Lots of New

Time, Gentlemen. Time

Well, New Years fast approaches and you know what that means, right? Yes, it means fewer parking spaces at the gym for a few weeks. Because of the New Year's resolutioneers, baby. They're going to come in to the gym, all bright and shiny in their new workout clothes and they're going to take up all the equipment. I used to get frustrated at that, but now I try to remember that they're like those insects in summer, those moths and flies that live for such a short time. Because they are only around for a limited time, I try to enjoy them for what they are, the fodder for countless nicknames and cynical observations about humanity.

In fact, those New Year's resolutioneers may have already yielded fruit; I have a new Gym Boyfriend.

What happened to old Gym Boyfriend? Well, he could be laying at the bottom of a ditch for all I care. Gym Boyfriends are, by their very nature, temporary. Disposable. I haven't seen Old Gym Boyfriend in over a month, ergo he is out. Oh, don't worry. My heart isn't as hard as all that. If he returns, he'll be automatically relegated to the status of Ex-Gym Boyfriend. There, he'll be in the fine company of others like Honolulu Fire Department, the short, cute guy who always worked out at my old gym in a Honolulu Fire Department t-shirt.

However, I may be speaking too soon about a New Gym Boyfriend. I mean, I've only seen New Gym Boyfriend once. Today. Today I walked in and there was this tall, strange, Slavic-looking guy, late 30's/early 40's, blond hair, blue eyes, doing the craziest workout. (I was alone, so I could employ all my stalker surreptitious watching skills.) While I watched, he grabbed a moderate weight (ten or fifteen pounds perhaps) and squatted on an upturned BOSUN and held that position for about thirty seconds, the whole time staring at himself in the mirror. He did several reps worth of that. Then he did some complicated stuff with one of the pulley-based machines. I couldn't observe that part too closely without seeming too obvious.

What? I can be subtle. I can. Actually, most women can. I mean, think about it: Most men can't hardly have a conversation with a woman that half the time he isn't talking to her tits, right? Right. But women have conversations with men all the time without once glancing at the bathing suit area, right? Right. (Gay Spiderman is exempt from this, of course.) Trust me, as far as that guy was concerned, I was subtle.

Leah & Bishop

I ran into Leah and Bishop at the gym today, too. Yay, my workout sistahs!

Dave

Dave is back, too, from visiting his sister in/near Chicago. He left the day after Christmas and flew back today, so it was a whirlwind forty-eight hour visit--just enough to fulfill his familial obligations.

Nikki

And get this: Tomorrow I'm having lunch with a friend of mine from high school. She emailed me out of the blue a couple of months ago, and she's in town for Christmas, so we're meeting for lunch. Unfortunately, we're meeting at Chuck E. Cheese. I know: Huh? But she's got an autistic eight year old, and that's the compromise.