February Vacation

Once again, I'm blogging from a PC, so there will be no picture today.

I am in the tail end of my February vacation. I cannot believe that it is already Thursday afternoon. Where has the time gone?

Nothing terribly interesting has been going on this week. I moved into my friends' house yesterday for ten days to take care of their cats and dog. I am no stranger to this gig. I have put in several tours of animal care for these peeps over the past couple of years. It is always nice to be around here because they live close to my gym and a bunch of neat coffee shops and stuff. I enjoy it. Plus, they have laundry right in the basement and there's no competing with laundry-jacking jackass neighbors! Lovely.

Other than some recent gym drama, I have nothing to report. But I will report on the gym drama.

I take a step aerobics class every saturday morning. It is a GREAT class. It is totally worth the effort of getting up to take a 6:30 bus to Harvard Square and then walking 15 minutes to the gym. Claudia, the instructor, takes us through an amazing workout! The problem is that the class is so freakin' crowded all the time. Actually, that really isn't the entirety of the problem. You see, if everybody gets their ass in the studio by 8:00 AM, we can all move around and make accomodations for everybody to fit and have sufficient room. The problem is that every week, like clockwork, the same inconsiderate jerks come to class ten to fifteen minutes late. They interrupt everybody when they walk over to get their equipment out, and then they set up shop right on top of some poor member who has to stop her own workout to make space for the late arriving offender. Often they end up pushing somebody (mostly ME) so far into a corner or so far against a wall that we can't even move safely. The worst part is that the jerks who show up late are often the "big kickers" whose moves are so huge that they have everybody around them cowering in fear of taking a boot to the head. It sucks.

This has been going on every Saturday since I joined the gym years ago. The annoying thing is that they "ticket" all the other popular classes so as to avoid this exact problem. But they refuse to ticket the step class.

Two weeks ago, in sheer frustration, I wrote a total poison pen email to the director of the club, in which I outlined all of the above concerns. Of course, every time I made mention of the latecomers, I referred to them in all caps as INCONSIDERATE JERKS!!

Anyway, I get this response in which they blame the instructor and say, "We aren't sure if ticketing the class would work, so we're not going to try."

I sent yet another poison pen taking them down a few pegs for blaming the instructor for something that the gym should be supervising. I also critisized them for refusing to try something that might help alleviate the problem.

Naturally I sent the emails from my own account and signed my own name to them. They all know who I am, and I wasn't cowering in the shadows of anonymity. Screw that. The funny thing is that the managers are all being all nice to me now, and they've decided to ticket the class after all.

Basically, I let it be known that for $91 dollars a month, their refusal to do anything about this problem, and endanger members in the process, constitutes an unacceptable level of customer service in my book.

So, there's my gym crusade.

Oh, and here's another little gym tale.

Today I was lifting weights at around 8. There was nobody there. Not a soul. The entire stretching area was empty and I was the only one in free weights for a while. Then another member showed up. I presumed she was there to lift weights, too. I was wrong. She was actually there in the free weight area to stretch, do abs, and do pushups. Whatever, right? Well, the crazy thing was that she decided to do all of these things right there in front of the free weight rack. So, needless to say, every time I needed a different weight, I was forced to walk around her or lean over her. And she kept getting pissed. Finally she said, "Do you think you could just take all the weights you'll need for your workout so that you don't have to keep interrupting me?" (Sounds shocking, I know, but this IS Cambridge.) To which I replied, "Do you think you could do your stretching in the stretching area so that you don't have to interrupt my lifting routine?" Of course she got mad. Remember, this is Cambridge, and everybody's world ends at the tip of their own nose. Convenient.

Anyway, hardly an interesting post, but still, at least it was procrastination time from my paper correcting.