I’m a little bit jealous of my brother, Dave’s, workout facility.  When I was there last month I got to go to the fitness wonderland called Lifetime Fitness.  It was so amazing that I didn’t want to leave and I decided that I could’ve truly stayed there all day long to exercise, work out, swim, lounge, pay a little to get a massage…you get the picture.  This place had it all!  Oh, and they had what seemed like a bizillion cardio machines…

…Then I came home to my fitness club-Fitness USA.  Well, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. I looked into Lifetime Fitness, and thought about Bally’s too, before making my decision for Fitness USA, but they were just too far away to commit to visiting 3-5 days a week.

It’s a workout facility that I’m glad I have available to me.  It’s helped me lose…a good amount of weight so far and it’s helping me get better at running.  One of my favorite machines is the elliptical machine.  When I go to the gym I start with 25 minutes of jogging, my weight training, and then 20-25 minutes of the elliptical machine.  The past couple of times that I went there I couldn’t get the elliptical machine-it was sooo busy.  So the one time I decided to do the bike and I learned that I only burn about 1/4 of the calories doing that.  Yeah, I won’t be doing that unless I’m desperate.  Then yesterday I did the stair climber and that was great because it burned a lot of calories, but what I decided was that I really loved the elliptical machine.  It burns a whole lot of calories but it relieves your knees of the impact of running.  Combined they’re really helping me build my cardio system.

This afternoon when I went I had to wait a minute to get on one, but at least I made it on one.  It was kind of funny though because this one lady was obnoxiously waiting to get on after the lady next to me.  She was calling her out for staying on past 20 minutes (the limit when it’s busy) and then talked about her bitterly after she left.  Classy entertainment at its best.  I hope I don’t get to the point that I get stressed out by people so much at the gym that it actually decreases the effectiveness of the stress-relievingness (?) of the workout itself. 

I’m not necessarily one to just post an email forward, but this made me laugh too hard not to share.  If you’re not in education you may not appreciate this as much…

SCHOOL ANSWERING MACHINE

This is the message that the Pacific Palisades High School (California) staff voted unanimously to record on their school telephone answering
machine. This is the actual answering machine message for the school. This came about because they implemented a policy requiring students and parents to be responsible for their children’s absences and missing homework. The
school and teachers are being sued by parents who want their children’s failing grades changed to passing grades – even though those children were absent 15-30 times during the semester and did not complete enough schoolwork to pass their classes.

The outgoing message:
"Hello! You have reached the automated answering service of your school.
In order to assist you in connecting to the right staff member, please listen
to all the options before making a selection:

To lie about why your child is absent – Press 1

To make excuses for why your child did not do his work- Press 2

To complain about what we do – Press 3

           To swear at staff members – Press 4

To ask why you didn’t get information that was already enclosed in your
newsletter and several flyers mailed to you – Press 5

If you want us to raise your child – Press 6

If you want to reach out and touch, slap or hit someone -Press 7

To request another teacher, for the third time this year -Press 8

To complain about bus transportation – Press 9

To complain about school lunches – Press 0

If you realize this is the real world and your child must be accountable
and responsible for his/her own behavior, class work, homework and that
it’s not the teachers’ fault for your child’s lack of effort: Hang up and have a
nice day!