(tapping fingers and thinking)

Sometimes putting my thoughts into writing is like trying to pick up mercury, minus the poison. It's like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in action: the more I focus on writing, the less I can say what I mean. Like staring at a star. Maybe it's just Murphy's Law. Or PMS.

Anyway. Thanks for all the advice on washing baseball caps. I don't have a dishwasher, as Keith pointed out, but the sink should do just as well. A plastic cap protector ranks right up there with salad spinners on my list of priorities. But while I'm laughing, someone, somewhere, is saying, "Dude, that is so cool!"

My upstairs neighbor Misha is being violent again. Loud thumps and crashes. I can't figure out if it's a tantrum or rough sex. I can't decide if that's a good thing.

I met with my eye doctor to pick up my lenses this afternoon. She's a little Thai woman with such intense inner peace that she's got her own gravity. It was like being with Yoda. She checked my lenses and my karma and sent me on my way, enlightened.

I took my good mood to the post office, where I ran into Brett. This is a good thing. Brett works at my gym; she was the one who gave me the tour and signed me up. (Yes, Brett's a woman. Didn't you ever read The Sun Also Rises? Neither did I.) She's a grown-up tomboy with a ponytail and a wise-ass grin, and we got along right away. She was headed to the Y to swim, I was headed to the gym, but we decided on Starbucks instead because it was warm and out of the snow.

By the time we left, the gym was in full rush-hour hell mode. I spent eight miserable minutes on a cross-trainer before an elliptical machine opened up. I'm just not tall enough for the cross-trainers; the poles yank me forward with each step and it's hell on my back.

Fifteen minutes into the first session, bored and dragging, I noticed a woman on a treadmill on the other side of the room. She was tall and athletic and blonde and she ran with the easy, tireless pace of a serious runner. She looked like a vitamin commercial. She reminded me of the opening to "The Bionic Woman" with Lindsay Wagner running joyfully in slo-mo toward the camera, blonde hair bouncing behind. I looked like a sitcom. That whole train of thought kept me going. So thanks, Lindsay.

The snow was falling in big, cinematic flakes as I walked home through Copley Square tonight. A couple of teenagers in t-shirts were goofing around in the empty fountain on skateboards, jumping the boards up the steps. I love those kids. Urbanicus juvenaliae, subspecies skateriae. They're as much a part of the city as pigeons and taxis. I'm not sure why they have such a bad rep; in my experience they tend to be nice kids. And they make me smile.

All the same, I was glad to get home. I worked out really hard and my joints hurt, especially my hips. (Bitch, moan, complain, you want some cheese with that whine?) I've had a hot shower and some ibuprofen and some pita chips; now I need sleep. Eventually.