Pirouettes in Snow

After days and days of feeling sickly, I started to feel a bit better yesterday. Better enough to be sassy and to want to watch t.v. Due to vicious irony, my bunny-ear-converter box broke and no longer connects my t.v. to the wider world around it. So. I discovered the evil of cable while working out at the local gym. You plug in your headphones and suddenly you’ve walked on a treadmill for two hours and seen a variety of commercials.

Gyms are strange little worlds that I’ve only marginally visited in the past. They smell of sock and sound of lowest-common-denominator rock. I have been amused by various on-line postings about how folks can’t wait for February for the “phony resolution people to leave and us REAL regulars get to have our gym back.” Such rants make me think that perhaps the resolution people felt pretty unwelcome by the regulars and that the regulars could offer to show how to use machines instead of sitting scornfully atop their lofty spinning machine. But I digress. I joined in February and go in the middle of the night, so that must make me some sort of regular. Or some sort of phony who currently can’t walk my usual three+ miles due to snow and having all my daylight hours scheduled solidly. Hmm.

Anyway, I was excited to feel good enough to finally want to watch t.v. At the gym, there was the typical guy doing speed lunge laps which is basically where you very quickly walk like a kitty stretching out its back leg over and over again in straight line around the gym. It seems to be very prevalent here in spite of the fact that it’s very silly-looking. Sometimes when I arrive, there are groups of six or so people doing these laps. It’s like performance art.

However, since the one other person was doing his laps, this meant the cable-powered machines were quite open. I decided to try something new, something scary, and something much taller than my usual treadmill or bicycle. I tried the elliptical. I got my ass kicked in just under eight minutes. I sheepishly walked back over to my treadmill and walked several miles in a short amount of time. I watched that “Clean House” show which always makes me feel better about the fact that I’ve not done my dishes for a day or two.

My story is boring. On my walk home in the snow, I noticed footprints heading in the same direction. Someone had been walking a dog and from the looks of it, the dog was large. Every time the doggie footprints went aways from the person, there was a little pirouette in the person’s footsteps. Sometimes even proof of sliding. I think the dog was having a good time.

My goal next time is to get my ass kicked by the elliptical in just under ten minutes. I am a woman with goals, who smells like sock in the middle of the night, and who likes to imagine people dancing with dogs in a snow storm.

An Erinku:
I will not rest
until I have
a scarf longer
than Tom Baker’s