i promptly clicked to see who else from my high school graduating class was on there, looked at their profile pictures, and realized we’re all old now, and closed the browser tab with extreme prejudice.

dammit. i can’t be old! i’m hip and with it! i have funny-colored hair! i have a sweet pair of red patent mary janes! i listen to indie rock! i … dammit!

i’m going to sulk over here in the corner and, like, do some retirement planning. stupid kids and their stupid facebook. dammit.

i went home and popped online and started reading reviews. then i popped over to a little fitness equipment store in the neighborhood to check them out. because my new philosophy of life involves cutting off any avenues for anxiety that i possibly can (because otherwise i will spend all my time worrying about details and never actually get anything done), i found one i liked and just bought it on the spot without messing around. (hey, i did my homework beforehand. i have Consumer Reports!) i wound up going with a Spirit XE 125, which is an entry-levelish model — no fancy tilting or padded pedals, no heartrate-adjusted programs, etc., but it does have this rather nice little fan in the control panel that you can aim at your face, which frankly i think i’ll get more use out of, and my shoes already have poufy little gel thingies so what need have i of fancy-pants padded pedals? and as a special favor to my downstairs neighbor (whom i kept in mind the whole time — noise/vibration of her ceiling is the reason a treadmill was out of the question), it’s a super-quiet model — less noise than the professional models i’ve used before, actually, so i was quite pleased with that. plus it was 20% off (mother’s day sale! thanks mom!) and so even with sales tax (9%! thanks, mayor daley!) and delivery it came out to exactly $1.14 over its original sticker price.

so, i’m pretty excited. i love using elliptical trainers. i like treadmills too, but ellipticals are just sort of fun — especially when you go backwards. and i really do hate going to gyms — i hate being around other people while gross and sweaty — so this will be so much more pleasant. i can just hang out and enjoy using the machine without all the hassles and irritation and the damned televisions always tuned to something insipid and the horrible music and so forth and so on. i’m super excited. i can’t wait for them to call me on monday to arrange for delivery. i want my new toy now!

…of course, that does actually give me a chance to figure out where the heck in my living room i can put it. i guess i know what i’m doing this weekend!

Sock on kiyoshi’s head! — The great thing about putting socks on kiyoshi’s head is that he just has no idea how to handle it. You can sit there as he’s perfectly still — sometimes with a paw half-raised to swipe at the sock — for a couple minutes as he tries to cope with the fact that OMG, there is a SOCK on his HEAD. As an example, this is actually the second time I took a picture of this sock-head incident — and that’s only after it occurred to me to grab the phone and take a picture.

Yeah, I totally do this to him like every morning when I’m getting ready to go to work. It is never not funny. It’s a good think Kiyoshi’s really dumb, or he’d totally hate me.