[nycfem]

Today I did an hour on the Stair Master (45/50 intervals), followed by a combined hour of weight lifting, leg exercises, and yoga.

During the first hour I made a blunder with Jill's best friend, a butch-lesbian-looking, African-Amerian trainer at the gym. She stands at Jill's Stair Master and socializes with Jill from the floor.

The blunder I made is an intricate story involving shady shenanigans on my part as usual. An elderly white man was on my favorite Stair Master that is nearest the plug in the floor that I like to use when I watch DVDs on my old school DVD player (Today I was forcing myself through the "Snapped" tv series.). So I had to get out my extension cord and secretly weave it through the bottom of his Stair Master in order to use that one open plug. I try and make it inconspicuous because I'm not supposed to be taking over the gym this way. You could say I'm somewhat of a menace, and you'd be right.

If you'll recall last time I did this, I accidentally tripped Jill because the wire to the plug is like a trap the way I have it set up but it's the only place to do it. So I solved that original problem (after tripping a few other folks), by placing a small pink gym bag on top of the wire. It was an interesting experiment that I was able to watch from the Stair Master. Now no one trips because their eyes fall on the pink bag so they step around or over; whereas before the wire did not stand out enough by itself to draw the eye and prevent a stumble.

Sooo... today Jill's best friend came by and said to the elderly man, "Whose bag is this?" He said, "I don't know. It's been there a long time." So the trainer picked up the bag to take to the lost and found. All of a sudden, I realized what was happening and said, "I'm sorry, that's my bag!" Then I tried quickly to get off the machine to take away the offending bag, at which point, out of my rhythm, I knocked my elbow against the old school (very sturdy, never breaks) DVD player, and it went flying through the air crashing to the ground beneath the Stair Master. The trainer said, "Are you okay?" I said, "Yes, I just dropped something." She looked at me like I was crazy (I am), and I looked back at her and said, "It's just one of those moments..." She looked at me like I was acting even crazier (I was.). Things were very awkward, and I gathered all my trouble-making stuff and left for the weight lifting area posthaste.

Jill was not there at that time. I was lifting weights, and there was poor air circulation in the gym (stuffy and hot). It was pretty empty in the gym and warm outside with an impending thunderstorm. Through the windows I could see that it was growing slowly but progressively more ominous and dark outside. A sense of doom began to overtake me. Especially after that mess I made at the Stair Master, I started to feel like I was too weird and alone in the world. What does it say when even Jill is not at the gym? Then staring into the mirrored wall ahead of me, I saw a reflection of Jill walking in her strange, muscular bow-legged swagger towards her preferred elliptical, and I breathed a sigh of relief. All felt normal again.