Tomorrow night begins a new chapter in my life. My friends Vangie and Stephanie have convinced me that we all need to take a class. Is it a class that I actually need to take (for example: cooking), or a class that will provide invaluable skills I can use for the upcoming Halloween season and beyond (for instance, sewing)? Of course not. We're taking hip hop dance lessons. Every Thursday night. For the next six weeks.

Now, I don't dance. Never liked to dance, still don't like to dance. If you happen to be one of the lucky few who can attest to the fact that I did, in fact, dance in college, perhaps even atop a bar once or twice, I have one word in my defense: Jagermeister. I'm just not a dancer. And I don't like hip hop. In fact, I can't stand it. Fergie can lower her London Bridge all she wants and Gwen Stefani can take pride in being a Hollaback girl all day long for all I care, but don't make me listen to it. So why am I paying good money to torture myself every Thursday? Well, first of all, my friends asked me to. Second of all, the dance studio happens to be strategically located above a bar and it also happens to be open after class. And third, ever seen the abs on Gwen and Fergie? If that's what hip hop dancing gets you, I can suck it up for an hour once a week.

On an entirely different and more altruistic note, my friend Julie Kenner is actually doing something useful with her life. If you love to write, or read, or just love a good cause, check out Julie's auction benefiting Love Without Borders, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping orphaned children in China. The idea for this fundraiser came to Julie only days after she and her husband submitted their Letter of Intent to adopt Chu Yongchen, a little girl born with a cleft lip and palate living in the Chuzhou Social Welfare Institute in the Anhui Province of China. Julie's complied a tremendous collection of cool stuff for auction, including critiques by agents, editors (including my very own Kara Cesare), and published authors. Lots of signed books by cool authors (including yours truly) and other assorted goodies. So bid often and generously. And thanks for helping!

Oh, where to start. There's the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The good: Went to Chicago last week for a library event called "Girls Night Out." It was so much fun, met Kimberla Lawson Roby and had a great conversation with Kim that actually convinced me to change something in INSIDER DATING. Also met some women who told me they actually read my blog - which now puts all sorts of pressure on me to impress someone besides my brother and sister-in-law, who are the only two people I thought read this thing. Now every time I write I'll be picturing these two women shaking their heads and muttering, "well, she's definitely used up her best stuff."

The bad: well, I lied. I don't really have anything bad. Just wanted to steal the line from the movie. Oh, wait, there is a bad - lost our field hockey game on Sunday night. Such a disappointment. I'm having field hockey anxiety dreams where I go to hit the ball and miss...and miss....and miss. And my teammates hate me and I'm a total loser. That's pretty bad.

And now the ugly: It's called the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles. Yesterday I went to get my new MA license. No lines, got called up right away, took my picture - all was well. Until the woman behind the desk says, "Um, you have some things you need to take of before we can issue the license." Yes, they had a parking ticket I got in Cambridge in 1992, as well as automobile exise tax from 92-93 that I never paid because I moved to Chicago and they didn't have my forwarding address to send the bill. My $90 license ended up costing me ten times that amount. Needless to say, I left there quite pissy and called my friend Vangie to rant with a string of four letter expletives. Her response, "They don't have a system to identify twelve terrorists about to hijack four planes, but they do have a system that won't issue you a license because fourteen years ago you forgot to feed a parking meter." My sentiments exactly - if you added in a bunch of four letter words. I told Vangie I live in "F**k-you-up-the-assachusetts." Put that on the state flag.