Today marks the 595th post to my journal here at the Fooled By April site. It also will be my last post here. But don't despair (or rejoice) about the journal's demise just yet - it is simply moving to a new home.
From now on, my ongoing bitter ramblings will be found here http://www.joewelsh.net/journal.html.
I tried to make a nice link that would take you right to it, but I really screwed it up. I guess there's no IT job in the cards for me just yet, unless cut and paste is the new sexy cutting edge technology and I'm at the vanguard. Who knows?
So, new gym = new opportunity to be nice and make friends, right? Wrong.
To me a new gym simply means new enemies to make and people to despise. I know I've made this point before, but I hate gym people. I can't stress it enough. And I don't feel that bad about it because, frankly, they deserve it.
Case in point. Yesterday I hit the gym and it was packed. I hate going to the gym in the first place, so going and then having to wait for a machine is doubly infuriating, especially when you run into College Girl Gym Enemy.
Everyone knows who College Girl Gym Enemy is. She's 19 or so, really skinny, wears a lot of makeup, has the new Jack Johnson blasting in her pastel iPod mini and probably has framed pictures of her high school boyfriend next to her stuffed animal sanctuary/bed.
That's enough to dislike CGGE, but then she has to take it to the next level. As I'm waiting for the elliptical machines, I see that she is at 29 minutes on a thirty minute workout, and since there is a strict 30 minute limit when people are waiting I start getting ready to be miserable for my 30 minutes.
Of course, when she finishes her thirty minutes she doesn't get off the machine. She starts another workout, even as I'm standing right in front of her. And despite my enormous degree of self control, I become somewhat livid.
So I stand there, right in front of her and don't move. Eventually she looks at me like "I don't know what you think you want, but I only date handsome young guys and I already have a boyfriend, perv. Giggle."
So I look back at her like "Listen, I get it. You're skinny and think you need to look great so that the frat boys will sleep with you every weekend when you drink too much. Then, Sunday morning you'll call your boyfriend in tears and then come back to the gym to work off some of the alcohol bloat. But sweetheart, they sleep with you because you're dumb, not pretty, so it doesn't matter. What does matter is that I'm 30 and I hate you and I need to get up on that stupid frigging machine and listen to some guns and roses and try to get myself to the point where I have some dignity in how I look. So stop being a selfish bitch and get down from there before I punch you in the throat."
Of course, it didn't work and I had to wait until some other annoying girl had finished her 90 minutes. Life is, of course, terrible.
The other day at the grocery store I got this thing called "Batman Bathtime Fizzies" which is perhaps the greatest product in history.
What it is is a package of 30 colored tablets that fizz like pop rocks when you put them in hot water. As they fizz they release this food coloring-esque stuff that gradually fills the tub with color. You can have a straight up blue tub, a red tub or a pee pee yellow tub. You can also can combine the tablets to make a green tub, an orange tub or a purple tub.
I discovered that the tablets also work in other places, like the toilet. I did some performance art with them that Sarah kind of hated. Titles included "bloody bowl," "kermit pee," and, when I put the tablet in the upper deck, "why won't my pee fully flush?" Good stuff.
Anyway, I wholly recommend getting these for yourself but I have my doubts about their availability, since they come in a box that looks like it was made in cold war era Siberia and they were on serious clearance at Wegmans.
Yesterday the gym kicked my ass so hard I now have to fart out of my left ear. Seriously, I was not made for exercise. However, yesterday I did watch an old Alias episode that I had never seen and man, that Jennifer Garner is one ok looking lady.
Anyway, life continues with frequent gym visits and copious amounts of freezing rain. Oh, and no job. Sarah suggested that getting a job was like getting a girlfriend - it's always easier when you already have one. I guess that was her way of trying to reassure me that this whole process may take a while. Either that, or she thinks that I'm a really lazy asshole and should be looking for two jobs.
I am still going to the gym every day despite every fiber in my being telling me not to. I mean, I hate it there. Honestly, I can't figure out why all this research money is going towards fighting cancer and AIDS when a system for getting ripped abs by watching TV and eating candy has yet to be invented. Come on, science!
I do have to hand it to the people who set the gym up however. There is a lot of motivational material to be had. For instance, there is a wall of TVs in front of the cardio machines where you can get your fill of Alias re-runs or an old Friends episode -OR- the Fox News Channel, the single greatest workout motivator ever invented.
The Fox News Channel is amazing. It stirs up so much angry energy in me that I frequently find myself staying on the elliptical machine longer than I planned.
And so, if you ever see me and I'm in good shape, thank the conservative and bigoted right wing agenda of Rupert Murdoch.
