Water Update

So it's been a whole week since I decided to cut down on my personal black hole of spending: diet soda.

My full disclosure: as I stated originally, I don't intend to -- and haven't -- stopped drinking soda at home. I still have a couple glasses of it at night after work, with dinner and during my precious TV watching-and-internetting time.

BUT, I'm proud to say I haven't purchased or drank a single soda at work since last Thursday. And it hasn't been so bad!

The first morning was great. "Lookitmeeee! I'm drinking water! Who needs soda?? Not meeeeee!" and then I finished my first bottle, around lunchtime. And promptly got slammed with a craving for fizzy deliciousness. "Stupid water. This is stupid. I want diet coke, dammit." But, lucky for me, I didn't have any cash for the vending machine, and I didn't have the time to run downstairs, and besides -- I can't just give up that easily, right?

And I'm happy to say that since then, I've averaged two full 800mL/28oz bottles of water a day. One in the morning, one in the afternoon. Plus, of course, my iced coffee in the morning, and occasionally a second iced coffee in the afternoon. By "occasionally," I mean "once."



So, I'm doing pretty well, I'd say. I honestly haven't missed my daily 40-60 ounces of Diet Coke/Coke Zero/whatever, but that's probably aided by the fact that I'm still having about 16-20 ounces at night. I don't know that I've noticed any changes -- but to be fair, I haven't been paying much attention. Herding a pack of dogs has taken up most of my time this week.

Last night, I herded said dogs into their respective crates for some dinner while I hit the gym. And what an interesting evening at the gym it was. Now, I use my condo complex's gym. It's actually pretty decent, with a good variety of equipment, enough cardio machines that I've never had to wait, and a nice set of dumbbells in every weight I need. Best of all, it's free (or, well, not "free," but "included in the HOA fee"). But one of the drawbacks of a free gym is that anyone who lives there can use it. This occasionally means, say, having someone bring their child with them and having said child wander aimlessly about, randomly messing around with the machines. Or people who don't regularly attend the gym, and thus have no sense of etiquette (i.e. sitting on a machine to rest, not wiping their sweat off, doing strange calisthenetics in the middle of the floor and blocking access to the weights).

But last night, I think there may have been a certifiably crazy woman there. There I was, pedaling away on the bike and cursing the burn in my quads, when I started hearing a sort of wailing coming from behind me. It was loud enough that I could hear it over my music, but not loud enough so that I could tell what was going on. After maybe ten minutes of this, I managed to nonchalantly turn around.

There was a woman wearing a long, light blue jersey dress (I'd call it a maxi dress, but it had short sleeves) and Ugg slippers, hair down, singing along -- and LOUDLY -- to "Stayin' Alive," which I presume was playing on her ipod. She was hopping sort of wildly from machine to machine -- she'd do a few crunches on that ab-weight-machine, wail "stayin aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive," jump up, run over to the leg adduction machine, bust out three or four thigh moves, "ah ah ah ah stayin alive, stayin alive," run over to the lat pulldown, knock out a couple of reps, continue singing and dash across the room to another random machine.

I'm wondering if we were being punked or something. Everyone in the gym was doing the same thing I was: trying to stare in disbelief while letting it appear as though you didn't even notice the bizarre turn of events going on in front of you.

Yeah. I cut my workout short last night.

Weird gym sightings?