I've been revisiting some past loves lately. Here is a list (I heart lists, as you can tell):

Tennis (The first sport I ever liked playing. Me and a ball and a brick wall for hours - I fixated, even at 6 years old.)

Good running shoes (I have been told I run like a gazelle. After a long absence, I am back to my natural state.)

Franz Ferdinand (Scottish Alternative Disco. So many things about this that are right for me.)

Buffy The Vampire Slayer (I've been watching in reverse. Seasons Seven and Six I've watched the least so I thought I'd start there. Good stuff. I'll get back to this.)

Singing (Saturday during a long hot shower I sang "I'm Going Bananas" from Dick Tracy. I'm not gonna lie. There was a dance too.)

So the tennis that I played because I bought some new sneakers led me to watch Wimbledon, which was a spontaneous addition to my list of movies to watch. Not only a great underdog story, but also a celebration of Auntie Sister's 30th!!! (She loves the movie, looks like Kiki Dunst, and used to have a shirt with big tennis balls that said, "Love Means Nothing.")

Plus there was a great detail that I'd never noticed. When the two lovebirds are walking through Wimbledon hand in hand in the dark, he's carrying her shoes for her. Her SHOES. Suh-weeeet.

Buffy Seasons Seven and Six are kind of fraught and overwrought upon first viewing. Season Seven seems bogged down with Buffy speeches and whiny teenagers afraid of death. But there is a lot of funny in this season - old-school Buffy funny. Madcap hijinks in "Him," "Storyteller," and any eppie with Anya and Andrew having any shared screen time. Plus some seriously good acting from Anya ("Selfless") and Spike ("Beneath You") in this season. Two of my favorite characters because they come in later in the series as superficial characters who become, at the end, even more fleshed out than the "heroes" we've been trained to love from the beginning.

Season Six is fraught with every possible difficulty or challenge that adult life can possibly bitch-slap you in the face with, but there's some really really fantastic acting. I did not care for weeping, addicted, melodramatic Willow, but grieving, murderous, quiet Willow was unbelievably scary and heart-wrenching. Self-loathing Buffy begging Tara not to forgive her, not to tell her she's a good person brought me to tears. Anya, though usually a comic foil, shows her chops again here as a heartbreaker (the first time was in "The Body" when she has to learn about death of someone she loves) left at the altar and having to deal with her own broken heart. Another shout out here, too - I think Tara was a very underrated character. I enjoy watching the gentler souls because I think that gentleness is underrated in our society. But gentle doesn't mean dumb or doormat. She loves everyone around her and sees everyone's side without judgment, while still shelling out the discipline to those in need of it.

Ahhhh, San Diego. Drink it in - it always goes down smooth...