Aquacise with Noriko

Being Saturday my schedule, as it always is, takes me to the UNC gym about 1:00 pm to walk for 30 min. Then change into a swimsuit and get ready for the 2:00 aquacise class with Noriko. For anyone who's had Noriko's classes you already know this is as fit a body you'll ever find, perfectly tanned, dark eyes, THE personal trainer and aquacise teacher that EVERY gym wants. I see her once a week at aquacise and sometimes she talks to me in the weight room where I am working out with the puny 7.5 pound weights and she's bouncing thirty-pounds around like nothing. We speak a little after the pool workout but nothing very personal.

For some reason today I was ready to reveal the start of dancerCIZE and the ballroom classes this coming Tuesday. Would you believe her mother was a ballroom dance teacher in Japan and as a young girl Noriko was a jazz dancer. Yes? I asked if she had seen the Japanese version of "Shall We Dance?" She answered many, many times and that the lead in the film reminds her a lot of a time when her mother was younger and still dancing. That did it - if I wasn't already impressed with her fitness career the fact that she also dances did it for me.

AND while talking to Noriko, another lady (this is in the locker room), asks about ballroom dance lessons, who turns out to be an acquaintance from U.U. days. I may have yet another couple in the ballroom class (6). All out of the unexpected. Who said "chance favors the well prepared?"

I am stiff tonight - the workouts yesterday and today have challenged every part of my body and I still have the Sunday morning workout to face. EF is happy as a clam; early this morning he began the transition from Earthlink to Bell South and so far (???), my Email is still working. I was getting tense just thinking about lost files and interrupted connections.

Waiting to see what the blog from DR brings next and was roaming the Dominican Republic travel pages to find an interesting blog from a Peace Corps volunteer. This young girl wrote from mid-05 until recently about a two-year assignment in an impoverished village in the mountains of DR. Her experiences organizing a youth club, baseball and local cocaine dealing is the stuff of nightmares. Apparently a tourism-based economy can bring money to the beach resorts but does nothing for the lower-class population. I have pursued this research to learn more about the country, it's culture and geography - but it leaves me with many concerns about living there.

My research is now turning to aesthetics and philosophy: specifically Hume, Hutchinson and Kant. Now that I've skimmed over Kant's Three Critiques, I seem to be back at the beginning of asking "What is the meaning of aesthetics?" I keep getting caught between art appreciation, architectural history, and sensory perception. The difference between pure reason, practical reason and aesthetics compares to empirical vs. rational knowledge but I don't see how aesthetics fits into that schematic. Thursday I'll ask more questions.

Tomorrow night: dinner & dancing at Fred Astaire. We practiced cha cha tonight. Rumba in the morning.
nite, nite bb