Yeah, so this morning I played three sets of tennis. I answered the phone and worked on the computer network for a few hours. Then I went back to the club for weight training. Then I did some more calling and e-mailing about my tennis and exercise dates. Then I took the second shower of the day and went out for good food, wine and conversation. We talked about WEB things and travel, genealogy, good food, weight loss. The portions were tiny and exquisite and the courses many. Zoot rocks. Our friends bought this meal at a charity auction. We just chipped in to tip. Our friends brought a nice burgundy, too.

Ho. Hum. They say unexamined life is not worth living (they being Plato et al) but what can you really say about such a sweet life? Where's the drama? At the dinner last night a fellow at our table said he had a cartoon from The New Yorker that had the caption "On the other hand, the examined life doesn't seem to produce too much income." He was drinking a little and I wondered if it was true. On the other hand, why would you make it up and not just cop the line if it was your own? But yeah this is 2003 and these things are knowable.

It's true, though. Get yourself to a nice peaceful retirement where you don't care that writing doesn't pay and poof...no ansgst, no stress and maybe no words. [Ed. note: words we seem to have...meaning maybe not!]

I did see a woman taking down a lost pet sign today. I mean you see them, maybe even see someone taping, tying or nailing them up but do you ever see them coming down? Hopefully this was because she found the pet not that someone had threatened her for violating the sign ordinace in the snooty neighborhood.

Of course, even the snooty places I hang out can be fodder for stories. We took Rob to the Four Seasons bar and he left with a story to tell.

But, sadly (or happily as the case may be), my life isn't busting with tales. Not right now. Not ones I'm willing to tell anyway. Maybe that's the problem.

One thing I do want to write about is women my age and our adjustments to the world through fashion. Yes, fashion. Or clothes anyway. Is that dull or wha? And, actually, I want it to be a movie. Today when I was trying to winnow down the newspaper pile in my office, I came across a book review in a two-week-old The New York Times, The Arts section. The book is America's Women 400 Years of Dols, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines. But the title of the book review was Shaping the Nation, In Corsets or Pantsuits. I don't know if she adressed dress but the reviewer thought of it in the headline. (There was nothing much about clothes in the copy so maybe it was just to symbolize the arc of time with fashion.) Is it all the burkhas in the news that makes me focus on clothes as symbols? Anyway, the dress thing is a way of subjugation, make no miskake, no different from yellow stars or pink triangles. Apparently this is an upbeat book that, according to the reviewer, if "read in the context of recent developments elsewhere in the world, where oppression of women fuels autocratic regimes, hers is all the more enobling a story." So, sister, you can like, vote, and get tattoos and have the right kind of abortion. Dig it. But, of course, I went to sixteen years of school required to wear a dress. And two years of work, similarly. (And, yes, yes, men had to wear ties to work. Don't write me about it.] So, I dig how far we have come. But I also know that our government isn't really concerned with liberating women. Only oil wells and imaginary weapons of mass destruction. Or maybe we are only concerned with liberating our military industrial complex. Whatever. I can wear pants wherever I please. This is amazing. Really. I have early memories of an extreme to desire to wear blue jeans. There, I've said it.

And that, my friends, is what I have to write about. Pants. It's sad, isn't it? Or happy.

 

 

 

 

 

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116/70 78

mood is better, digeestion is better