arts class. My inner voice of doubt has been overrruled. Let's move onto the next agenda item.

In other news, I'm completely in love with Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones.

( this is the kind of poetry I can get behind )

It ain't over til it's over.

I'm ridiculously sleepy. I can't believe I have to come back to the damn office this evening for a training session. The upside is that I will hopefully have volunteers to do some of my grunt work. So, you know, I can sit online and not worry about the tasks getting done because the person not getting paid will do them. Though to my credit, whenever I have a volunteer or intern working for me, I become way more productive myself, so it's a good motivator.

I really just want to go home and stretch out on my couch and watch a movie. Or episodes of While You Were Out. Then maybe eat a few oreos and pass out at 10 pm. Mmmmm, sexy. I suppose my fantasy can still come true later on in the evening, after work. After an extremely socially stimulating weekend that started Thursday evening and continued all the way until nearly midnight last night, I'm in dire need of some more peace and quiet. Last night I had a good dose before bedtime, but it's not quite a full recharge.

This entry served no purpose except to help keep me awake another five minutes. So I will tell a random story. Warning: contains tennis jargon and mid-90's references that are probably hugely obsolete and forgotten by most others.

I knew precious little about tennis prior to the summer of 1993 when I visited London, including a day trip to the lawns of Wimbledon on the day of the women's final. I maybe had as much knowledge of tennis as any other random sport -- knew some names and faces and events and occasionally some of the drama, including the recent stabbing of Monica Seles. It was so recent at that point that she was still in the profiles section of the Wimbledon program.

We had tickets for Court One where the teen girls were playing. I watched them for all of five minutes, and now wish I'd at least bothered to jot down their names because I might have been watching some future big name, like that horrible Hingis or Kournikova. Actually, maybe it's just as well I don't remember.

Most of our day was spent walking around the grounds, watching the women's finals on the big screen while sitting on the lawn. Steffi Graf was losing, and I sort of wasn't sure if I liked her at that point. We wandered to the back courts and ended up following this small crowd who'd gathered around two spots. One had Jim Courier playing with a Stefan Edberg lookalike, the other had Pete Sampras playing with a hitting partner. I was drawn to Jim and his nerdy nature. I immediately hated Sampras with no discernible reason. My teacher/chaperone confirmed it when she announced to us that he was currently ranked number one but had never one a major tournament. That hardly seemed fair to me, and I suspected some bullshit number crunching (that would later get confirmed the next year when everyone and their mom's tennis coach started complaining about those damn clay courters). My teacher then went on and on about how sexy and attractive Sampras was and how graceful he was as a player.

She's leaning in towards my ear, saying these things, and I'm transfixed by his ape-like loping around and annoying cockyness. And I swear to god, as she went on and on about how hot he is, I thought, "I don't know if I'm cut out for this having sex with men thing. I don't understand why people think THAT is attractive."

I still hate Sampras. But I do understand wanting to have sex with men.

Epilogue: My teacher/chaperone made us leave early so we could get dinner in the city with the bigger group, telling us the rest of the match would be over soon. Seconds after we caught a cab, Jana Novotna started choking and Graf came back to win. I can't believe I missed Novotna crying on the Duchess's shoulder.