I went to work at my very very non-glam job yesterday, and did my part to make sure nothing remotely important or necessary got done. I spent most of the day putting in calls to people to tell them I was absolutely too busy to do the work they'd asked of me, then spending ten minutes each with other admins complaining about how much work we have to do. I am becoming an excellent government employee.
After leaving work half an hour early, I went to the gym where I was prepared to kick some calorie ass. I have to do a lot of that for the next couple of weeks.
I am going to be on television at the end of January. Given that the camera adds ten pounds, and I am ten pounds overweight (meaning I'm technically the correct weight, but I define the right weight to be ten pounds underweight because when you look like you don't have the time to eat, you look more important), I should lose 20 pounds in 14 days. That's a lot of work.
So I was at the gym and I first rocked the stairmaster for half an hour. I was feeling good and looking good, and the people on the stationary bikes behind me had a glorious view of my ass. Lucky them.
I next moved on to the elliptical trainer, which is like the pussy way to burn lots of calories fast. (I think every new fitness machine overstates the calories burned using it, but it's a pleasant false hope.) Anyhoo, I was up on the thing for less than ten minutes when a woman got on the machine next to mine. She looked normal- stretchy cotton shorts and a tank top. But the girl was not okay.
Fans, living in San Francisco raises your level of tolerance to horrible body odors, as the average citizen is as funky as a pig wrapped in patchouli. The homeless people in this town smell twice as bad as homeless anywhere else. Dog crap on the street has a range of five feet max in either direction, but homeless people can clear out 20 feet of a crowded bus with their nastiness.
But this girl has a home. My gym is supposedly for employees yet it's still a fucking ripoff, so the person is in no way poor. But I have never been around a worse smelling non-homeless woman in my life. It was like the Sum of All Stank.
I stayed on the machine to see if maybe I was nuts. I know there are times when I'm not-so-fresh (though not at the gym), but I quickly determined the stank wasn't coming from me. I tried breathing out of my mouth instead of my nose to avoid the smell, but that wasn't working. Then I tried breathing out of the side of my mouth opposite where she was, but this girl was so rank that the smell turned the corner and got inside.
Normally when someone stinks I keep it all inside then blog about it later. (Angst is my food.) But I just couldn't do it. It was like standing in a sewer. It was like pooping on your own face. It was like bathing in someone's ass. It was like someone used the same gym sock every day for a month, then cracked an egg into it and let it sit out in the sun for a couple days. How could she not know how disgusting she smelled?
So casually, yet huffily, I left the area. I went over to the treadmills and chose a spot next to the window away from Olympic Jerk. Olympic Jerk is in the gym no matter when I go in- 11AM, 1PM, 2PM, 3PM, etc. She's always there. Sometimes she's on the weight machine, but usually she's on the treadmill. For hours. Of course, the policy posted all over the places states that people may only use the treadmill for 30 minutes at a time when people are waiting. Though people aren't often waiting, she hides the time on her machine so they can't see she's already way past the limit.
Olympic Jerk is about 5 foot 3, and never, ever looks like she's enjoying herself. She puts a t-shirt over the LED panel of the treadmill, which one may think that she does in an attempt to ignore or not micromanage or obsess about the time or speed or number of calories burned on the treadmill. I could see that. But nobody is at the gym 7 days a week for three hours a day without knowing all of those statistics cold. So clearly, she puts the shirt over the LED to hide the amount of time she's been on it from the people waiting for it so she can be on it beyond her 30 minute time limit. Also when all the machines fill up, she'll reset the time on the machine so it looks like she just got on.
At the gym, one spends a lot of time free-form thinking. I try to read at the gym when I can, but that is limited to the stairmaster, elliptical trainer, and bicycle. So what I do is obsess about the other people in the gym. Olympic Jerk is my number one mental target. I think about all the ways I will yell at her, and when she tries to act like she doesn't know that she was violating policy how I would call her on her bullshit, and how I will become her enemy, and how I will suggest that she get her own damn treadmill at home since she's on it so much. Oh the things I'll say!
Number two enemy is Loud Girl. She has a voice that you can hear from three buildings away- especially her laugh. And oh does she love to laugh! It's not that she speaks and laughs all that loudly, but somehow it is so piercing it's unstoppable. When she's conversing, you can see every person in the room tense up.
You get about four seconds of silence followed by two seconds of hellishly loud laughter that eats through your skull, followed by another period of waiting. They could have used her in place of water torture in Vietnam.
Anyway, she wasn't in the gym on this day. A guy got on the treadmill next to me and was getting going as well. Another fifteen minutes into it, the stinky girl got on the next treadmill over from him. Surprisingly, her smell didn't waft over to my treadmill, but I could tell the poor guy next to me was suffering. While running he started sniffing as if he had a runny nose, then blinking and wiping his eyes and his nose. He was basically having an allergic reaction to her funkage.
I was thoroughly entertained by the miserable guy next to me, and glad to know that it wasn't just I who was repulsed by her smell. Alas, my time on the treadmill was soon done. I wonder how long he lasted next to stinky before he too fled to another part of the gym.
Fans, when your laughter or your funk is potent enough to warp solid objects, you need to stay out of public.