So I have been totally MIA for awhile and I have not a one single good excuse other than this one: I have been trying to turn my life around! It's so vague that it makes a good excuse. But honestly, I have been trying to go out more and see things, and on top of that, I joined a gym. This is the first "real" gym I have joined since I would guess about 1999 when my mom and I would meet at the Women's Wellness Center In Winston-Salem ridiculously early in the morning and we would always go because neither of us wanted to be the one to not show up. And I say "real" gym because I was a member of the YWCA, not the M, but the W, for about a year but that is less a gym and more a room with six pieces of equipment and an over the hill gym rat named Riff. Everything has been going great so far at my new gym. I got all signed up, I went for my first workout, checked out the layout (trying to look like I knew what I was doing, of course) and then things started to fall apart on my second visit. I had a great cardio workout and I got onto the treadmill to cool down, and in the middle of my cooling down, in which I was jogging remarkably slow, I don't think there is a speed for what I was doing, I somehow threw out my back. I am getting so old that I can no longer walk on a treadmill without fear of a muscle pulling or my arthritic hip giving out. Ok, I don't have an arthritic hip, that I know of at least, but I feel really breakable when injuries occur for no reason. I was not even trying to do something crazy, like lift weights (trust me, that is crazy for me, I am a weakling). So now I will have to put my new fitness plan on hold until I heal, which is really lame because I just paid for the gym and I was just getting motivated!

Then the other thing I have been doing is trying to go out more and see things. I am finally making a little bit of extra money, or at least I know I can pay my rent every month so I have a chance to see things. I have been to roller derby, which I highly recommend to everyone I have ever met ever, I went to an LA Galaxy game, my first professional MLS game, I went to Universal Studios and rode the Simpsons ride and had a margarita, just to name a few things. Oh the margarita was not my first margarita but my first at universal studios. I can see how that could be confusing! So, these are the reasons I have been away! I hope you understand.