the craze

Almost everyone at my office has fallen under the spell of this new exercize program called CrossFit. I guess it's new to town or whatever, but they're seriously freaking out over this thing, the women I work with especially. It sounds pretty intense from how they describe it, and I can see that it works because they're all getting seriously buff. Not as buff as Ms. Fitness Canada here, but I think it's just a matter of time.

One of my co-workers told me that the last time she went, she was working out so hard, she told the instructor she thought she was going to die. Apparently, he told her that if she wasn't tasting bile, she'd be fine. A picture on their local site showed a man on a weight bench who was working so hard, he puked all over himself. That's pretty hardcore. They even got them doing cartwheels and shit. I can't remember I did one of those, but I'm sure if I tried one now, all the king's horses and all the king's men wouldn't be able to reassemble my fractured spine.

I'd kinda like to be more fit. But the thing is, I know I have to get into better shape just so I'd be fit enough to exercise. I'm pretty active though, at least a lot more active than I was in my early 20s. I walk a lot now and ride a bike. Today I walked my surrogate dog home from work and he pulled me like a tractor but I managed to keep up with him. I figure I'd like to lose 10 or so more pounds, but I'm not all that motivated to get a start on that. I like to eat. I like being lazy. I had a gym membership once and hated it. I think I'm just destined to be doughy.

I've been having weird bouts of synchronicity lately. With this entry mulling around in my mind (sometimes I think about what I'm going to write here; I try not to, but it happens anyway because I'm that narcissistic), and after cackling as Michelle Rodriguez continued to make Sawyer her bitch on Lost, I caught two specials about kick-ass women on PBS. The first was about Helen of Troy, in which a kinda sexy British scholar looked around Greece and Turkey in search of historical evidence about the woman whose face launched a thousand ships (and some really bad movies). She was super stoked on it. She carried around this notebook full of little quotes and sayings that she'd translated from around that time, all of which she was able to link back to Helen and the Trojan war in one way or another. The second was about the Amazons and used DNA evidence to try to prove that this nomadic tribe of warrior women actually existed and whose bloodline is still alive today. By the end of the show, the scholar was able to show that there were in fact a tribe of warrior women, and that members of the nomadic tribes in Western Mongolia are direct descendents of them. I'm not sure what that has to do with Amazons, but it's pretty cool I guess.

I've been having these remarkably vivid dreams lately. Some of them have been so real, I'm not able to separate them from reality. In one, I died and it was really bad. I woke up from the dream still inside the dream and it felt like I had to claw myself out of some kind of hole to wake up for real. I thought I was dead for sure. Last night was a lot less dramatic. For some reason, I was trying to set up an interview with Mariah Carey, and I can't stand her. I wasn't going to do the interview though. Instead, I ended up playing this really nice semi-hollow bodied electric guitar, and I was doing a really good job. My sister was there too, jamming on a Gibson Flying V. I flipped a switch or hit a pedal and got this really spacey feedback/distortion effect and it sounded like something on a Sigur Ros album. I saw a violin on the floor and it was playing itself, jamming along with me. It sounded really good.

Today I booked my flight to Seattle. I'm really excited about it, but the jet I'm on is an Alaskan Airlines MD-80, which seems to be the most dangerous type of passenger jet ever. Good thing I'm not a rock star. I just talk to them sometimes.