Well, Whaddaya Know?

Then again, maybe not. Oh hell, I let you decide, cause God knows I can't figure it out......

This morning at the gym as I was talking with my trainer at then end of my workout the following events transpired.

I had just signed the paperwork stating I had used the second to last of my sessions, and we were discussing arrangements for additional training sessions when he kind of looked around me raised his left hand, and said, "Hi" as he waved. All in all, not an uncommon occurance, given that he works there as a trainer and is bound to see people he knows. At the time my back was facing so that no less than 97% of the gym was behind me, therefore, I had no idea who he was waving at. Just then a woman walks up from behind me and says, "How are you." and I assumed she is speaking to my trainer. Then in the same breath she says, " Are you tired? Well, if he just trained you then you are." At this point I realize she is speaking to me so I say that for some reason I am still tired and had had a hard time waking up this morning. As a matter of fact I had woken up only 6 minutes before I was to meet with my trainer. She said, she had beat me only by 30 minutes. Then she asked my trainer if there was a coffee pot anywhere. He said, "Yes but its locked up, and they both chuckled. I said, that was ok with me because I was a Diet Coke drinker. Poking fun at me she says, "Oh, one of those are you." Insert big grin from her...... I teased her a bit about coffee drinkers walking around holding a cup of coffee at 4:30 pm in the middle of August when it is 115 degrees outside, and blah blah blah.

At this point I still have no idea who this woman is. The conversation lasted just millaseconds more before she flitted away. At which time I had come to realize just how devistatingly beautiful she was. She appeared to be about my age, give or take a few years. Her shoulder leangth hair, like mine, appeared to have at one time been blond but over the years turned light brown, and she has a body that won't stop. Not overly thin or muscular, definately no fat, and very "fit" all of which complemented her bright smile and wit.

Once she was out of earshot and I had been given ample time to asess her dorsal assests, I turned to my trainer and said.....

(I realize I am normally a civilized, well behaved, cultured, respectful, and refined gentleman. However, there are times when my "maleness" takes over and my refining halo slips ever so slightly.)

"Dude, she is smokin' hot! Is she married?" To which he replied, "I don't believe so. I have never heard her talk about anyone else." I then said, "Hopefully, one day soon women I don't even know will wave at me, or better yet come right over and talk to me like they do you. (My trainer is the exact opposite of the "Alpha Male" personality muscle head gym rats types at my gym. In short, he is a genuinely nice guy, and the women obviously find him very attractive, which I am certain is the bain of his girl friend.) Side track sorry.... Then he says in responce to me, "Ah, I belive she was talking to you not me, she certainly spent far more time talking with you."

.....It still hadn't sunk in at this point that she came over to talk with me. After all, it was not me she waved at. I had my back to her. Furthermore, I have never seen her in the nearly 2 years I have been a member. (Trust me I would have remembered her.) Plus, I am thinking to myself, what would she want with me. To date, women that look like her tend not to ever want to have anything to do with me, nor has one ever come over to speak with me even though I had never met her much less even laid eyes on her.

It was time for me to go home and shower, so off I went, but the warmth of her smile stayed with me. Even after I had dropped "Little Man" off at school on my way to work, she was still on my mind, so I started to analize the event from earlier this morning. The more I thought about it the more I realized that she had not walked up and spoken to my trainer, she had walked up and spoken to me. (I still don't know if she trains with my trainer or if he just knows her from around.) Now it is finally starting to sink in. Then I get to thinking, was this a set up? If it is I won't complain! Then, I began to rationalize why she might actually want to talk with me when she could have any man she wanted, and I decided that even though I have not yet reached my goal I am lightyears closer than I was. AND the sweats I had on might have camoflaged some of it too. Then I began to think about the other men in my age group at the gym, what they looked like, and what their additudes/personalities were, and realized that if they weren't gay (there are alot of them at my club) or married, most were in there unsuccessfully trying to fight off the fact that they had not taken good care of themselves and it was showing. (Yes, that was me too, two years ago, but not now.)

By this point I am half way to work, and my thoughts were racing through my head. I also realized that she had been making a big point of holding her coffee up and drawing attention to it and that she was using her left hand to do it with. Furthermore, while I had not been looking at the time because I thought she had come over to talk with my trainer, that her ring finger was quite bare. While still in shock at the fact that someone like her could have possably have wanted to talk to me I started trying to remember as much about her as I could. Was she wearing makeup, most women don't at the gym, and if she did have any on it was very basic. (But hey, I am a guy and I could never be certain even on a good day if I were actually trying to figure it out.)

Once I got my SUV snugly tucked into the parking ramp at work, reality hit me.

1. She may acutally have been trying to hit on my trainer.
2. She may train with him, and had just come over to say hi.
3. She may even have seen my trainer with a coffe cup before and thought he might be a good person to ask where she might get more.

Then I start to think. OK fotonut slow the F down! If she is interested in you, and that is a BIG IF, you don't want to screw it up by acting like an über desperate, mouth breathing, emotional cripple. So take it slow. Talk to super cool trainer next week and see if you can find out if he trains her and what else he knows about her.

Fear not, I am no longer the guy who will sit around all night thinking up a whole life revolved around this chance meeting, causing me to rush in like a bull in a china shop and ruin everything. I am stable enough to know that if it is meant to be there will likely be nothing I could do to screw it up, and if it isn't meant to be, and she has no interest in me at all, I am cool with that too. Now I just have to do my best to stop thinking about it until next Tuesday. YEAH RIGHT!

How Much Can YOU Lift?

Had I known what I was in for when I got up this morning, I wouldn't have gone to the gym. We are short staffed right now so I roll up my sleeves when I can. I moved 72, 50 lbs boxes (total 3600 lbs) from the UPS truck on the dock onto 2 big carts. Since I over loaded each cart's maximum by 250 lbs the first cart I filled got a flat tire so I had to take 1800 lbs of boxes from that cart to a new one. Then I pushed them to our library and unloaded them on to the floor where they told me. U should also tell you that the load was so heavy that I had to help one of my employees (who is no whimp herself) by pushing the cart she was pulling with my right hand while pulling my cart with the same load with my left hand. It is also very unfortunate that I get stupid on days ending in Y and I always forget that not everyone is as tall (six four) or as strong as I am, so I proceeded to stack the 3600 lbs of boxes far too high for the employees that work there.

You guessed it; I went back up and moved 1800 lbs of boxes from the top of the stack onto the floor. Alas, I knew this was not the last time I would see these boxes. Later in the day we get a call that half of them are ready to be shipped to the other "city office" libraries throughout the world in which my firm has offices. So.....I went back up stairs and got 1800 lbs of boxes brought them back down to the mail room. Next I repacked them (lifting the same 1800 lbs in 15 lb increments, into new boxes, before lifting the same 1800 lbs of books in larger boxes onto the scale for shipping. As I finished processing each shipment I lifted that same 1800 lbs of boxes once again onto a cart to take back out to the dock for the Fed Ex driver.

When the driver got there I explained that I would not be helping him this evening (which I am not required to do anyway), and then told him the above story, finishing up with I have lifted these books enough times today and I was not about to lift them any more.

The sad part is there is still 1800 lbs of books left at my firm that will need to be picked up and delivered to one of our 23 floors tomorrow. I have always been the type of boss that never asked my employees to do anything I wouldn't do myself, and I will likely go and deliver the rest tomorrow. I am not trying to win any awards; I just want to burn the calories. In case you didn't remember, today was abs day! So that makes this whole story all that much more interesting. I am guessing I will be feeling every atom in every molecule that makes up each one of my muscles tomorrow when I wake up. What do you think?


I am not tired enough, however, that I can't do math. I added it up and I lifted a total of 27,200 lbs today. DAYAMM that’s a lot of flippin' weight!

Big News In The World Of Fitness Today!

Today was measurement day. I haven't said too much about it lately because it hasn't been all the wonderful. Since my Pnuemonia, I haven't been walking. However, I have never stopped training. This means while I haven't lost great amounts of weight, I have been gaining large amounts of muscle throught the winter. Even though the scale hasn't changed much my body has been!

In short I have been building up a big furnace/engine in which to melt the rest of my body fat away with. To give you an idea of how much my body has been changing, (and I nearly shit myself this morning when my trainer told me this,) my biceps increase by 3/4th of an inch and my lower arms by 1/2 an inch in just one month! While on my back, using my legs to press up, I can lift 74o lbs, and with my calf muscles alone I can lift nearly 200 lbs. I set the ab cruncher machine at 70 lbs and work my way up to 95 lbs before I am done.

To give you an idea of just how far I have come..... When I walked into that gym nearly two years ago I couldn't even curl 10lbs 1o times It damn near killed me. Now I can curl 65 lbs for 3 sets of 10 to 12 reps. I didn't realize until today that curling 65 lbs is actually quite a big deal. There are guys there who I would say look very fit and well muscled, that can only curl 35 lbs. It finally hit me today, that underneath all of this insulation I have been carrying around is a mass of twisted steel waiting to be uncovered.

I can hardly wait until the weather warms up enough for me to start walking again. Last summer the pounds practally fell off as I walked 4 to 6 miles a day, and can't imagine how much more I will be able to burn now that I have greatly increased my lean muscle mass! The only way I can describe how I feel right now is to say that I haven't felt like this since I was 6 years old on the day before Christmas. I can hardly stand it!!!!!!

In Redecorating news. I have now completed everything in my room with the eception of the window coverings, and the shovling up of all of the stuff that had been packed into the old case peices I had in the room. I would think that in the next month you can expect to see the finished product. Then stay tuned for the even bigger unvailing of the transformed fotonut! Looks like I may not need to wear a shirt to the pool this summer after all...................