The Good of Gyms and a Bit of Tech Too
I must say that one thing I don’t like about going to the gym (or even thinking about it), aside from my irritation that people will pay for something they can get so easily for free, is the idea that I will walk in there with my big fat self and all these tiny little spandex hardbody types will stare and maybe even laugh a little as I clamber onto some groaning piece of machinery or belly flop into the pool. It did not help when I talked to the gym membership guy and, completely out of nowhere, he said, “I know [this particular gym chain] has a reputation for being a meat market, but we’re not like that! Really!!!” Nikoline mentioned joining a women’s gym and I wish I could do that, that would at least be slightly better, but alas, the nearby women’s gym not only does not have a pool, but they also don’t offer childcare. Because, you know, women aren’t really the ones who need childcare, it’s the children who need the childcare and if that’s the case then they should probably just find their own gym.
However, yesterday, in a rather rageful moment with my children (or one child in particular, the five year old who is currently dabbling in the very worst of all behaviors adolescent), I was thinking about how nice it would be to rip a book-on-CD to my iPod, dump the boys into the car and go spend an hour peacefully listening to someone read to me while taking a long, treadmill-facilitated walk, and I could see how that might be potentially a very glorious thing.
Plus, the swimming! That’s how I really justify this idea to myself, by reminding myself that I can swim whenever I want. Because while I could theoretically go for a walk around my neighborhood instead of walking on a treadmill, or I could workout with weights at home instead of at a gym, or I could buy an aerobics/pilates/yoga/whatever video instead of taking classes at the gym, I have no such alternative for swimming. There is a pool not too far away, but not only is there no one to watch my children while I swim (unless I am doing the watching…which prevents much of the swimming), most of the available swim times are times that don’t work for me. And the 8′ hard plastic kiddie pool we have in our yard really is not so conducive to laps.
So the gym, it is! My excuse for not going this very minute is that I don’t have anything with which to entertain myself during such an excursion (no immediate means for getting books-on-CD onto my iPod and music is not enough), but my hope is to have that resolved by the end of the week, so maybe Saturday will bring the lucky day of trial membership and the subsequent automated removal of $36 a month from my checking account.
In other news of the cheering-up variety, I made a major breakthrough in the efforts to get my damned media server working and as always (and to the great amusement of my children), I danced a happy victory dance around the living room. Now I can proceed with planning my home network and figuring out what I need and to implement solutions. I brainstormed a list of all the purposes that I want technology to serve in my home and larger life, and all the gadgets that could possibly perform those functions, and then I narrowed down a list to a tidy few and outlined the kind of specs I would need for each. It’s very exciting! A guy at work who collects and refurbishes old computers brought me a new(-to-me, but otherwise pretty old) laptop to try out for a week in order to see if it meets my mobile computing needs. If it seems good he’ll sell it to me cheap and then I’ll be able to move forward with getting everything finished!
Computers are so much fun!