uh....

Is it Wednesday already? Sheesh.

The Idiot Son of an A$$hole

I want to direct everyone to view this music video, which is my new favorite song in the world. Close the door to your office or plug in your headphones before you watch in a crowded office. (thanks to Ray for the link).

Objections Overruled!

No court for us!

I've had enough of court rooms for one year, actually. I was only in one for about 15 minutes to protest a speeding ticket in late March (I plead it down but still got a fine... I wanted to do more, but the surly ass judge looked like he was as willing to put up with my shit as George W. is willing to wear a turban) and I wasn't looking forward to small claims. Well, not entirely. But we had such a slam dunk of a case to get our cash that it might have been fun...

Here's the gist: we bought our house in September last year and as we moved in, we could see that the laminate (read: faux wood) floor in the kitchen had bubbles in it. As if someone had poked a straw under and blown them up. Obvious water damage causing the laminate to shrink and grow. So at the closing for the house, we brought it up and our disappointment in it and got the seller to hold $1200 of the money we were paying for the house so it could go toward repairs. The money got escrowed with our lawyer.

I got some estimates. Not on fixing it though. It was beyond fix. It has been installed improperly (the guy who installed it actually came to look, and of course blamed the problem on the previous owners). Everyone else said the installer did a terrible job, and I agree -- no caulking the edges, no breathing room in some places for expansion/contraction, etc.

About this time, the deadline for the seller to get this fixed -- the responsibility was on him in the paper work -- came and went. So we decided to go ahead with it. One day in October, the seller actually showed up at my house out of the blue and asked if he could get some more time. It was an obvious pressure tactic -- we'd been communicating through the lawyers to this point and it was all going our way, so he wanted to get face to face where it's harder for us to refuse him. So I gave him another week to get some one up to the house for estimates. And no one came.

In that time, I got three more estimates! But now I was beyond trying to get it fixed. We'd always wanted to have a nice tile floor in our kitchen in the old house, so I decided we'd get one now.

It took a few months since the holidays and other things got in the way, but in February a guy recommended to us came in and in a week put in our new tile floor. (My parents helped Bon and I rip out the old). It looks great. It cost a helluva a lot more than $1200, but that was still all we expected to get from the seller, since it was the money escrowed with our lawyer.

And the seller, upon hearing that we'd replaced the floor, refused to give us the money. He offered $500. My lawyer, a great attorney by the way, went slightly ballistic at that and sent one of the most kick ass letters I've ever seen to the seller's lawyer, telling him the seller was not adhering to the agreement, etc. It was great. Plus, it said that we would be going for the money in small claims court.

I filed the paper work for that last week -- but it turns out my lawyer's letter likely did the trick. The day before I even filed, the seller's attorney sent a note to mine, giving the ok to the release of the full $1200. The check arrived a couple days ago.

Bon and I celebrated with an expensive meal downtown.

And that's that. No court for me, no histrionics or fist pounding during testimony, no finger pointing and wagging of contracts and paperwork. I'm almost disappointed. Almost.

Crazy Town

I post this only as a record, not because I wish to belabor the point:

There was snow on the ground this morning. On April 23.

To talk any more of it would lead only to madness.

What Would Eric Do?

For Easter -- which I personally consider a bigger non-holiday than Arbor Day, and I think it's ridiculous that anything be closed for it that wasn't closed for Passover, or hell, for St. Patrick's Day -- the wife and I were off to church.

No, we haven't found God (I didn't know he was lost! Bada-BING!) -- My nephew was being baptized.

I don't do well with church. I believe it all began when I was a wee lad, and my grandparents took my brother and me to the Canisteo Baptist church where they were members. Now, staying overnight with my grandparents in those days was always an exercise in seeing just how far politeness could take us before the screaming began. Besides speaking to us in French and expecting instant comprehension, Grandma would feed us only foods we didn't like, from the barely tolerable (Cheerios) to the outright painful (liver -- the first and only time I ate it).

On one Sunday during a holiday season, we were seated in a middle pew toward the back and I listened with horror as the female clergy-person (Reverend? Vicar? Padre? Mother superior? I dunno) went on at length about how children should not be taught Santa Claus, but only the story of Christ. She probably didn't like that Drummer Boy stealing his thunder, either.

I was too far gone on the Xmas commercialism express even at that age to get past the growing anger that sermon inflamed. I think part of her argument was Santa and Satan being too close together in spelling, but that might be wishful thinking on my part.

(At a completely different sermon at that same Baptist church, there was stoked in my being a fervent desire to follow the ways of "our lord" Jesus. Except, in my mind, Jesus H. Christ was a kick-ass meta-human super-hero with a flowing robe and a flaming staff or righteousness! He went wandering from town to town like the guy in Kung Fu, helping the weak and trod upon with his Magic Rod (eww) that turned water to wine, and cracked skulls of the bad guys! I vividly remember putting on a bathrobe and a fake beard I cut-out of a paper plate, so I could enact the adventures of this savior turned super-hero. My brother Paul wouldn't go along with it and play Jesus's sidekick, so I probably hit him with the big stick and ran before he could catch me. WWJD, indeed.)

As I grew up -- despite some of my best friends being Catholic, but probably because I dated a Born-again Christian -- I started to feel full-fledged heebie-jeebies with anything having to do with church. I vividly remember being at some church in town for a show choir performance and having such high anxiety, I thought I was having a panic attack. I felt like a hypocrite being in such a building. Picture Bill Gates trying to live with the Amish -- that's how I felt.

It boils down to this. I have a lot of respect for religion. You have to respect something so important is so many lives, cable of driving people to doing acts of such incredible good and despicable evil. While I tend to believe, historically, the use of religion as the only basis for a decision is the road to disaster (no one expects the Spanish Inquisition), I'm also hopeful that religion can be what keeps people from going the wrong way when times are tough.

Not for me mind you. While I'm no atheist, but I'm far from convinced there's any one right or wrong way in the higher-being belief business. That was and is always the argument that most drives me up a wall: "My religion is the only religion that's right. Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Presbyterians are all going straight to hell." Yes, and perhaps monkey's will fly out my butt. Religious group-think and blind following just makes it worse. It's not the military. Well, at least not everywhere it isn't.

I don't have panic attacks in churches anymore. I even got married in one, if the chapel at Ithaca College counts. I was disappointed my wife wanted to be married in a chapel, but we made the ceremony wholly ours in every respect: nothing was in it that was forcing us down a path we weren't ready or willing to take.

So, it was interesting for me to watch my nephew get baptized in Hornell's St. Anne's Catholic Church on Easter Sunday. I suppose it's good to know he'll always be accepted there even if he doesn't practice -- everyone deserves a place to go even if they don't know it. But baby John Edward isn't likely to be brought up going to mass several times a week like most of my catholic friends from school did (and probably still do). If it's possible, my brother may be less religious than me, and his wife didn't want a church wedding -- they got married in their back yard. I think this baptism was done out of mother-in-law guilt.

Which is all well and good, but the part that bugged me was that the ceremony basically contains an oath before God that the parents and god parents (which I am not one of) will raise the child to follow the tenets of the church. I guess that's easy for some people to ignore. If the ceremony were forced on me, maybe I'd ignore it too. But, like I said, I have a lot of respect for religion even if I don't practice it. I know for a fact that if I had a kid, when the suggestion came that my child be baptized (and someone always suggests such a thing, because people can't keep they're mouths shut, especially when it comes to raising childred), I'd be poo-pooing the idea in no uncertain terms.

The big guy and I have an understanding -- I can flip-off the heavens after a snow storm and I can say the F-word in church all I want (like I did yesterday... my Mom smacked me) as long as I'm not a dick to other people. Well, people who don't deserve it. But if I make a promise to my personal higher-being, I try to stick too it, even if it's just between us. Like the time I swore I'd give up eating cake. And drive slower. And that I'd never, ever read porn if he would just make the itchy, painful rash go away.

I trust God to know when I'm kidding.

That's a Paddlin'

I'm reminded -- as I frequently am -- of The Simpsons, the episode where the old guy with the beard, Jasper, ends up having to be a substitute teacher during the teachers strike and he start's explaining to his class the rules:

"Talkin' out of turn... that's a paddlin'. Lookin' out the window.... that's a paddlin'. Starin' at my sandals.... that's a paddlin'. Paddlin' the school canoe... oh, you'd better believe that's a paddlin'."

This was meant to be my segue into an essay about the horrific overuse of the term "anti-American" these days... it was meant to be, but it's a pretty non sequiturial (is that a term? It should be) transition to what I was going to say. So I'll just say it:

"Anti-American" is our "Better dead, than Red" for the new millennium. The more people who get painted with that brush -- whether it's a former president or a Dixie Chick -- the more it smacks of McCarthyism waiting to happen, again.

(I was going to also add "Oscar-winning documentarians" above, but as much as I admire what Michael Moore has to say, he's become the left's Rush Limbaugh, never knowing went to shut up and fabricating facts to get his point across. Sometimes ambiguity helps, big guy.)

I was up on and off over night actually thinking about this, trying to clarify my thoughts on the war and the current state of affairs in the US. From the get go on Bush's push to war I've been against it, and I've only wavered recently because of the footage of grateful Iraqi citizens, and even more so the horrific tales of what happened to CNN reporters. Could the ends truly have justified the means?

But this morning, surfing about, I read some eye-opening bits from some fellow anti-Americans, especially the political cartoonists who not only draw, but write. They spell things out much better than I can, with the links to the stories that back up what they say. Political cartoons are perhaps the last bastion of truth in the world, since no one takes them seriously. Unfortunately.

So, yes, lets get it out there: I'm a rabid left-wing liberal Clinton-lovin' dove who hates that we stormed Iraq on the pretense of going after WMD and the people responsible for 9/11, when it was really about familial revenge and all that bubblin' crude. So far, no WMDs. Osama wasn't in one of Saddam's guest rooms. And along the way, we've got Rumsfield saying "free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things"-- I bet Ashcroft and the Patriot Act would beg to differ.

No one balked at Afghanistan for obvious reasons. But Iraq didn't hit us first -- or even one of our friends this time. That's because the big kids shouldn't pick the fight. Those are first-grade playground-bully rules that apparently W didn't pickup in prep school.

And there times now when I'm struck into complete terror, when I think the entire Muslim world will decide to take us on because of this. That this is just the precursor to World War III. Bush makes me glad I don't have children. (The last time I felt this much like not having a papoose was, hey! Back during the LAST Bush administration! What a coincidence.)

If nothing else, saying some of this might bring some traffic to my site as some pro-War nuts try to defend the administration. Go nutz, people.

While I'm at it: Macintosh computer suck ass, the Linux OS is for crazy people, and Carmen deserves to win American Idol! (I might as well bring out all the controversy crazies I can with this one post, as I'll soon be back to my usual batch of posts about going to the gym and fart jokes.)

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

It's 11am on Sunday. This weekend I've worked around the house in the glorious 50 degree sunny weather, eaten McDonalds and brownies and hard lemonade, spent hours on the PC updating Facts Are Meaningless to Movable Type, watched three episodes of Farscape, purchased roofing shingles to replace all those blown off in the last six months, and done very little thinking unless you count creating a cascading style sheet as thinking.

Today is all abou thinking and writing and blogging and playing with the bitches until my wife get's home late late tonight, and then it's back to married life.

Which is exactly the same as all of the above, but with supervision.

And fewer McDonald's #5 meals.

Wiping Away a Job Offer

It's no secret that I've always hoped -- indeed, I believe it's the secret hope of every owner of a blog -- that someday, someone will recognize the prose on these digital pages and offer me the chance of a lifetime: to get paid to write this drivel.

And I think that almost happened to me yesterday. Sort of.

Back when my beloved Access Magazine was on the short track to death, I wrote a few little one-off items for our Web site, which are reproduced here on this site, so they aren't lost for all eternity. The last item I wrote was called Placement Perfect , where I hypothesized that the perfect advertising for dotcoms was in unexpected places. Like on urinal cakes.

Today I got an e-mail from a guy named who apparently just read the story. I'm not sure how or why he found it. I checked google, and a search for urinal+cake+advertising doesn't even call up the page.

But find it he did. And this is what he said:

I read Placement Perfect!

It has been me thinking all day.

Urnial Cakes, it is not such a bad idea. Did you ever do any research on if it is done?

There is something on the internet about a company called Flusho based in Houston. I think it is a great idea, but they do not exist.

We operate the website www.justtoiletpaper.com.

We have just done our first test run of printing on Jumbo rolls of toilet paper, and
have a few ideas we would like to roll out.

I think you might be the person to do copy for us.

What can I say? I was flattered. And it was nice to know it was him I got thinking.

But my heady dreams of being the rich and beloved copy-writer for pre-printed ass-paper were dashed quickly when I considered my hectic schedule. Namely, when would I find time to watch Farscape reruns if I were to take on such a job? So I wrote back to him with a twinge of sadness in my heart:

I didn't do any research into the urinal cake advertising idea. But smells like an IPO just waiting to happen to me. Flusho must have got caught up in all the Internet hype (if you know what I mean... nudge nudge wink wink).

I appreciate you feeling that I might be the right guy to write copy about your toilet paper products, but with a full time job already, I barely have time to wipe as it is. Good luck selling the two-ply.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I want to go read about the "Jack Schitt Toilet Paper" they sell.

Memories, Like the Corners of My Basement

I spent an hour or more Monday cruising around the Ithaca College alumni site, looking up the names of gorgeous coeds whose names I could remember from a decade ago.

I dropped a quick note to my friend Kristina when I found her listing. She and I shared many, many a Pizza Hut pie after lunch shifts in the dining hall (yes, we got free meals but still went out to eat. College students aren't bright.) And lo, I got a reply. She actually sounded happy to hear from me, which is always a welcome change.

Anyway, she sent me a marvelous timeline on what's happened to her since graduation -- she's now a former army paratrooper and FBI agent. She still carries a gun in her current job for the IRS, so if you screw with her, she can shoot and audit you, simultaneously. If she could make you watch FoxNews at the same time, that would be a torture hat trick.

I sent her a timeline of my past decade in return, and I figured I'd expand upon it here, sort of an "Intro to Eric" kinda thing. Sort of like the DVDs for the first few seasons of my life before the blog. So here are...

The Milestones of My Life

1969 -- Birth. I preferred the womb.

1970-1974 -- Pooped in my pants a lot. Didn't get a chance to do that again until 1994.

1975 -- Did first public performance, singing Little Brown Jug with my nursery school class.

1977-- Bought a copy of The Amazing Spider-Man #170 at the Key's Pharmacy. Well, Mom probably bought it for me. It began the dumb-ass hobby I still spend a minimum of $70 per month on today.

Mom also helped me write my first short story: "The Snidey Spider and Eric the Elephant Story." Choosing my name for the elephant character was not a reflection on my feelings toward my weight at the time. Maybe it would be now, but not then. I also illustrated it.

1979 -- Became a member of the Lincoln School fourth grade choir. Once a week we were all bused over to Bryant School to sing with them as one big choir. This is when I first saw The Girl I Was Obsessed With™. She was the first girl I ever saw who wore a bra.

1980 -- The vacation to Disney World. It was the focus of much of my childhood after my parents said they'd take us when I was 10 years old. Now, however, I desire a trip to the Magic Kingdom as much as I desire pooping my drawers.

1982 -- In Sixth grade, I'm in my first play: the Littlest Chimney Sweep. I play Lobster Louie. I do one play a year, minimum, from then until I get out of school. Later, in seventh grade, I meet my friend Mark; his home pretty much became my and my friends base of operations throughout high school.

1983 -- Our family dog, Whiskers, died with his head on my lap as we drove him to the vet after he was hit by a car.

1986 -- Start my first job: Sunday morning disk jockey at WLEA Hornell. Mostly, I played religious shows. If they wanted to convert me, it didn't take.

1987-- Start dating my first regular girlfriend. (I'm forced to interview her father before I can take her out, instilling in me a life-long hatred of the interview process. At least when they guy I'm talking to is a Born-again Nut-bag.)

1988 -- Lost out playing Harold Hill in The Music Man. Sadly, I haven't been in a performance since.

My grandfather died a month before I graduated. Took me totally by surprise because I talked to him a few days before in the hospital and he seemed to be doing so well. He was feeling sorry for President Reagan over something.

Graduated with one focus: Get out of Hornell. I spent the summer with boxes packed, ready to roll.

Started at Ithaca College that August. First thing I did after move in: work a shift at the dining hall, setting the stage for most of my academic career.

1989-- Hook up with Bonny in October. She's still kicking around here somewhere.

1992: Buy first (and last) Mac computer. Graduate with little fanfare. Move to New Jersey and work free for the summer. Finally, get job as editor with a computer magazine. By December, I move up toward Poughkeepsie, because I hate New Jersey.

1993: Commute into NYC every day for work at Windows Sources magazine.

1994: NYC is wearing us down. Must move out of NYC. Get dream-job offer from DC Comics (in NYC) and FamilyPC Magazine (in Northampton, MA) the same week. Opt for MA. Wed Bon in October that year. She's still kicking around here somewhere.

1995: Move into job as Web editor for FamilyPC. The Internet takes over my life.

1996: Buy first house, get first dog, Siren.

1998: On November 5 the orders came from HR that they were moving the magazine to NYC. I wasn't going back to that hellhole, so I started looking for a job.

1999: Had four full time jobs over the course of the year -- still a personal best. Two were at dotcoms (one I hated, the other went belly up on my fifth wedding anniversary). Moved closer to Boston. By November I'm in THE BEST JOB EVER: senior editor for Access Magazine in Needham, a weekly covering consumer technology and the Internet. I love it. I am loved. All is well, even though I turned 30.

2000: Dotcom mania rules. The magazine is an unqualified success. I'm Mr. happy, happy, joy, joy. Vacation in the Adirondacks with the dogs. All is well.

2001: Oh crap, Dotcom bust! Venture capitalist pull all funding. I spend the summer unemployed and nervous (I should have enjoyed it). I start the blog. By September, I'm employed again running a Web site about networking, which I know nothing about. I work from home -- that rules.

And now you're caught up with my entire life to the point were the blog started. If you read this entire timeline, that's probably ten minutes of your own life you'll never get back again, suckers.

In the Navel

For two days this week, the hills of Ithaca were enveloped in a fog the likes of which I have never seen. I was afraid to pull out of my driveway because I couldn't tell if vehicles were coming from either direction.

That's what it was like at 7:30 Thursday morning when I left for my appointment at the Wellness Center.

First, however, knowing the errors of the previous day -- namely, I showed up freshly showered but scaly as a Sleestak -- I slathered some moisturizing lotion on my legs and arms, taking special care of my elbows... I once worked for a man who had the world's ugliest elbows, all knotted and gnarled as if he'd used them to stoke a fire, and I desperately hope to avoid such a fate for my favorite joints. However, I neglected to use my stash of fragrance free I keep at my desk (for one should never type with dry skin.) Instead, I used the lotion bottle near Bonny's sink, which I always forget is where she recycles all the old lotions in the house. This mishmash moisturizes just fine, but smells like a French brothel. As did I, now. Too late to worry it though, I had to get up to campus.

I got to the Wellness center and, after a quick call to the campus safety office to make sure I wouldn't get towed, I met Renee, the graduate student who would be completing my physical test that day, and will be my physical trainer, setting up the exercise routine I'd be following soon. First however, it was to the back room to put me through my paces once again. This time, thankfully, without headgear.

To be honest, it wasn't terrible. I had to do some testing for my grip (my right hand is about twice as strong as my left hand... take from that what you will), my limberness (which probably isn't a word, and if it is, doesn't describe my ability to stretch at all), and the prerequisite push-ups and sit-ups. I did more push-ups than I thought I was capable of, but my sit-up experience goes to show that my abdomen is the root of all my problems.

This part of the test was punctuated by the fat calipers . Renee had a plastic box that held this special piece of equipment, which she had to use to pinch around my back, side, stomach, and thighs to measure my body fat. Of course, this always reminds me of the classic 70's commercials that said if you can "pinch an inch" it's time to take off the weight. I could pinch a decameter.

I had my shirt off, and Renee was kneading my flesh to get up a good amount of flab to grab, when I was stricken with a sudden terror.

I was well aware that my chest was now a patchy mess after being shaved for electrodes the day before -- Bon says I was shaved with the shape of a human ass into my chest. Being a moderately hirsute fellow in the front -- I'd say mid-way between a silverback ape and Robin Williams, at worst -- I have another problem however. The hair around my belly-button tends to capture clothing fuzz and flotsam like a dryer lint trap. My wife is constantly on the look out for navel lint in there. I think she finds it amusing that it generally looks blue.

So as Renee finished with her first fat measurement on my back shoulder blade and asked me to turn around, I was overcome with the thought that I potentially had a wade of soft refuse tucked in my tummy, likely sticking out for all to see. It had completely escaped my mind that I had taken a shower less than an hour earlier, and all thoughts of my excess moisturizer giving off a cloying flower fragrance only an old lady would admire had left me also. I was horrified that this 23-year-old girl would have to see the horror my midriff collected.

I didn't look down. I stared at the wall as Renee had me place my arm or thigh or shorts in various positions so she could get a pinch (I had to drop trou about an inch so she could squeeze the folds at the top of my pelvis). I started to think, Maybe she'll just pluck the lint right out. She might even use the calipers to do it. And she'll place the wad in the garbage and say nothing and act like it happens all the time. For who's to say it doesn't? I'm sure we've all been there.

I had to turn around again soon so she could go through the pinch process a second time -- part of the routine. I surreptitiously swiped my finger across the umbilical hole in my breadbasket, and (WHEW) found nothing. It was just me, my hairy spare tire, and the occasional bald patch. And really, that's all I could ask for. Minus the spare tire part.

Renee will be crunching all the numbers from my final test and the previous day's running to come up with the perfect course of therapy to get me on track to a slender-er moi. More on that as it develops.

Stress Testing

It's 10am as I start typing this, and I've already been to the gym and spent an agonizing 45 minutes on the phone with a vendor from the UK telling me about a chip. And not the kettle-fried, potato-y kind , unfortunately.

Yes, I'm back to the gym on a (hopefully) regular basis for the first time since January 1998. Back then, as the economy boomed and life was good -- I was working with good friends in a great town, owned my first house, my little dog was only a year old; we truly had the world by the cahones -- I was still a bucket o' lard. Knowing I had only eight months until my 10 year high school reunion spurred me to join the gym and Weight Watchers, and over the next six or so months, I managed to drop 25 pounds. I was still overweight for a guy my age and height and hair style, but it was nice to move to a different pant size.

This year nothing is spurring me to weight loss outside of my own self-disgust, which as I've mentioned waxes and wanes depending upon the mix of my brain chemicals. I mean, if the Sopranos has taught me anything, its that skanky gangster molls should be attracted to my physique at least. Perhaps I just don't kill enough of my goombahs...

Either way, I'm giving weight loss the ol' college try again, quite literally, having joined the Ithaca College Wellness Center. Not only do I get access to the gym for a year for $100, but I get a personal trainer to come up with the exact exercise program I need to molt the outer layer of my rotundity.

Before I can start pumping the hydraulic iron, however, I had to be tested. Yesterday at 8am I met with a senior health sciences student named Jen, who had the brownest eyes I have ever seen. She was there to put me through the first part of my stress test, which is their way of torturing me to see how much I can endure. She had me take my shirt off (while a graduate student looked on... nothing like having an audience) and proceeded to shave various parts of my chest and abdomen so she could attach electrodes to hook me to an ECG.

[Digression: An ECG is an electrocardiogram, which measures heart rate and abnormalities... it just so happens, my parents picked my name based on those same initials. It's sometimes also called an EKG (because in medicine, I guess you can spell it "kardio"), so for years my grandfather called me "Elmer Kirk," instead of Eric Christopher, hoping it would stick.]

Jen went through four razors to clear the areas she needed. I assumed this was because I have a pelt second only to the nutria , but she kindly assured me that it was because they have the cheapest razors they could buy. What do you expect for such low tuition dollars? $31,000 a year doesn't go far any more.

As Jen was smoothing out my chest, I realized that after I'd taken a shower that morning, I hadn't put on any moisturizing lotion, something I'd promised myself I'd do laying in bed the night before. After the cold winter, my arms and legs have the texture of red, easily-bruised, cinder-blocks. I guess it didn’t matter much, as Jen then got out alcohol and gauze and proceeded to rub repeatedly on the spots where the electrodes would go until my skin turned pink. I guess I conduct electricity better that way.

After running some initial ECG numbers and taking my blood pressure (BP), I was taken out into the back room -- thankfully they don't do these tests in the middle of the actual gym area -- and Frank, the guy in charge of the center, helped Jen get me hooked up for the main stress part of the test. I would be doing a brisk walk on a treadmill (that would get an increased incline) until I could walk no more. I was again hooked up to an ECG, had a sphygmomanometer on my arm, and was outfitted with a giant piece of head gear with a breathing apparatus. It was like a snorkel, and about as comfortable as holding a stapler in my mouth. Frank pinched off my nostrils with a pair of fancy nose clips, and they got me walking.

As I walked, Jen took a BP ever couple of minutes. I haven't had my arm draped around the shoulder of a 22-year-old coed that often since, well, I was 22. As the speed and incline increased, they would frequently ask me to rate my exertion level on a level of 6 (at rest) to 200 (heart exploding, aneurysm imminent). The chart is based on heart rate of the average college student: 6 = 60 beats per minute, 20 = 200 beats per minute (or two six packs of Jolt cola before finals). I could only communicate through hand signals, such as thumbs up, thumbs down, or a middle finger.

The air I was breathing through the head dress might have been sand. Whatever it was, it had absorbent properties that would make Bounty (the Quicker Picker Upper!) jealous. My throat was dry as Geraldo Rivera's moustache.

Walking at four miles per hour, I lasted only 8 minutes before the shin splints and the pain in my gluteus maximus was too much for me. Pathetic. All the while, Jen and Frank would yell out "Great job!" and "Good effort!" and the like. I'd like to hire them to come to my house and say that as I sit in this chair.

After a cool down walk, I sat down in a molded plastic chair and the sweat just started pouring off of me. I had to lean forward so I wouldn't create suction between my back and the plastic. Frank handed me a paper towel, pointing out that "there might be some saliva" when he took off the ceremonial head dress/snorkle of the Wellness Center. He was right. All the moisture in my mouth had worked it's way between my teeth and lips. That, the sweat, and suddenly a runny nose had me feeling sexier than I'd felt in a long time. If by sexy, you mean "close to death."

I walked out of the center with Frank, who left a note for Renee, the student I'd be working with as my trainer. I headed home on rubber legs. By the time I got home though, I felt fine. And I worked for the rest of the day in my shorts, even though there was still snow outside. Quite the protest, huh?

Next up in my Gym update: Renee, the Fat Calipers, and Fear of Navel Lint.