Drink Your Water or Use a Sippy-Cup

Today’s edition was going to be called “Gym Etiquette For Old Broads”, it will now be called “Drink Your Water/Use a Sippy-Cup”. The change in title is the result of dumping a glass of water on my desk. That is the thing about “To Do” lists, things that I have written down get bumped by things that are not predicted and urgent. Of course we all know that water is not the best thing for electronic equipment so I needed to be especially careful to insure no water dripped down the soaked cables into the USB slots. Everything seems to be working, not too badly and I do have one side of my desk clear of dust and paper. However there are a number of pieces of paper lying on the carpet drying.

Liquid and I have had other “unfortunate” events, hence the “sippy-cup” recommendation. Once, while minding our table for Women in Aviation at an Aviation Days event, I managed to spill water on some of our stuff and was teased unmercifully for a bit. For the next event, I decided to have one of those coffee things with the sip port that can be open and closed. For sure, I was having a gay old time and thinking myself very clever until I discovered everytime I took a sip a little of the coffee I was drinking leaked out onto the top of my white shirt. Gad, I can’t win! … anyway …

Interesting time in the Gym today … there is definitely some kind of etiquette working and it is all very subtle. Some observations:
• At my tender old age, “we” do not speak to each other while in the state of undress … younger folk can
• One does not loiter near the two, tiny changing closets, even if your stuff is near there, you sort of move it
• People definitely look different at various stages of repair – to the point that I didn’t even recognize my trainer today as her usually wavy hair was poker-straight
• Control of the remote for the television is not as straight forward as I thought.

Initially I assumed who ever had the remote when you went into the room where the TV is located has the prerogative to choose both the programs and the volume. Yesterday and today the remote was abandoned on the piece of equipment with which I chose to exercise. Hhhmmm what to do, what to do?
The reasonable thing was to leave it on the station on which it was set with the prerogative of knocking down the volume a little. Today, after each person left the cardio room I turned down the volume a little more and a little more until there was just another lady and me in the room. She was reading and at no point did she give me the hairy eyeball as I gradually reduced the sound.

An especially nice event occurred in that as one fellow left, he walked through the treadmill area where the TV was blaring to NO ONE and he turned it down. As he turned to face me I mouthed “Thank you” and gave him a thumbs up. He commented something about it being “too loud”, YES INDEEDY! For today he is my
HERO