The Gym Part Deux

Okay, a few days later at the gym, more shenanagans.

First off, I went to the stair-stepper where I start my work-out. Some guy had just hopped off it (he used the one at the end which the same one I like. I don't like being boxed in). When I stepped on, the handle things were slippery with his sweat. The whole dashboard was covered with sweat. It literally looked like all fluids from within him splased out all over the machine. I stepped off and used the one beside it. Why don't people ever wipe down the machines they use?

Five minutes into my workout, a familiar chick stepped on the sweat drenched machine. I think her name was Nancy. She noticed all the wet stuff and said to me that someone spilled their water onto the machine. She then started using her own face towel to wipe everything down. Why on earth would you use your towel to clean off a machine. She then started her workout, all the while speaking to me. I usually don't like being spoken to while I'm working out--to me it's like being at the urinal: speaking causes some sort of performance stage fright. But it was Nancy and she is a female and so permitted to speak. But did I really have a choice?

No sooner had she started her workout then a bunch of college aged students come into work out. There was a group of about five and then a loner sort of guy. The group peons did everything to annoy one another, short of pancing one another. The loner guy worked out and then started practicing his karate/judo cadas in one of the mirrors. The five peons started mocking him. Nancy started wiping her face with the sweat of the messy workout strager while watching the cada-dancing loner guy.

She said, "He is going to be really good looking when he grows into his own".

I had to agree. Cada loner guy had that awkward stage look about him. Judging by the size of his bookbag, he probably was a brain too. This added to his awkward nerd image. But he certainly was pretty good looking.

Now covered in some stanger's sweat, Nancy said something like, "If I was in college I would be all over him". This statement got my attention.

I looked at 45 year old, botox pumped Nancy. She had perfectly manicured nails, her hair and boobs did not move as she bounced up and down on the stair-stepper. Heck, her pores were so deadened by the botox injections that she didn't even break a sweat, nor could she make a work-out face. All I could think was "Dear Lord Nancy, please don't be the first women this poor soul touches. Let him know the nice feeling of the natural fat under neath normal mammary glands. Let him kiss lips that don't have collagen pumped into them. Let the nails that first dig into his back be the keratinized sheddings of a human body and not porcelain covered crap from a salon". Just let it be a normal girl.

I don't think Nancy has ever been with a nerd. She was most cetainly a head cheerleader in high school. I'm sure she was either president or vice-president of her sorority in college. And she married exremely well judging by the rock on her finger and the stones which surrounded her wrist, were embedded in her ears, and also dangled from her neck. Plus she didn't smell like spray on perfume, but the dabbed on kind.

I was talking to my friend Sarah sometime later that day. I asked her about nerds and their turn-on ability. She said it was their sense of innocence that was intriguing, the awkwardness they had that could be sexy on the right man. I don't get it. I always thought chicks were turned on by the five peons who spent more time laughing and high fiving each other in the gym, then the booksmart guy. Maybe there is hope for someone like me.

Happy Holidays Folks!!

Why Can't Everyday Be Christmas

Well aside from it being completely too expensive, Christmas decorations lose their sense of magic after New Years Eve.

I was talking to a friend today. She was saying that she almost has everything done for Christmas--she has just a little more shopping to do and she also has to find an outfit for Christmas Eve dinner. I am so glad that all I have to do is change the color of my tie and then my outfit looks entirely new. I'm so glad that I don't have to worry about co-ordinating my shoes to match my tie, belt or shirt color. I'm so glad that whoever set the standard for guys said black or brown for shoes. And I'm so glad that our hair doesn't have to be perfect. But I digress.

Anyway, I was thinking that after the holidays, this feeling of joy and cheer disappear too. I don't feel an overwhelming sense of gladness or tiding towards others once January really sets in. Looking back over the years, I have never really kept a resolution either. Of course my resolutions have been pretty easy ones to make: "quit smoking" (which I did, but it wasn't because of the resolution, I quit because while I was at a Kaplan medical review, I got the flu and cigarettes didn't taste so good--and then I just didn't pick it back up), "start exercising", "eat better" all those things that we make as resolutions, but somehow quit after January 3rd.

Maybe this year, I'll work on keeping a resolution and keeping that good cheer feeling going.

The Gym: A Reality Show

I really believe that my gym could be on a reality show. Or any gym for that matter. The characters that you meet at such a place.

For instance there is this one guy at my gym who has to grunt every single time he lifts weights. His grunting is so loud and animated, that I'm waiting for him to either fart or drop a load in his shorts. And he doesn't just grunt once or twice, it's constant and from the gut--so Tarzan would be proud. Today, he did something quite remarkable. I have no idea, what part of his body he was exercising, but he got down on the floor, laid on his back and started twisting, spinning his legs and going left and right. At best he was a white boy trying to break dance, at worse and goodness forgive me if this is true, he was having a seizure. The woman on the stair master beside me was beside herself laughing.

This guy then (and I kid you not) came up to the women and said something to the effect of his stamina being good for several things. I guess he didn't see her laughing at him. My conclusion was he thought she was checking him out. She replied without missing a beat, "if your bedroom face is the same as your weight lifting face--it's not a good thing". He smiled, winked and backed off into a corner.

I think there should be a policy. Gyms should interview their potential members, there has to be some sort of process to weed out members. I wish I had a camera so I could show you exactly what I saw.

And Then A Hero Comes Along.....

Recently at the library, I ran into some girls who were studying for the USMLE Step 1 exam. I didn't so much run into them, as I heard them quizzing each other and saw the familiar First Aid for the USMLE Step 1--a really popular book among medical students.

Anyway, since one (well actually both of them were cute--one more than the other), I walked up to them and asked them when they were taking the exam. One of them said she had seen me and my study buddy using the Step 2 books. She then proceeded to ask what we did to prepare for Step 1. I gave her the name of a few books and she exclaimed, "I love that one"!!!

I told her that at Kaplan, that professor actually lectured. He had even written a book specifically for Kaplan courses only. She said that she had seen the book that some of her classmates had (those who had taken the course). I went on to say that there were several other acclaimed medical authors who lectured during the six week review course. And then I told her that after one particular lecture, I actually asked the professor to autograph a book I had purchased of his...that was when my brain started screaming "Stop you friggin LOSER". Was I actually talking to a girl I was attempting to flirt with about getting a medical professor's autograph. Had my mind gone into complete meltdown? Had playing with myself on those lonely nights actually caused some mental damage? It was too late, I could not reverse the damage--the statement was out there.

She exclaimed, "Oh my GOD"--in a sorority screeching on rush night voice--"You got his autograph? What was he like, is he funny, down to earth, what?".

I couldn't believe that she was into this. And then suddenly, I wasn't turned on anymore. No explanation. When our conversation was done....I didn't want to ask her out anymore. I'm going to have my hormone levels checked.

Mirror, Mirror on The Wall

While driving today, I heard Karen Carpenter's "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas". I've heard her voice described as hauntingly beautiful. They say you can hear her pain/agony in her voice. I just hear it as depressing. Anyway, it made me think about anorexia nervosa. It's a disease that plagues many young females and a few males. Before I had taken psychiatry class, I remember thinking it wasn't real, that these girls were just being stubborn and all you needed to do was put a Pizza Hut Meat Lovers pan crust pizza in front of them and they would cave. I mean who could resist Pizza Hut's buttery crust?

I remember first talking about it in psychiatry class. Our professor was a beautiful, well dressed, physician, who was also a psychiatrist. She talked about the disease with some gusto. And she talked about how delicate the self-esteem of many of these patients were. Motivated by her beauty (and not wanting to bomb her exam--you know so she wouldn't think I was a dummy), I studied these personality disorders too. I started to see it as a personality defect, rather than something that could be cured by sliding some food under the noses of the patients. It was their egos, their self-images that we were dealing with and not their stubborn not wanting to eat stance.

Okay, I am getting to a point. Later on in my Kaplan review class, a different professor told us that we have to watch what we say to certain loved ones. The people who hold us in high regard. He said we (males) as boyfriends, husbands and fathers had to watch how we projected our images of what is beautiful to our wives, girlfriends, and daughters. His speech was hilarious--he told us things like "don't cop a feel when your wife/girlfriend wants to be held because they were upset".

The point I'm trying to make--I know I ramble: is that a person's perception is sometimes shaped by what people say to us. I've posted in the past how working out has not done anything for me. That I still feel somewhat overweight and chunky. Today at the gym, some chick told me that she could tell us I was losing weight. Of course she told me as I was stepping off the weighing scale (making me self-conscious). She said that she could tell that I was working hard to lose the weight.

Later, while changing in the locker room, I looked in the mirror. And my image was replaced by a somewhat thinner me. I guess that what I see, or what I've been looking at is not what others are seeing.

Okay, I'm waiting for "South Park" and so I rambled a little and I'm unsure how to tie all this together. The idea was there while I was on the treadmill, but once again, I forgot how I was going to post this. Sorry!!

A Christmas Poem

I got a forward in the mail from a cherished friend from my undergrad days at West Virginia University. My friend Pam's husband served in Iraq, and she sent this which I received today.


A Different Christmas Poem:



The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.

The sound wasn't loud, and it wasn't too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear..
Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know, Then the
Sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.

A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.
"What are you doing?" I asked without fear,
"Come in this moment, it's freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!"

For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts..
To the window that danced with a warm fire's light
Then he sighed and he said "Its really all right,
I'm out here by choice. I'm here every night." "It's my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.
No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I'm proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at ' Pearl on a day in December,"
Then he sighed, "That's a Christmas 'Gram always remembers."
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ' Nam ',
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.
I've not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he's sure got her smile.

Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue... An American flag.
I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall."

"So go back inside," he said, "harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I'll be all right."
"But isn't there something I can do, at the least,
"Give you money," I asked, "or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you've done,
For being away from your wife and your son."
Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
"Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us."

Christmas will be coming soon and some credit is due to our U.S. Service men and women for our being able to celebrate these festivities. Let's try in this small way to pay a tiny bit of what we owe. Make people stop and think of our heroes, living and dead, who sacrificed themselves for us.