The shortest distance between two points or The longest journey begins with a single step

In the span of the past 72 hours, I am proud to say that I have managed to cross a great many things off my to do list.

1. Make the decision to join my wife's gym, Planet Fitness. - Check

           I can point to several key factors that allowed me to make this decision. My wife has been going and not hating it for a few weeks. The gym is within 5 miles from both my house and work. Michelle got a handful of coupons that would make the membership cost less than $10 a month. And, clearly the most important factor, their commercials have been hilarious. My favorite is the "I made a bunny" guy linked here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSjGjzLapgA   

  2.    Plan ahead by scheduling a time for the first trip and registration. - Check

         Wednesday. After work. And after Michelle gets one of her rats to the vet for some minor surgery. She got in the routine of making this a 3 night a week plan while I was sticking my arms into ventilation shafts and skipping around in a circle with 2 other guys, a dog, and an relentless kid and her dog from Kansas that wouldn't let us stop. I figured I can tag along easily enough since Michelle and I are getting out of work around the same time.

  3.    Speed the passage of time. - Check
         
          Work. It happens even to the best of us. Luckily, I was able to spend the majority of the time with some of the best of us, a great group of coworkers from another office. It was fun to show them around and work through our different topics and ideas. And it gave me a different excuse to run around like a crazy person than the 30-40 I have during a normal day. After all, variety is the spice of life.

   4.     Actually go to the gym.

   5.     Have it be Friday.  - Check

Suck on that, Meatloaf. You settle for 2 out of 3 and call it "ain't bad"? How's 4 out of 5? Bet it blows your mind.

      I can point to several key factors that allowed me to make this decision. My wife has been battling what sounds like a variety of lung based death plague for a few weeks now. By Wednesday, Michelle was calling herself Ms. Barry White (in reference to how AWESOME my voice gets when I have a chest cold). I was thinking she had taken up smoking as a suitable replacement for breathing or drinking water and replaced eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner with yelling as loud as she could, stopping occasionally to smoke. Work was long for her that day and having to run back to our house then back out to the vet was a lot of extra driving. Also, there was a great opportunity to promote a better working relationship with our partners from another cubicle over some professionally prepared cuisine. [sidetrack: Hibachi grills are an awesome setting to get a bunch of people willing to try new food to have a good time. You're all facing each other, so conversation is a breeze. There's food actually flying around and burst into flame and at a decent place, there are energized hosts and chefs. Fun for all.] So after talking it over with Michelle, we decided to postpone the great gym-ening. It was completely the right thing to do.

      Sadly, it opened the door. The time it takes me to travel from legitimate reasons to transforming those into irrefutable excuses is barely measurable by the Omega Olympic Swimming Pressure Plates that decided beyond a shadow of a doubt that Michael Phelps' fingernails were athletically longer than all the speedsuit wearing mammals in all realms of known existence. If there's a world championship for "stunning aptitude in finding or creating methods and reasons to avoid doing something", I'd gladly pitch my campaign to represent the United States, but I haven't renewed my passport, even though I received the forms (I have them somewhere, I swear) and a promise to cover the cost of the renewal as a wonderfully clever Christmas present nearly 5 years ago. (sorry mom)

"If the rings that I run were lines, just imagine how much farther I could be." - Splashdown Lost Frontier