Blog Number 102

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

First things first, I apologize for the delay between postings.  I still have random thoughts, I just haven't taken the time to blog about them.

So I am still making use of the "extra" hour my body seems to have each morning since it has not yet adjusted to "falling back" an hour.  I have faithfully gotten up each weekday morning at 4:30 and headed down to the workout room that our apartment has for tenants use.  This makes my wife very happy.  I have only seen two people in the workout room thus far.  For the sake of this blog, let's call them "Little Blonde" and "Pony Tail."  I will explain the names in a little bit.

I try to work out for 30 minutes splitting my time between the exercise bike and the treadmill.  When I arrive each morning, Little Blonde is already there and using one of the two treadmills.  The workout room has two televisions and both are on different channels.  One is muted, one is really, really loud.  Initially I gave LB (Little Blonde) the benefit of the doubt since the treadmill is loud, it makes sense that the TV needs to be loud.  Upon further inspection, I noticed that she was also wearing headphones.  So she has the TV set so loud as to hear it over the treadmill AND her headphones.  This is particularly annoying but since I am new (both to the apartments and to the workout routine) I don't want to make waves.  When she leaves (after about 50 minutes on the treadmill), she leaves both TVs on even though the remote controls are right by her area.  I just stop what I am doing and turn off the loud TV (the remote is busted for the TV that is muted).

As soon as LB leaves (almost as if on queue), Pony Tail (PT) enters and gets on the same treadmill.  When I was telling my wife about the people in the room, she asked if one of them had a pony tail.  She evidently had spoken to PT sometime in the past.  PT has headphones as well but does not feel the need to turn on the other TV (thankfully).  I have never spoke to LB but I have spoken to PT.  PT and I speak about LB.  In fact, it is PT who asked me the first day I was there, "Did the Little Blonde leave the TV on real loud?"  When I was first asked this, I did not know how to respond.  I would never refer to any woman as "Little Blonde" and so I had to be careful how I answer this question.  If I answer YES, then it might be construed that LB is a phrase I would use to describe her.  If I answer NO then I am lying.  I answered, "I think so" hoping that it would suffice.  PT explained several things that she did not like about LB.  This might account for her arriving right after LB leaves.

This morning I got there about 5 minutes later than normal and missed LB.  She was there though as the TV was up really, really loud again.  By the time I got to the treadmill portion of my time there, PT was there.  I had not been on the treadmill the same time as PT before and the equipment is laid out so that you can see the other persons settings (incline and MPH).  I was walking happily along and then she started.  I was going 4.2 mph at a 2 degree incline.  She had the gall to do 4.5 mph and 2.5 degree incline.  My ego got the better of me and I bumped it up to 4.5 mph.  After a minute or so, she declined down to 1.5 degrees.  A few minutes later, she started to go 6.7 mph.  "Crud!" I thought.  Not to be out done I jumped up to 6.5 mph (in my mind this was close enough).  Thankfully she slowed down a few moments later and soon my 30 minutes was up and I left with my ego still in tact.

I feel like an intruder though.  Even though the room could fit a half dozen people each working out on different machines, LB and PT seem to have it sorted out so that they are alone.  I have even thought of using this as an excuse for stopping to go there in the morning.  That would probably upset TW though (The Wife).

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon