Sunday night aikido. I find that specific classes on specific nights taught by specific people each have their own distinct "feel" or "spirit". For me, Sunday night classes always have a peculiar bitter-sweetness to them: a blend of fatigue/relief/but-also-sadness that the weekend is over, juxtaposed against the energetic anticipation of the coming week. I went in with pain in my knee and my back that had been bugging me for a few days, and now afterward, the pain's gone. You'd think all that intense activity would've made things worse, but apparently I just needed to work some kinks out.
The weekend: full of glorious not-very-much-really. Swimming lessons, naps (for both $sprog and $self), a surprisingly fruitful trip to the big library (more on that below), coffee, bagels. The usual.
Four years ago now, we moved to Toronto. M said "when I was a kid, I used to go to the main library at North York Centre a lot; it was great, you should check it out." And I was all like "Yah whatever." So we took the kids yesterday, and I wanted to see what sort of things people do in diaries, and essays, since blogs are apparently kinda both, right? I didn't expect to find much, but apparently I forgot about the entire genre of the personal essay. And creative nonfiction. Plus published diaries. Um, so basically, I'm dumb, and that library is really cool, and I should listen to my wife more often. To wit: I actually found a ton of stuff that looked interesting at the library:
Hogs and Cabbagers (George Matheson, Friesens, Canada 1996) - Short reflections on 1950's Cabbagetown characters
oddball@large (Bill Richardson, Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver/Toronto 1998) - Richardson's columns and stuff, collected essays blah. I like him on the radio, so I figure I'll like him in print.
The Disappointment Artist (Jonathan Lethem, Doubleday, USA 2005) - I've enjoyed this guy's offbeat fiction, so, similarly to Richardson, I'm checking out his essays.
The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World's Greatest Diaries (Irene and Alan Taylor, eds., Canongate Books, UK 2000) - Hey, get this: people used to write about the ordinary crap they did in their everyday lives even before the Internet!
Best American Essays 2005 (Susan Orlean, ed., Houghton/Mifflin, USA 2005) - Because ya gotta have one general anthology when exploring a new genre.