More Gym Thoughts, by Kris Howard:

• I think sometimes guys go overboard in their quest to look “hardcore”. This one guy caught my eye tonight as I was doing my quad exercises. He was doing chin-ups in the corner, but apparently lifting his own body weight was too easy for this He-Man. So he was clenching, like, a fifty pound free weight between his thighs. I’m serious; it almost looked like he was holding it in his ass. It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.
• The rowing machine is incredibly deceptive. The first minute was easy, and my little virtual boat was soon ahead by three boat lengths. Deluded but inspired, I continued to row for seventeen more minutes. I can barely type right now. By morning, I won’t be able to lift my arms. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
• I finally got chatted up by a chick. I was on the inner thigh adductor machine (of course) and this middle-aged goth lady asked if she could workout with me. She even gave me the “I haven’t seen you before. Are you new here?” line. Fortunately I was done with my lifting, which gave me a polite excuse to head for the treadmill. Snookums was much amused.
• I am a self-loathing big girl. Let me explain. Tonight on my way out, the girl at the counter struck up a conversation with me. She was way heavier than me, but she said she’d lost two stone (28 pounds) in the past four months. I asked how she did it, and she said it was all cardio. I explained that my trainer has me doing weight lifting too. She pooh-poohed that idea, and then said, “That just adds bulk, and we big girls are strong enough anyway, don’t you think?” I mumbled an agreement and hit the door before she could continue. Why does it bother me that she put us in the same group? I am big. I’m tall and I’ve got boobs and a bum, but I wouldn’t say I was obese. Yet somehow the “big girl” label bothers me. Whenever someone sympathizes that I’ll “never be a size eight”, it upsets me. Part of that, I think, has to do with the messages we females get from the media and advertising. Jenny Craig says that anybody can lose forty pounds. Weight Watchers doesn’t say, “Oh, but you’ll never be a size eight; you’re just a big girl.” They say, “Give us your money and it’ll happen.” And that’s seductive. I feel like accepting the big girl label is a cop-out. But maybe I’m deluding myself. I dunno. I guess the reason I rejected being grouped with the counter chick tonight was that in some psycho part of my brain, I want to believe I can be a size eight. And by grouping myself in with her, I’d be admitting that that’s never going to be true.

Ugh. Who knew that the rowing machine would make me so damn introspective?

I’m Belle! She’s my favorite! Which Disney princess are you? It’s not the most well-written quiz – Hello? Look at my result up there – but it’s an entertaining Thursday diversion. (Link courtesy of Brigita.)

R.I.P. Spike Milligan. Did you know that he was Roald Dahl‘s first choice to play Willy Wonka?

What was I thinking? Christmas my ass. This is just like moving all over again. It’s gonna take all day to unpack this stuff…

Walking through the Broadway Shopping Centre today, my bad fashion spidey-sense started tingling. I quickly looked around for the source of the irritation. No, it wasn’t any of my fellow shoppers, and it certainly wasn’t me. That’s when I realized that every mannequin in every single shop window was wearing… a ra-ra skirt. *shudder* It’s back, ladies. In a big way.

Good: Our stuff is finally arriving from London tomorrow! Yes, it’s taken three months, but they’re here. Ten boxes! I don’t even remember what we had in there! It’s gonna be like Christmas.

Bad: The jackhammers started at 8 a.m. this morning. I woke up clenching my jaw. I can’t wait for this damn café to be finished.

The Snook is a bit of wine connoisseur, as is his brother-in-law Smithy. (Smithy actually has a purpose-built wine cellar with all kinds of crazy high-tech gadgets measuring the humidity and temperature and stuff.) Next to those two, I feel like a complete Philistine. I can’t tell the expensive stuff from the plonk. Anyway, that’s why I found this article so amusing. It’s about a scientist who did a study on taste, especially in regards to wine. He basically concludes that all “professional tasting” is hooey, and that the experts are just making it all up. One of his particularly cheeky tricks was to serve them all a white wine, and then serve them the same wine dyed red. Everyone fell for it. See? Maybe I’m not the uncultured rube I thought. (Link via PCJM.)

So I go to check out this Stripper FAQ that anon linked, thinking it would be good for a laugh. (Warning, link not exactly work safe.) Instead I found myself choking on my orange juice once I realized the chick made more – working just three nights a week – than I did at my cushy IT job in London. Damn.

I’ve been thinking about that “audience” thing I said below. You know, in my mind I think of the audience of this site just being the folks that leave comments. But I myself visit lots of sites where I just lurk and never post anything. So I wonder – do I have many lurkers? If you’re a regular-ish reader and you rarely (or never) comment, please do me a favor and say hello. You don’t have to come up with anything witty; just let me know that you’re out there. (I’m suddenly paralyzed by the thought that there aren’t any lurkers, and this is just going to be embarrassing.)

Photoshop 7.0 for Mac OSX is out! It looks sweeeet. Of course, it’s $600 American. That’s $1200 Australian. That’s a month’s rent. I cannot justify spending a bloody month’s rent on a piece of software. Thus, as of yesterday I have officially switched to The GIMP. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to use, but it’s got good documentation, it does nearly everything Photoshop does (which is way more than I need anyway), and it’s free. And I don’t have that icky feeling of being a software stealer anymore. In fact, everything on my machine is now legal! How many people can say the same?