Mmmmmm. The smell of chlorine on your skin is so.... bloody revolting. But I do believe I am quite taken with this gym caper lately. My sister and I are hooked on the rowing machine. The gym has two of them at opposite sides of the room, so we'd look over the river of stepping machines that seperated us and wave, "I say, lovely day for a row, eh chum?". It's really quite difficult if you really get into it, your shoulders tend to scream in protest, but it's fun to test your limits. I yelled at my sister to pick up her pace a bit and she yelled back, "I can't help it, I've got a slow boat!"

After that I soaked my aching muscles in the spa. The spa is set upon some lovely wooden stage-type construction, flanked by plastic plants, with charming wood panelling for that porno set ambience. From this secluded position, you can watch people come and go in the change rooms. I'm always amazed with the ease and indifference that patrons shed their stinky workout gear and parade around starkers. I always turn up to the gym ready to start, and either go home stinky or run prudishly to the showers and change there. I expose not so much as a lily white toe to anyone!

I found myself unable to resist peeking at other chicks' boobs from the safety of fake plastic ferns in that critical, comparitive, scientific kind of way. Being largely of the heterosexual persuasion it's not like I see naked breasts very often. It's bizarre to see how different they are! I am so used to the ones that I lug around, that I never fully appreciated that there are also little ones and pointy ones and bouncy ones and wacky nipples and all sorts of crazy shit. They're so diverse, but each with their own charms!

Really! It made me realise how silly I am to waste so much time being paranoid about how I look, think that this bit or that bit of me wasn't perfect or looked funny or should be smaller or bigger or tanner or whatever. Who's to say what's normal or perfect? I really should just love the bod I've been given and just get comfortable in my own skin like the gals at my gym seem to be comfy in theirs. Paranoia is just far too exhausting.

Such a painfully obvious revelation that most people figured out eons ago, but for a fretting dork like me it was all new. I got out of the spa and danced in front of the mirrors in my cozzies for a minute while George Harrison appreciatively crooned My Sweet Lord over the radio...

Saturday afternoon was spent at the NPG, (as in the National Portrait Gallery, not Prince's New Power Generation. Spending time with them lacks any real appeal for me) for the absolutely wonderful Tête à Tête - Portraits by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Subjects include Albert Camus, Truman Capote, Marilyn Monroe, Picasso, Coco Chanel, William Faulkner, blah blah blah. Great stuff that leaves you thinking, "Oooh I'll have to go get his/her book/movie/whatever". I lack the art wanker brain to wax lyrical about how good it was, but if it's possible for you to get to Canberra by July 15, I heartily recommend it. And it's only $2 to get in!