A Girl in a Boy's Gym

The answer to our last fire exam question - A strap wrench.  Congratulations, Anonymous, you got it right.  Woot woot.

So the tattoo is healing....slowly.  It hurts, and the waistband of my work pants rubs on it, which of course doesn't help.  I stuffed a wad of Kleenex down my pants yesterday, which helped until I got up and walked around the office and it fell out of the bottom of my pants leg.  Humiliating?  Believe it or not, those who know me best - my coworkers - wouldn't bat an eye at that.  Another day in the life of Tina.

I went to the gym yesterday in my cool new Leary Foundation T-shirt and I gotta tell you, I spend a good 50% of the evening just checking myself out in all those mirrors.  Homegirl is lookin pretty sweet.  Once I realized that I could exercise and look at myself at the same time, I hit the treadmill.  My intent was to just warm up for a few minutes on the treadmill, then hit the weights.   Forty minutes later - well - I was still slugging away on the treadmill, mouthing the words to Shake Senora and pretending like I wasn't.

The problem was,at that particular time of night, the gym was full of GUYS.  It's not that I don't like men looking at me (especially when I'm wearing my cute Leary Foundation T-shirt), but flopping those little dumbbells around next to the heavy weightlifter...makes me feel...SILLY.  I would have zero problem going into the middle of the gym in front of all those men and putting my makeup on, or making pasta, or doing my hair.  That's girl stuff, and that's different. But weight lifting...well...going at 7 p.m. with the Thug Patrol cemented my decision to start going on my lunch hour when nobody else is there. It's a good thing I'm not studying to enter a male-dominated career field or something; how uncomfortable would that be?

ahem.

So anyway, Kat stayed on the treadmill for most of the night. In the end, I figured an hour of half-assed workout on the treadmill is still better an an hour of watching tv, right?  Right.

We are on target, dearest reader.  It's a marathon, not a sprint.

That being said, I ate about a thousand calories' worth of sloppy joes and chips tonight.  Yes, meat.  Yes, from a cow.  I try not to blow my weekly meat fest so early in the week...but you know what?  It was worth it.  It was a Manwich night.

Sharpen your pencils - exam question time:

When hoselines are laid by an apparatus (ie a pumper or tanker truck), what is the correct means for a firefighter to anchor the hose before the apparatus moves forward to pay out its load?'
a. Stand atop the hose or coupling
b.  Wrap the hose twice around the waist
c.  Face the opposite direction the apparatus is moving and lean forward while straddling the hose.
d.  Grasp the hose firmly and lean slightly backward.