So, it's official, I'm doing Namowrimo ! Okay, so it's probably not officially official until I register in October, but as I have been talking about it, my language has drifted from "this thing that I'm thinking of doing" to "this thing that I'm doing" without me noticing. And Andi wants to do it to, and she suggested we could grab her laptops and write in cafes (I almost wrote cages - what a visual!) and have all-nighters and it all just sounds delightfully fun.

I have not written here as much as I've wanted to - work has been just insanely busy (I can't wait to take time off to go to Boston, although who knows when that baby's coming? I think my mini-trip will probably wind up being early October at this rate) and I've been really busy and I also tend to hold off on writing because I want to write something important and I've just gotta let go of that. Nanowrimo to the rescue!

Brian tells me that random musings about monkeys and ninjas are perfectly A-OK for Nanowrimo. Rose , I think that's just up your alley!

So nothing at all important in this entry, unless I feel like it.

I really ought to go to bed, seeing that it's almost midnight, but I just got home and I am not so good at getting to bed right away, no matter what time I get home. Bad habit! I want to write this entry, and then do some email (I'm having some really enjoyable correspondence lately and I'm itching to get at it) and I also wouldn't mind popping up some popcorn and watching a movie on HBO on Demand, but hello, it's only Tuesday night! Damn grownup responsibilities!

(Probably not a direct quote, but I just heard this and it had me on the floor. Leela from Futurama: "Sure, I'd like to be a witch, but only if I get to hurt people and not just dance around on the equinox.")

So tonight I went with Andi and a bunch of the NAAFA crew to see Doron perform in his first live performance in the states (and he's been in the US for ages, so this was really a big thing for him.) He was marvelous! He is completely modest, too, because his bio was incredible - he was so accomplished and acknowledged in Israel, and he doesn't really talk about that much, and he has gone through a lot of hardships in the states as well that he also doesn't talk about much, and he is so unassuming (and I mean that in the most complimentary way) that you'd never know he was such an incredible talent until he picks up that violin! I know not a thing about classical music (my whole collection consists of Classical Thunder , parts 1-3) but it was such a joy to watch him, he was so expressive, and I've always liked the violin, and I was sitting in this church (it was a Lutheran church at 53rd and Lex, I don't remember the name, but it's an architecturally lovely building, with clean lines and high ceilings and quietly rippling pools of water) and surrounded by good friends and listening to this music and I felt so at peace, so at home in my body and my mind, I felt like hey, being me, being Aimee, hey, that's a good thing, this is a good life.

Those moments of peaceful bliss (blissful peace?), that's really what it's all about.

I also got to meet Doron's friend Josh tonight, whom I've heard about since I met them in February; he's a one-armed trumpet player (a good instrument to choose having only one arm) and a music teacher and absolutely adorable - I told Andi, "hey, you never told me he was so cute!" - and she said she would discreetly hint around for me. I actually don't know how I feel about dating friends of friends - what an awful position to be in if things go wrong! - but it was just a lot of fun to hang out with them on the subway platform and laugh non-stop as we waited (a long time!) for the E train to show up.

I cleaned my room this weekend, pretty significantly, and it looks SO lovely, I am really enjoying spending time in here. I bought purple daisies to put in my purple cracked-glass vase, and two new houseplants, an ivy of some sort and a peace lily (any horticulturists in the house? The lily is getting yellowed leaves already and I thought it was getting enough sun but maybe not), and I vacuumed and cleaned the rug, and although there's still a lot of organizing to do, it feels so cozy and tranquil and homey. When I lived with the louse, especially in the first oh-so-horrible apartment (Brian#1, perhaps you could help explain how brutally inhospitable it was; I try to block it out!), he kept everything so dark and dingy and everything new we bought (oh, who am I kidding, everything new I bought, I bought everything) was black or navy, everything so sucking of color and vibrancy and vitality and the mere act of buying yellow curtains or pastel sheets seems like such freedom and celebration.

Oooh, my feet hurt - I've been wearing my kick-ass five dollar Payless not-quite-platform Mary Janes for two days in a row because they look great, but oh my unhappy feet! Tomorrow it's all sneakers all the way, baby!

One of my boss's doctoral students came by today and she is the sweetest woman you could ever meet - she hugs me every time she sees me - and today she was chatting with me and she complimented me on my necklace and earrings (both glittery and a tad over-the-top) and told me that I always look so lovely and fashionable and I almost fell off my chair. Lovely, fine, but fashionable? That was so unexpected - I know that I have lately enjoyed putting together outfits more often, but mainly just to avoid that out-of-sorts feeling bad clothes (bad looking or worse, bad fitting) give me, that "oh god, everyone's looking at me" constantly picking at my clothes, frumpy grumpy feeling I get when I wake up at 8:15 and dash out the door at 8:30 without even looking in the mirror. Hee! Yesterday I wore my posture bra that is really ugly but makes my back feel great and I forgot that it's got sports bra type straps and I wore a blouse with a wide neckline and made it all the way though our staff meeting when I went to the bathroom and realized that the wide bands of my bra were totally visible. Ugh. I wound up tucking my blouse under the straps.

My, I am rambling tonight!

Sunday I went to a hip hop dance workshop hosted by Big Moves , which is a non-profit organization that promotes size diversity in the dance world. They're based in San Francisco, but are trying to expand to the east coast; I did their first workshop in July and enjoyed it but everyone seemed to pick it up better than I did and I felt really clumsy and bad at it and somewhat bad about myself, even though it felt good to do too. But something about this time was so much better. I still wasn't great at it (I'm too slow a learner when it comes to physical things to pick up everything in two hours, not to mention I have no rhythm) but I just had fun. I think it helped that Andi came this time - she was great at it, and had such fabulous energy, it was infectious. Marina, the founder and instructor, has a performing hip hop troupe called the Phat Fly Girls out in SF, and she wants to eventually get one out here, and lately I've been thinking, "hey, maybe I could do that!" I don't know if I am coordinated or talented enough to learn it with enough flair for performing, but it's worth a try.