My statistics class is wearing me down. Monday through Thursday evenings. I drive to the class from work, and have barely enough time afterward each night to eat dinner and do my homework, each new statistics problem laying the groundwork for another nightmare once I go to sleep. This is no way to live, even for six weeks. Four down, two to go. And the worst part about it is that I'm not even sure I'm going to pass the course.

What I feel like I've gotten out of the course so far is a pretty good imitation of the instructor's Russian accent. Why not try to get a little something positive out of the experience, I decided around week two. A good Russian accent imitation can be useful in a myriad of situations, like at parties, or when you're trying to fool your friends over the phone, or when solicitors call you can be nice but pretend you don't understand English well enough to understand what they're asking for.

So anyway, I've been taking some of my notes phonetically. I've gotten a little friendly with one of the men in the class who's a political science major. This is the only course he needs to graduate, and he's not doing well either. I told him about my accent imitation project, and he was quite enthusiastic. We've been meeting briefly after class to talk in Russian accents and to discuss any new pronunciation notations we've made during the class.

My garden is doing well, in places. I've had to curtail my weeknight gardening activity for the sake of statistics.

Things are not going to work out with the agent. For one thing, he has a client who's a friend of mine and for whom he negotiated a six figure contract several months ago. Her book isn't finished yet and won't be for a while, and I just found out she's madly in love with the agent, who is carefully keeping his distance and doing what he can to get her to finish the book. So I suppose even if he were interested in me, he'd figure it would be pretty stupid to start going out with me and take a chance on alienating his star client.

Recently, I got inspired to answer an ad in the paper. The man called me and we had a great time on the phone. He's an entertainment lawyer who, it turns out, writes short stories. He's funny, he's bright, he's imaginative. For some reason, though, he struck me as a little too nice and too friendly not to be married. The single men around here tend to be fairly suspicious. So I'm trying to suppress my own fairly suspicious nature, and I'm hoping that I'm wrong.