Now that I am among the vaccinated, I decided it was OK to return to the gym routinely. Some things have changed a little. You gotta walk in with a mask but if you are actively working out you can pull it down. Masks, when doing normal stuff like walking around, are easy to breathe through regardless of how much protection you have on. That’s just a fact, Karen. However, if you huff and puff, you’ll notice the restriction quickly.
A few things have changed. I now have to work out with my phone and keys in my pocket. The gym has changed the way you sign in to a phone based app, and the car key holder usually found in most gyms has been removed. You now have your own personal bottle of disinfecting spray instead of it being atop the various paper towel stations. It’s all kind of funny to me, because all this touchless precaution is relatively useless now that we have determined that corona infection doesn’t happen much from surface transmission. And you are most certainly much less likely to get it that way than by being in a crowd of people exerting themselves. Truthfully, a place like the gym just shouldn’t be open yet.
Anyway, the other thing they do to try and curtail surface transmission is they’ve policed up all of the remotes that control the TVs on the cardio machines. This means I am utterly stuck watching whatever channel it’s tuned to, and I can’t even turn on the captions for a source of distraction. This makes for a long, long cardio workout. In the interest of socially distancing, every other machine is off limits. The TVs are still on on the machines that are unusable.
So I get on a treadmill yesterday, ready for a long half hour of walk/run. The channel is on sports, and I am not a fan. However, I find that the machine next to much is tuned to Fox News.
Frabjous day! Because back when I was in college, I’d hate-listen to whatever right wing swill was on my AM dial. Gave me a laugh or a chance to voice some derision. So I craned my neck to watch.
Now I confess to a brief streak of conservatism in my less sophisticated days. In fact, I have changed teams more than I care to admit. I’m done changing, so be relieved. I know I am.
(More spring cleaning while I wait for evidence that Trump turned himself in. I still have not gone back to the gym yet, despite my BMI that suggests I’m on the precipice of obesity. It’s pretty obvious in the mirror, but if I suck in there’s still a little left of the shape I was in the last time I gave a shit about my looks.)
The Illogical Seminary 