Friends, two firsts happened to me at the gym today.
1. They ran out of towels twice, so for my shower I had to use one of the tiny towels stacked up in the weight room for the lifters to use to clean their sweat off the bench, and
2. I Zumba'd.
I actually rearranged my appointment with my therapist so I could try this Zumba class because I had heard it was so fun. It's so popular at my gym that you need to pick up a pass at the desk before the class starts, because otherwise the room would fill up. I made sure to situate myself in the far back. The instructor was tiny and tan and wiry and apparently spine-free, so frenetically and effortlessly did her hips swivel and shake independently from the rest of her body.
I am relieved to say I was not the only one having trouble following the moves. I did ok, all things considered. I am fairly uncoordinated — I sometimes have trouble remembering to alternate my legs as I walk down the stairs, seriously. But I kept up, mostly. Though my neighbor complained of burning thighs from all the squats and such, my legs felt fine. I did start feeling it in a bad way in my knees, however, which made me feel old. (The multiple girls with words printed on their asses also made me feel old, but also a little superior.) At one point I got a bad stitch in my side and had to just stand there while everyone else hip-swiveled and did the salsa step back and forth. By the end of it my face was flushed, in the weird way it gets sometimes when it's like the blood has filled every single capillary. My face was super-hot, so red as to be purple. It's not a good feeling. After my shower with the ratty, tiny towel (which tore as I inadequately dried myself), I drove home with the air conditioning directed directly into my face. But only a chocolate eclair bar got me completely back to normal.

I can see why people like Zumba, but I think I need a class that's more about proper form and less about dance steps, since my knobby, inward-facing knees are prone to being messed up.

Does anyone else hate my new template? I'm not sure, but I think instead of growing on me, it's shrinking. Or growing mold, instead of something good like carrots or affection.

Speaking of growing! Me and my neighbor/coworker/awesome friend K finally put together our square foot gardens this past Sunday. This is 2009's battle plan against the voles -- planting vulnerable plants inside 8-inch-tall, 4-foot-square boxes, with unchewable steel mesh bottoms. If the voles are brave and determined enough to clamber over the sides, that will mean total WAR. I'm not sure what we'd do. Add a huge mesh cage that goes over the whole thing? Affix broken glass with mortar along the edges, or that spiky anti-pigeon stuff? Perhaps a tiny electric fence? K and I are fairly tender-hearted, but watching our plants last year get destroyed by unseen, under-earth predators has hardened us. We are ready to draw blood if this doesn't work.

I am going to use the rest of my garden space to grow the kinds of things the voles didn't eat last year (mostly flowers and herbs). So far in the box I have planted seeds for lettuce, chard, carrots, and peas. I actually made a second, small, 12-foot-high box -- a cubic foot -- garden just for growing carrots.

In other news, I've been going to the gym regularly, doing cardio stuff and then some hand weights and crunches and crap like that. I went overboard and played a new-to-me Gameboy Advance PS for many hours this last weekend, and now my shoulder and arm is killing me, so I am laying off the upper body stuff for now.

I am getting more familiar with my gym. For instance:

Almost everyone at my gym is already in great shape. There are a few really buff women who I see all the time (naturally, since they're there all the time -- one of them was sighing about going to the gym twice a day to train for some unnamed competition).

Strangers will make friendly small talk with you in the locker room. Even the girl with the perfectly smooth, tanned skin and the dangling, crystal-encrusted bellybutton ring will talk to you about how she's got to put on more makeup before she "gets out there." ("Huh" I said neutrally, as I pulled on my old, holey t-shirt and $10 target shorts.)

It turns out I am NOT the only one on this planet still using a relatively-ancient iPod.

I have been doing the "high interval" heart training routine on the elliptical (in which you alternate three minutes at a high heart rate -- for my age/weight, this is 147, according to the machine -- with then three minutes at a lower rate, 119 for me). In order to slow back down to the lower heart rate, I have to go so slowly that the machine thinks I have actually left the room, and the screen says "WORKOUT PAUSED" for a second, until the machine realizes that I'm still on it, moving, just very slowly. Fuck you, elliptical machine.

My gym has a kid's room with some kind of two-story crawl-through play structure (like you might find at a McDonald's). This room is apparently enough of a draw that kids have their birthday parties at the gym. These parties always involve pizza, which is delivered to and served at the little juice bar area in the center of the gym. Smelling hot, fresh pizza while you are wheezing away on the elliptical machine? Not so helpful. It makes me alternately nauseous and starving.

Anyway, there's a bunch of neighborhood association leadership stuff that I did and am planning but I've already written too much for one post.

Yesterday the guy at the pizza place said I looked like Cynthia Nixon from Sex and the City. I’ll take it as a compliment, though Ms. Nixon is like ten years older than me. Maybe I should start wearing makeup? It just seems like a complete waste of time.

In other news, I joined a gym! I’ve been there 4 times in the last 9 days (I would have gone more, but I went to NJ for the weekend). I haven’t yet met with a trainer – you get two free sessions with a personal trainer – so my strategy is to spend 30 minutes on a cardio machine (elliptical or recumbent bike), doing interval heart training if the machine’s computer offers it, and then I go stretch and do mat work (sit ups and such) and/or some free weights for a while until I get bored. I know I should up the cardio to 45 minutes, probably. There’s some science that says doing cardio at a low constant level is best for burning fat, and interval training – doing a few minutes at a low rate, then a few minutes at a high rate, back and forth – is better for strengthening your heart, or increasing your metabolism, or something. Whatever it is, that’s the one I want. My vague fitness goal is to increase my endurance and get stronger. I want to be able to ride my bike from my house to the Hadley mall and back (or even all the way to Amherst) without it being a huge, exhausting, multi-rest-stop production.

My gym also offers spin class, which is a mystery to me. I have seen the class cycling away in there, while the male instructor shouts things at them (I can’t make out what he’s saying) and I think there’s some music on, too, maybe? The elliptical machine I keep using is on a sort of second-floor balcony area so I get to watch the spinners exit the first-floor spin room after class. They mostly look happy. Gaunt, pale, and sweaty, but happy. I got to see my aunt over the weekend and I asked her about spinning, since she used to be really, really into it. She talked about it like it was this kind of transcendent physical experience, that if you have a great instructor it can be amazing, it gets you in great shape, etc. I don’t know. She also once told this story about a man passing out on his bike during class, and a helper just came in and pulled him out of the room, and the class didn’t skip a beat. I am pretty sure I would end up being that man, at least right now.

Today I went to the gym with CJ, which cost $12 for 45 minutes speed-walking on a treadmill and a shower afterwards. I've been wanting to try it out because I know I need to be more fit, and finally I resigned myself to go. The working-out part was fine; the treadmill had its own television screen, so I switched between America's Next Top Model and Man vs. Wild, and the machine had a heart rate monitor so I could see I wasn't pushing myself too much. But after I was done, I stepped off of the machine and almost fell over. It made me super woozy and dizzy. I am guessing it was a combo of watching a stationary TV while walking in place (moving my head up and down), because I have worked out on a treadmill before (not for as long as 45 minutes though) and never had this motion-sick feeling. Next time I'll turn off the TV and listen to a podcast or something. Or I might try working out with Maya again, though I'm going to have to pretend I'm a new user (which will require giving myself a new name) since it's been so long and I couldn't take the scolding.

Another short post:

My local peer group gathers to play an informal game of baseball at a park every Sunday afternoon. It's been happening for at least three years now. They call it the Hangover League or something... I tried playing with them back when only a few people would show up, and let me tell you: baseballs are very hard. Like, even when you manage to hit one with a bat — even though there's a big wooden stick between you and the ball — it will hurt your hands. And once when I was pitching, the batter hit a grounder and it popped up and hit me in the kneecap, making me queasy and faint from the pain for a few minutes.

I would only participate in this if it were softball, ideally put on in this manner, but stoned-optional.

The good folks at Bubbilicious sent the office a briefcase-sized box full of gum today. It's open and on display in a well-trafficked area, and every time I walk past a pink sugary cloud seeps into my head. It's kind of delicious and intoxicating and nauseating, all at the same time.

Yesterday I became a woman: I defrosted my fridge. I had googled some good tips (put a pan of boiling water inside and close the door, and the frost will fall off in sheets; use a plastic knife to pry off the rest) and so I knew what I was getting into. My fridge seems much happier now, and seems to be turning on a lot less.

I also took a long walk. I figured out a simple loop starting and ending at my door. I doubt I'll repeat it. For one thing, only about a third of it has interesting scenery and buildings; the other two-thirds might as well have been in New Jersey. For another, there are no sidewalks, which is fine in the country-ish part of the loop, not so fine during the nearly-a-mile part I'm walking along Rt. 5. It was so windy when I was walking on Rt. 5 that I couldn't catch my breath. I did discover, however, that I can easily walk to an open-24-hours gas station mini-mart, the Danish furniture store, the RV place, and (slightly further) a soft-serve ice cream store and (furthest of all) Holy Smokes, a bbq joint inside an old church. Because this was Easter Sunday, I saw two groups of children searching for eggs, and a third group playing ball on the lawn in their Easter dresses. I do not do anything for Easter except buy half-off candy the day afterwards. Actually, I sort of celebrated by not using my car all day. Christ died for your gasoline!

Over the past week:

I purchased a second-hand CB2 shag rug (similar to this, except mine is ivory-colored) off of craigslist. It sheds pieces of wool fluff constantly, but you're not supposed to vaccuum it. So I obsessively and gleefully comb it with my hands at every available opportunity. It's like owning a large, flat, lazy dog.

I taught new guy that a concave surface (say, the bowl of a spoon) will reflect an image upside-down. He was fascinated and shocked, and had to go look up the phenomenon online to figure out why it does that. He's a curious cat.

I've passed my 50th workout with Maya, my computerized personal trainer. She now thinks I can do actual straight-leg pushups. I cannot. Other than that, it's good, and I am feeling progress; stronger, better cardio... It's great.

I ate at the Sierra Grill a couple more times. It's just too convenient, the food is fresh and tasty, their wine list is too good, and they have $3 desserts which are just big enough for me. But: I also ate at two places in town I'd never been to before: Caminito and Cafe Lebanon. Cam is kind of expensive and I'm not entirely convinced it's worth it (unless it's summer and you're out on their porch with some sangria); Cafe Lebanon gets a huge thumbs-up from me. Their Chicken Shawarma sandwich rules.

I went to see Jaws on the big screen at midnight on Friday (part of Cinemark's Friday flashback series, I think it's called...). The print was ancient but it was still fantastic to see it in a theater. There's just nothing wrong with that movie. "Quint?" "No."