wearing my tan on my sleeve

I've been doing a few things that are out of character.

I've always been too self-conscious to take off my shirt. Getting in the pool was always a mental battle. I had to convince myself that it didn't matter what I looked like. I laid by the pool today shirtless.

I guess it started when I bought a sleeveless shirt from Amercian Apparel. Just going in there is like, I don't know, a practice in playing it cool. I know I probably stand out like square in a circle shop, but I try to keep it together. I may not be one of you, I think, but I'm sure as hell trying to act like it.

So I wore it to pick up Bek and she laughed, like I knew she would. It's all related to this body building thing. It'll be strange and funny but then it'll be normal. I'm trying not to take myself too seriously here.

Back to the point of this post, I wore my sleeveless Mexico jersey to Jazz Fest, laid shirtless in the park with Same, wore the AA shirt to the bike shop and then just now took off my shirt by the pool while I read. Oh, and I'm doing it to get rid of my tan line, not to show off. I'm not that comfortable with my body. I'll show the guns first, then maybe later the whole arsenal.

(By the way, I'm trying to reflect more, assess my feelings more in this endevour. Because I'm realizing, as I read a book for my summer course -the book is called The Ethnographic I- that the emotion is, actually, where it's at. If I don't reveal how this effects me, what I really think about it all, then you readers will never connect. Oh, and while I was hoping this book would help with my Peace Corps book, I am finding that this story will be a good candidate as well. Maybe even the bike building thing could turn into an essay. Also, this blog thing really is turning out to be a good way record my thoughts. And it'll be helpful to go back and see how I felt in contrast to how I feel when I read it.)

"Crunch it out. Good."

So, we moved into our new apartment this weekend (thanks to my parents) and it looks great (thanks to my parents and family, who donated furniture). Today, I was going to begin working out in our gym, but my body said NO when I woke up. I'm telling myself I did enough work over the weekend moving dressers and sections of a sentional. So I'll start tomorrow.


Also, I wanted to add to my reflection on the pop music in the UNO gym. It may have sounded like I didn't like any of it. But I did like the Maroon 5 stuff. And other stuff. And thanks to my mom, I now know that I also heard a lot of Daughtry (she has his cd, man, he has a lot of songs out on the radio).

Finally, I wanted to mention the trainer at the UNO gym, a guy I only started seeing there recently. He was training a woman. And he was a real motivator. For example, while I was doing my bike-ab workout, he had the woman on an ab-machine of some kind, and he was pushing her the whole way: "Crunch it out. Good. Crunch it out. Good. Squeeze it. Good. Crunch it out. Good."

Shrug it out

Chris, my know-it-all younger brother (what, am I writing a kid's book here?), took a look at my slideshow when he was in town and the first thing he said was, "You need to do some shrugs." He pointed to my traps in one of the photos.

So I'm doing shrugs now.

I'd hate to leave out, as I record all this, the exposure I get to pop culture while I'm working out. The music they push through the air is all pop. Pop, pop, pop. Maroon 5, Fergie, the song about tear drops on a guitar and the song where the guys sings "Stop and staaaaaaaaaaaaare." I'll admit that if it weren't for Gym Radio, I woudn't know any of these songs, they would have passed me right on by and dissappeared. And I wouldn't have cared. But now maybe, in some future game of Pop Culture Trivia, I'll get a random song question right.

Also, in the tradition of moderm gyms, there are a couple dozen television sets lining the gym walls. That's where I get my SportCenter fix. I actually don't mind that at all.

And today might have been my last day in the UNO gym. That's because we're moving, beginning tomorrow, and I'll start using the apartment complex's gym. To celebrate that fact, a capoeira group danced in the lobby on my way out. That is on my list of things to do, to join up with a group like that. It was a good show. I love new experiences. (Oh, it also just happened to be National Sports and Fitness Day.)