More on the gym stuff

Last night, I went to the gym a little earlier than usual. I thought, hey, it's February... maybe the scores of people who, like me, joined up in January will get back to their regularly scheduled sloth activities and leave a little room on the treadmills for me.

I was tired, and considered not going at all, but once I got there (there were two people waiting ahead of me, but I only had to stand in line for about 5 minutes) and got going on the treadmill, I got into it. There are a lot of "gots" in that sentence, aren't there. Oh, well. After trying about about 4 different locations, we've continued going to the one closest to our house, even though, aesthetically, the interior really annoys me (the walls are light peach, with turquoise as an accent color. It looks like it's straight out of 1983) and the exterior lights (the area right outside the gym, which you have to walk through to get to your car; essentially it's an alley) have been out for a month, but it's close, and they have the most treadmills ("Treadmill Alley"). The only bad thing is, the treadmills face this wall of mirrors, which I find... distracting.

Last night this gorgeous blond woman was on the treadmill to my right. I had lucked out: in front of the machine I was on, on the mirrored wall, the gym had posted their rules for the treadmills, so all I could see of my own body was the upper right corner of my head (sure. My head has corners. Doesn't everyone?) and my feet. Fine. Unfortunately, I could also see the people to my right and left, and for some reason, having this beautiful young woman on my right was... intimidating. I guess I like it better when the people next to me are old and homely? I don't know, I think I was making comparisons, which is always a bad move. She was also probably 10 years younger than me, and that always makes me wish I'd started taking better care of myself, sooner. Well. I'm there now, and that's what's important, but still. It's hard to break old habits.

(The guy on my left, a runner, exceeded his 20 minutes by at least 10 minutes, which I thought was incredibly unfair, as I had someone waiting right behind me for the final 10 minutes of my workout.)

I kept watching her. She was friends with the woman on her right, and the two of them were chatting and running, pausing periodically to stretch, and I don't know, flip their perfect hair or something. I felt slow, sweaty, slumped, and fat. I am trying to stop holding on to the machine when I walk, since I know it degrades the whole experience but it's so hard. Even at a slower pace. I'm going to keep trying.

Since I knew I was limited to 20 minutes (unless no one was waiting), I also felt like I wanted to pack a good workout into a short amount of time, so I kept my machine set at an incline the whole time (usually I build it up gradually over 45 minutes) and saved my "cool down" for the walk to the car. I was dissatisfied with the whole gym experience yesterday. I realized that I could've gotten back in line for another 20 minutes, but I went home, instead.

On my way out, I passed by the pool area (there are windows) and it looked like they were having some sort of water aerobics class. Now that looked fun. I might check that out next time.

And: the lights are still out.

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In non-gym related news: Patrick's truck is in the shop. He told me Monday that he thought maybe his transmission was slipping, and he finally listened to me and took it to West LA, where our favorite mechanic has a shop (Tony's Motor and Brake Clinic). I followed him there and picked him up. On the way home, we stopped and visited with my folks for awhile, then went to the Toyota dealer in Carson, where we looked at the new Highlanders. Patrick has been interested in the 4 cylinder model, which was just re-released this month. We got a very nice salesman to help us, a tall man named Michael (turns out Michael is a drummer, too), and he let us drive it and inspect it for a good 30 minutes, even after we told him we were really just looking.

Yesterday, Patrick talked to Tony (a friend of his family from way back), and Tony said his car wasn't as bad as we thought. Not quite time to trade it in, we'll hang onto it until next year, at least. This afternoon I'll take him to pick it up.

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Finally, I've been reading Jane Fonda's blog. There was an article in the NY Times about her, and I've always been interested in her. For one thing, she's beautiful. She's in a new play that opens later this month on Broadway, and her blog is really interesting. I bet she's fun to know. I wish I could be in New York to see her play.