Off With Their Heads!

A lot has been going on, but not a lot has been going on that I can blog about.

I've been going to the gym. I've run the treadmill a few times, which bores me to death. But the treadmill allows me to focus on things that need work, like old injuries and bad form and various weaknesses. It's mind-numbing, but if I am to avoid an injury like I had to deal with last year at this time I think it is necessary.

I've been focusing mostly on legs lately, because of the coming race. I hadn't intended to join a gym just to prepare for a race, but that's only because I had forgotten that the race was coming up so soon. So far a big problem I've uncovered is my knee. It doesn't seem to be very happy. It's been several days since my last run, but it still hurts. It's a cranky bastard.

I found ... I don't know the official word for it .. a jump box? Many gyms these days are reacting to the rediscovery of the value of old-fashioned ideas like kettle bells and medicine balls and dynamic exercises like jumping. So they're equipping their gyms with stands for people to jump onto and off of. My new gym has 2, one very small and one larger stand. It looks like a stool that you'd drag around a library to reach higher shelves, but in fact it is for jumping on. I've been using it. It's easy to get because no one else uses it. I jump and jump and jump. And my knee doesn't much like it.

I also did a few sets of negatives with the leg extension machine, focusing heavily on my weaker and most frequently injured knee. I make it do extra sets. I go heavier and lift the weight with both legs and then force my weaker knee to slowly lower it. I do this over and over until my leg feels like it is going to fall off. I suspect this has something to do with my knee still hurting me all through the weekend. But I don't know that for sure. Hopefully its just soreness and complaining from the exercise and not an actual injury. With this particular knee there is just no telling.

"Off with their heads!"

Things at the office are starting to get ugly. This has nothing to do with Drama Queen or my coffee cup. It relates more to an attitude much higher up that filters down and affects all the rest of us. It's a bit like Alice and Wonderland and the Queen of Hearts' - "off with their heads!" No mistakes or its your head. Ah, but go fast, fast, fast and no mistakes. Faster, dammit, but NO mistakes. Go blindingly fast, don't slow down to think, but don't make even a perceived mistake that isn't a mistake or else its off with your head. Did you ever see the episode of "I Love Lucy" where she worked in a chocolate factory and the assembly line kept going faster and faster and faster? Yeah, its a lot like that.

So anyway, I have to stop here. I'd like to say more, but so much can't be said openly until I change my current situation.




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Crazy Coworker Drama and the Coffee Cup

OK, so I had written before about someone in my office randomly and repeatedly stealing my coffee cup and stashing it in the break room for no particular reason. This has gone on for over 6 months, and yet no one has ever identified themselves to me or confessed. Instead, what has happened is that the coworker who sits directly across from me, out of the blue, asked if anyone had stolen my cup recently.

This was instantly suspicious to me. She is best friends with Drama Queen, the office screamer who sits in the cube right next to mine and has refused to talk to me for at least 3 months without ever giving a reason. We didn't fight. I certainly didn't do anything to her. But over the last several months she went from bugging me with questions and rude observations about me to refusing to speak to me at all.

During the week of Valentine's Day, the office administrators went around and stuck hearts to the overhead storage space above everyone's desks. Drama Queen, without asking or being given permission, climbed up on a chair, reached over the cubical wall, and tore mine off. This happened not long before the coworker across the aisle asked me about the coffee cup.

And then, just last Friday, Drama Queen EXPLODED out of nowhere.

I had just come back from the gym and sat down in my cubical. Drama Queen was having a conversation with a coworker who was sitting in his own cubical at his own desk. Drama Queen isn't what anyone would call physically fit or active. And she has a huge ego. So she feels entitled, if you know what I mean. She was sitting in her chair shouting across the office to this coworker, chatting about nothing important. I sat down in my own cubical, pulled a Kleenex out of my drawer and blew my nose. Drama Queen, in mid-sentence/shout, interrupted herself to scream at me, "DO YOU MIND? I'M TRYYYYYING TO HAVE A CONVERSATION! I SWEAR, YOU ARE SOOOOO RUDE!"

I ignored her and began to eat my lunch at my desk. It was lunch hour, after all, and that's what people do during lunch hour. I finished my sandwich and began eating my potato chips. Drama Queen, who was no longer having a conversation with anyone, suddenly jumped up on the cubical wall and screamed again, "CAN YOU AT LEAST EAT WITH YOUR MOUTH CLOSED! I SWEAR, THAT IS SOOOO LOUD!"

I WAS eating with my mouth closed, as if it were any of her business in the first place. This time I shouted back at her, now turning to see a red-faced, sweating, greasy, gorilla hanging from the cubical wall that divides us (she's very short, like maybe 5' tall at the most) "I AM eating with my mouth closed!"

She rolled her eyes like a 12-year-old girl and said "OH PUH-LEEZE!" At this point I want to point out that Drama Queen is the only person in the office who talks like a 12-year-old on a regular basis despite being closer to 45. She says "for reelz" instead of "for real" and "ridonkulous" instead of "ridiculous" and other, truly idiotic and juvenile things that no adult says. And she's the office screamer. She randomly screams like a banshee whenever she wants some attention. It's ear-piercing, but consistent with the middle-school-girl theme she seems to be going for.

Anyway, at this point, seeing her face so red and sweaty and her eyes big and crazy and spinning, I realized that Drama Queen was on the verge of truly going postal, like for reelz. I also know she owns a gun, because I heard her very loud and obnoxious conversations about it many times. And I know she hates my guts even though I have never done anything to her, because she has a GIGANTIC ego and doesn't respect boundaries. People like her frequently end up in wars with their neighbors because their egos push the boundaries defining what is theirs and what is the neighbors until they imagine that the neighbor, even as he sits in his own house minding his own business, is somehow encroaching on her territory. These are the people who put fences across the property line and try to claim a chunk of the neighbor's yard as their own. These are the people who routinely park in 2 parking spaces at once.

Speaking of which, she does that every single day. She parks her pearl white Lexus, with stick-on "look at me" eyelashes on the headlights, across multiple spaces in the far corner of the parking lot every single day. And she LOVES LOVES LOVES to tell people that she drives a Lexus. She loves to talk about expensive cars and even convinced a recently college graduated coworker to spend his last dime, despite being in debt for school, to buy a brand new BMW. Or as she put it "everyone has to have their FIRST Beamer!" As if it goes without saying that you HAVE to buy a BMW or else, well, what are you?

On her Facebook page, because I looked, she has as her header a photo of a glass of wine, indicating either that she is an alcoholic or else wants to portray herself as upper class. Her profile photo features her in extreme closeup (because she's fat) with her head thrown back feigning laughter. So she's a laughing drunk, basically, or at least this is how she wants to be seen by family and friends.

So she's going postal in the office in the cubical right next to mine, and it is me that she's focusing all her irrational, 12-year-old, "ridonkulous" rage at. And I know, being a white heterosexual male, that no matter how I respond to Drama Queen, HR will side with her and fire me. So I do the only thing that I can do. I email my boss and tell him what is happening.

He calls me over to his office and says "take the rest of the day and go home. Let's get you out of the situation while I go talk to her manager and see what can be done."

I already know what can be done. Nothing. Nothing at all. I work for a company where every single decision, right down to where each employee sits, must be approved by the top guy. And since separating me from Drama Queen, even though she is going to go postal and shoot up the place resulting in a massive lawsuit and scandal on the national news, still he will not approve moving either one of us. Not only that, but she won't be fired or written up or anything. But I would if I stayed, even if I simply sat in my chair and did nothing while she climbed like a monkey over the cubical wall and stabbed me repeatedly with sharpened office supplies.

So I went home.

Come Monday, she was still there. I knew she would be. And I knew something else, too.

She is the one who has been taking my coffee cup over and over and over again. The very first time I reported it, the executive assistant said "its that group that sits around you. It's HER." She and her friend across from me were the only ones questioned about it.  But this was when I was still new, and she was still speaking to me and pretending to be nice. She pretends to be nice a lot, but when you really listen to her you realize she is talking down and insulting you. Since most people aren't so extremely nasty everyone always assumes that she is just kidding. I was still assuming she was nice so I actually defended her and her team when she was first pointed out as the most likely culprit.

"No, I'm sure it isn't them. They're NICE to me."

No, it is them. But it's not just them. It's her. And her friend in the cubical across from mine knows it, too. The whole team knows. They talk all day long, day in and day out. When they aren't shouting to each other across cubes, they are on Instant Messaging or writing an email chain back and forth to each other, always talking talking talking.

So anyway, I think I'm going to be cut at the end of this month. I'm almost positive. So I took my coffee cup home and put it in the sink, where it will stay. I drink my coffee out of a paper cup at work now. All the contractors who were always everywhere, everywhere, everywhere are suddenly gone. And full-timers like me are suddenly being treated badly, criticized in the extreme for our work with examples given that make no sense or actually show the opposite of what is intended. My team lead disappeared suddenly. There is hostility coming from above directed at me and a fellow team member. I think we're both going to be cut. I heard a rumor that it's going to happen at the end of this month. So all this drama, and the coffee cup crime-spree, is all going to end very, very soon. I knew when I took this job that it was probably going to be temporary. There is a culture of perfectionism, unreasonableness, demanding the impossible. There is a constant churning of employees. And I am about to get churned.

And then I will be looking for the next job in the worst economic depression since Roosevelt. And Drama Queen and her crew will no doubt once again strip the empty cubical bare, steal the desk keys I leave behind inside the desk in preparation for stealing more personal items from the next victim who occupies that cubical, and start off pretending to be nice to the new person, only to slowly slide the mask off and reveal the crazy Drama Queen that hides beneath.

I Won a Blog Award?

Annika awarded me the One Lovely Blog Award after she had won it for her blog. I was shocked, but grateful. My blog is pretty small, with only a handful of followers, so it means a lot to me. As part of winning the award I am supposed to write 15 things about me. That's going to be hard. But I'll give it my best shot. And then I'm going to forward the award to other blogs.

Fifteen Things About Me

- because I'm so special -

1. Blood tests reveal my blood thyroid peroxidase antibodies score to be greater than 1000. My doctor insists this doesn't mean anything, but the internet says it means I'm going to die of Hashimoto's disease. Or not die, necessarily, but it is still bad and might reveal the source of most of my health problems of the past several years. A nurse I talked to disagreed with him, too. So I need to go back to my doctor and argue about why this is not "nothing" and needs to be looked at further. Obamacare isn't helping at all here, as doctors are now spending 90 percent of their time filling out Obama-required electronic paperwork and only 10 percent actually thinking about our cases or talking directly to us. Thanks Dr Obama, for making medicine worse with all your deep medical knowledge and experience which enabled you and your party, so overflowing with medical professionals as it is, to legislate everything all better.

2. My allergies are beating the ever loving crap out of me as I write this. My nose is running like an Icelandic waterfall in Springtime. Aughlek!

My allergies

3. My best friend growing up was half Swedish, half Choctaw Indian and he almost never talked. I mean, he'll talk if I can stumble across a topic that interests him, but otherwise he is mostly just silent. And if I ever ask a personal question like "are you dating anyone" or "who do you like for the presidential election" this is an offense tantamount to insulting his mother or the Chicago Cubs. Unless he happens to feel like talking about one or both of those subjects at that exact moment. So mostly I end up doing all the talking and he will either just listen to me ramble on or else he will ignore me and watch TV. But he never says "I wish you'd go home and leave me alone because I don't feel like seeing you today." And he never calls me up and says "hey, do you want to do something?" or email out of the blue to ask "what's up?" He is Swedish to the bone. And his sisters are beautiful.

4. When I was younger I didn't care if the gym was totally empty as long as I had the equipment I needed to do my workout and maybe a good workout partner. As I've gotten older and lost all my old workout partners and most of my drive I find myself caring more about who else is around, even if we never speak to each other. I guess being alone changes things. And also getting no results from my workouts. That's a real demotivator, too, so I guess I lack the focus I used to have. See #1 for a possible cause of the stubborn lack of results. All of this is ironic because I tend to try to ignore the other people in the gym and just do my thing. Or maybe I am an idiot and don't realize that sometimes I notice the other people and sometimes I totally don't? Maybe my allergies have my brain more muddled than I realize? Where am I and what was I talking about?

5. My new car costs too much. I don't just mean the car itself, but everything associated with it. The insurance is high. The tires cost a freakin' fortune to replace. It didn't come with a spare and I'm not driving around with no spare, so I went out on Ebay and bought a wheel that fits it. Next I'll have to throw a tire on the new wheel and that's going to cost a pretty penny. And then I'll have to throw that into my trunk along with a jack and wrench I stole from another car I used to have. This sort of defeats the purpose of choosing the car with the larger trunk since its going to be full of 20" spare tire now. Blah! But otherwise it is a lot of fun, especially when I step on the gas pedal.

FA$T Car!

6. Lately it seems like everyone I know is either A) in a band, B) promoting a book they wrote, or C) getting married. I had at one point deluded myself into thinking my irregular bouts of guitar practice would lead to my joining one of my friends bands, but no, I suck too badly to ever make it into anyone's band. With multiple friends writing books I'm doing a lot of reading lately. I feel like I should be able to say "hey, that was a great book! I just read it and it was awesome." One problem is that I don't own a Kindle or a Nook or whatever and more and more I find my friends self-publishing their books electronically only, or else they'll come out in print for all of a week and then go strictly electronic. So that gives me a week to buy the book or else I can't get it. Looks like I'm going to have to buy a Kindle whether I like it or not, I guess. I don't really know what to say about the people getting married. Congrats, I guess. But be aware, you are probably having more and better sex while engaged than you will after you get married. Just sayin'

7. I instantly dislike people when I see them in traffic driving slowly in the passing lane, only to speed up as soon as anyone threatens to get around them, and then slow back down again when the threat has been successfully blocked. Or go slowly in the passing lane until one of the other drivers does manage to escape their passive/aggressive blockade and get past, and then they speed up and chase that other person for miles and miles in a quest to force their victim back behind them again, at which point they'll slow down once more. I had a guy chase me for 10 miles this morning because I escaped him and it made him mad. People like that don't deserve to have a license. What they deserve is a punch in the face.

Get out of the passing lane, you doucheturtle!

8. Farting makes me laugh. In college I knew a girl who was seemingly normal in every way except that farts didn't make her laugh. She said she had never, ever laughed at a fart or a burp, not even as a little kid. She had never found them the least bit funny. It was then that I noticed that she didn't laugh much, even though she had a nice smile. And she was dating a guy who didn't seem terribly funny or prone to laughing either. I think there is something odd about a person who can't ever find a fart funny.

9. When I'm really mad I cuss worse than any sailor I have ever met. The only person I know who cusses worse than me was a tow truck driver who had to give me a tow after a car accident back in college. And he seemed to take pride in his exceptionally creative cursing. He shouted things at other drivers that were brand new to me. I had never heard things like that before in my life and I've never heard anything like them since, although to be fair I can't remember what he said anymore. I just remember that it was exceptional. After I told my father about it, he said that some people take pride in their ability to creatively curse other people out. I guess he was right. This guy was a cursing genius. He was the Hemingway of "F You."

Ernest F-ing Hemingway

10. If you decide to take your blog private, and I have you in my blogroll, and you don't invite me to view your private blog, I will drop you from my blogroll. I think that's fair. Why would I or anyone keep a blog in my blogroll that I can't even view? And how do I know its still active even? Clearly it must be dropped.

11. I used to be very athletic. Since having 2 knee surgeries and a sinus surgery a few years ago, something changed inside of me and screwed up my whole body. No one seems able to, or interested in, figuring out what the problem is. That's why #1 is up there. It is apparently entirely up to me to find out what is broken and how to fix it. I still compete in races and things, but now its more like I'm just there for the hell of it, but not at all competitive, because my athletic body transformed into a potato. And my health, meanwhile, just continues to slowly slide downward.

12. At this writing, as far as my family and I know from what heritage we can find, I am Cherokee, Irish, Scottish  English, Welsh and Snarkish. We haven't found any Italian, Germanic/Scandanavian, Asian, black, Jewish, Spanish, Mestizo or Puerto Rican in our family tree as yet. Anyone know the official PC definition of 'diversity?' I'd like to know if I qualify or not.

13. For whatever reason, and this too may relate to #1 from what I've read about it, but I seem unable to read one book at a time. I have a stack of them beside my bed and I am perpetually reading a few at a time. Right now I'm reading "Overlay" by Marlayna Glynn Brown and "Dracula" by Bram Stoker at the same time. It's quite a contrast since the two stories have absolutely nothing in common.

I want to suck your ... oh look, boobies!

14. I have 2 cats and yet I am a dog person. I don't have any dogs at all. How the F did this happen?

15. I have a brother that I have not seen in years. Even before that, I almost never see or hear from him. The only way I know to get in touch with him is to go to his house and knock on the door. I don't even have a phone number.

And now its my turn to award this to the following blogs:

Ute
Padded Cell Princess
AlleyCat
Julie Maloney
About Last Weekend
Blue Grumpster
Our Not So Fairy Tale Life

No pressure. You don't have to do anything if you don't want to. But if you do decide to post something about the award and do the 15 things, let me know so I can come by and read them.

Irony - just as I was receiving this blog award someone dropped me from their blogroll.

Stolen Half a Meme

My last post updating the situation with the new gym didn't exactly inspire a lot of interest from anyone at all, so I'm dropping the post I was going to do today and doing this half-a-meme that I stole from Julie at Momspective.

38: How did you spend Valentines day?

I spent my Valentine's Day trading Valentine's with my significant other. And then we ate and drank and watched TV and agreed that we were going out on Saturday night instead of the Thursday night that Valentine's Day actually fell on because A) everyone else was out that night B) we were already tired and C) we had to be at work the next day and didn't want to go to the office smelling like genitalia and alcohol.

39: Do you eat enough vegetables?

No, but I watch a lot of vegetables on TV doing the network news. I mostly try to make up for my lack of vegetables with meat. If I shape a pound of hamburger like an apple I count it as being an apple. Same with carrots or celery - shape some hamburger like a carrot and it counts. Works for me.

Horror movies - Blah blah blah!

40: Do you like horror movies? How about thrillers?

Sure, I like horror movies if they're well done. I don't like really lame horror movies that aren't trying to be lame and don't seem to realize how lame they are. Or, if they do realize they are lame and make it into a joke then that's fine, too. I remember one time at a party we were all slightly inebriated and one of the Friday the 13th movies came on, so we all stood around the bar drinking and shouting at the movie. That was a blast.

Thrillers are a lot more fun to me than horror movies, but again, they have to be well done. Just having action for actions' sake, or a constant tension which doesn't seem to really lead anywhere unexpected can be tiresome. I'm thinking of a lame thriller I saw the other night, but the title is escaping me just now. A good thriller has to make you care that the protagonists are stressed. If you don't like them or care then you find yourself hoping they die and the movie ends. That's no good.

41: Do you like scotch?

Sure, I have a bottle of Glenleven, or however you spell it, in my cabinet and I like it just fine. I don't guzzle it or suck it through a funnel or anything, but I like it.

42: Who is someone you would never swear in front of?

Jesus, and by Jesus I don't mean the Mexican guy who repaired my roof a year or so ago. I'm talking about the Jesus who turned water into wine and then walked on water which technically he could also have turned into wine but probably didn't because it would have been murder for all the fish. Not that I think he'd strike me with lightning or anything, but probably he wouldn't be too thrilled to hear it.

43: Coolest thing you’ve ever seen on Halloween?

Jamie Lee Curtis fighting off Michael Myers after he'd killed her naked friend in a hot tub. Everyone wore really high-waisted paints in that movie, which was the style at the time, apparently.

44: If you could change your natural hair color, would you? To what?

I can't really imagine that changing my natural hair color would have all that much of an impact on my life except to make people avoid me or otherwise mistreat me for looking weird. I don't think I'd look quite right if I were suddenly blonde or auburn-haired. If I went jet black it would shock people, but not impress them. If I went flaming red then I'd just be a ginger and nobody really wants to see that. Honestly, I can't see how this would benefit me.

Photographing models - easier to screw up than you might think

45: What subject would you take if you were forced to take a free class?

Photography 201 - models. I used to be really into photography and I shot a lot of photos of people, but there are things about shooting models that are specific to that area of photography. I stumbled around a lot trying to figure those things out on my own and it would sure be nice to just take the class I skipped and get all the info in one shot rather than wasting some girl's time and then having her look at the photos and think you're a freak who just wanted to get her alone like a serial killer, but don't really know what you're doing. That's embarrassing.

By the way, never tell a girl that you're a photographer and have shot models and then try to prove it by taking her photo using your Blackberry. Those things have the worst cameras known to man and I don't know exactly why. You can't take a good photo of a person with those phones. It always looks awful and then, again, they think you're lying and probably a serial killer.

46: Do you use a reusable grocery bags?

Never. I have 2 cats and I need those crummy grocery bags to scoop the poop into. Have you noticed how cheap WalMart's disposable bags are? Every single one of them already has holes in the bottom by the time you get it home. That makes them all useless for cat litter because it leaks out and pours all over the floor. Stupid Walmart.

47: City or nature person?

Depends on what I'm doing. If I'm riding a motorcycle down a trail I'm a nature person. Except I don't like when deer run across the trail and nearly decapitate me. Not that they enjoyed it so much either. If I'm looking to buy something I prefer the city because there are more stores and they have to compete and their prices tend to be lower. 

Makeup - can only do so much about your face

48: Have you ever used something other than “makeup” as makeup? (Like paint? Markers?)

I don't use makeup. For Halloween I usually buy some mask that includes all the details already so I don't need makeup on my face. One lesson I learned from that is that if you're going to a Halloween party it is a bad idea to wear a mask that covers your entire face. You can't have a conversation with your mouth covered and you can't see well and generally communicating with your friends is hard. And you can't eat or drink anything. 

49: Do heights bother you? Can look look out the window on the top floor of a skyscraper?

Heights don't bother me any more than a normal average person. I'm not comfortable standing right on the very edge of a 1,000 foot cliff leaning over, but I don't mind going up and looking over from a few inches from the edge. I didn't know that my brother was afraid of heights until we worked together at a company that wanted him to get in a 'bucket' and be lifted up onto the roof of a metal robot cell we were constructing and he wouldn't do it. He said he was afraid of heights and absolutely did not want to be lifted up in the bucket truck. I thought he was crazy and went and jumped into the bucket and they lifted me up there. It was fun. 

50: Post 5 awesome things about your blog. BRAG AWAY!

1) It's mine so no one else can stop me from posting whatever I want

2) No one reads it

3) #2 is not very awesome, but it's true

4) I am glad for the few people who do read it and especially the ones who leave comments and talk to me.

5) I fully intended for my blog to be rather clean and mostly G or PG, but I couldn't get the URL omgfml.blogspot.com and I couldn't get OhMyGodFML.blogspot.com either, so all that was left was the one that I got, which of course has the F-word right in it. Oh well.

The New Gym is Haunted

So I've finally found and joined a new gym. I wrote about that last week. But there's something about this gym in particular that bothers me.

It's just so .... old.

Don't misunderstand. I don't mean the building itself or the equipment is old. No, it's the people.

A coworker of mine had told me about this gym and encouraged me to join and to come work out when she does. It took me several months to finally go by and sign up, but I did it. I did my first lunch hour workout last week, as I said I would.

I'm not joking when I say that I was the youngest person there. And I'm not especially young.

I tried to ignore it. I tried to focus on my workout and not gawk around at all the other people. But then this old man, so stiff that he walked like he couldn't move anything above the waist at all, walked right up to me as I was doing some dumbbell presses. He almost seemed not to see me as he stumbled a bit and then went around me. He was hunched over a bit and his hair was as white as snow.

I asked my coworker about it after I got back to the office. I thought maybe it was just an off day. "Is everyone there super old? I mean, are there ever any younger people there, like even in their 30s? Any at all?"

She laughed and said that she hadn't seen anyone there who wasn't old. She's younger than me so technically when she's there that makes her the youngest person and me the second youngest person. But I have to say, this is sort of depressing.

First of all, even old people mostly prefer to be around young people. Young people are alive and exciting. A world filled with white haired, gray skinned, wrinkly people is depressing. And who wants to be depressed while working out?

Second of all, researchers conclusively proved that for men, being around attractive young females literally makes us stronger. It makes us happier. It makes us feel better in every way. The primary reason is because their presence causes our bodies to produce more testosterone. More testosterone makes us healthier, stronger, faster, in a better mood and have a better workout. Everything about the reason we're at the gym in the first place is improved by working out around attractive young females because of the way our bodies respond to them.

Inspiring

Whereas, the lack of them is just sort of sterile. And the lack of them combined with a whole gym filled with elderly people is just downright depressing.

Depressing

Wordless Wednesday

Finding a New Gym

Old injury forces me to take up cycling

So, in case I haven't mentioned it already, and I can't recall if I have or not, I have moved from the city I was living in when I started this blog to a new city. I gave up my job and my awesome gym with the Bodypump classes and college girls to move to a city I don't care for where I took a higher paying and much more demanding job. I joined a gym near my house, but I rarely went to it after sustaining a calf injury that seemed to just hang around bothering me forever. That calf injury led to me digging my old road bike out of the shed and cleaning it up to ride. I rode until winter when the darkness would overtake my neighborhood before I had even arrived home from work. There are few street lights where I live, so riding at night is not an option. 

I have not run or trained at all since my last race in September or October. I can't remember which month it was. I did manage to injure my back during that time, though. So awesome.

So, I joined a new gym last week. From the outside and looking at their website it looks very similar to my old gym at the University. But walking around I see a significant difference or two.

Old city's average citizen

In my previous city, the average citizen there has at least an undergraduate degree. There are a high number of people with masters degrees. Doctorates are also fairly common. Almost everyone either works for the defense department or NASA in some capacity, whether they are employed directly by them or through a contracted company.

New city's average citizen (skin color may vary)

In this city, the average citizen here has at least one arrest for a criminal offense of some sort. There are a high number of gang members. Drug dealers are also fairly common. A lot of people here don't work at all and simply draw welfare.

Old gym's average female client

At my old gym, being on a college campus, most of the females were college girls and somewhat pretty. I'm not saying I gawked at them or anything. I was there to work out, after all. Observing the female population wasn't really the purpose of being there. But attractive females weren't rare.

New gym's average female client

At my new gym, being in this city where beauty is harder to find than crack cocaine, I didn't see a single attractive female anywhere in the gym at all. To be fair, I just got there and haven't even worked out there yet. I just took the tour and looked around. Fairly empty gym, except for the treadmills, etc. No attractive females at all. Not one.

Old gym's pool

At my old gym, the swimming pool was enormous and always filled with people swimming laps. I never got a chance to use it.

New gym's pool

At my new gym, the swimming pool is large enough for doing laps. It was filled with old white guys, all of whom had beards, one of whom was oddly splashing over and over and over, like a mentally ill person or a child might do. Only 2 men were swimming laps.

Old gym during lunch hour

At my old gym, during lunch every single day there were workout classes with a lead trainer to guide you, including bodypump and spin classes. There were also plenty of classes early in the morning and after work, running from 5 to 7 each night.

New gym during lunch hour

At my new gym, there are absolutely no classes of any kind during lunch. None. There are 2 classes offered at 5 am and again after work at 5:30 pm. 2 classes.

At my old gym, the entire building was shiny and new, even if the equipment wasn't necessarily all that new. Most of it was, but not all of it, and it didn't really matter. The main thing was that it worked. The free weight area had a steady stream of dedicate athletes, many of whom were college students, and sometimes it could get crowded despite the enormous floor space available for the free weights.

At my new gym, the entire building looks damp inside, somehow. I don't know how to explain it. I think it has been there awhile. The equipment looks perfectly fine. There was absolutely no one working out in the free weight area. Not a single person. The person showing me around said that was unusual, but couldn't explain why it was completely vacant.

Old city - I have friends

In my old city, I had a large group of friends, all of whom worked out and some of whom compete in triathlons. They had me considering attempting to compete in a triathlon myself.

New city - I am alone

In this new city, I don't have a lot of friends. Some of them work out, but I don't know which ones. None of them are into triathlons at all. If I do train for a triathlon, chances are I'll enter one in my old city and go there to race, perhaps hooking up with some of my old friends for support.

Today at lunch I was planning to go to this new gym and give it a try. I haven't worked out in months, as I said. I know it won't be epic. I packed my gym back with all my old stuff in preparation, but I can't find my lock for the lockers. I have a pack of 3 combination locks, all with the same combination for in case I lose one and need another and don't want to have to learn a new combination. But now I can't find any of them. They're all together somewhere. So instead of going to the gym, today during lunch I'll be going to the store to buy new locks.

Yeah, I'm off to a roaring start, and not terribly motivated.