Day 4: Hace dos días

What I saw:

1. 4 really cute students in the corner of the cafe before school starts
2. boy on steps cruising me 'cause we're wearing similar penguin hoodies
3. my whiteboard a mess with new vocabulary
4. 2 Elluminate screens while training a teacher
5. implant specialist putting xray film in my mouth
6. puddles of my sweat on each side of gym treadmill — interval training
7. cards on floor of Spanish class
8. full(ish) moon over London Eye, lit up blue
9. late night omelet in a frying pan
10. my new bf Andy Dwyer on P&R as I crash on sofa

7. Cards of the floor of Spanish class

Lupe has multi-colored sets of cards, all with sentences. She explains we have to put them in order. Each one has a sentence, and when the task is over we'll have a story. My partner and I get the yellow set. It will be a race.

Lupe asks if we want to work at our escritorios or en el suelo. Without answering, I'm out of my chair and on the nasty, industrial carpeted suelo. My classmates follow suit. I'm so exhausted from the intervals I did before class (speedwork kills) that I just want to lie down. Even if it's on a classroom floor that has years of shoe shit trampled into it.  It feels hard, coarse and just a little itchy.  It could in fact be the most inviting sleeping surface I've ever been prostrate upon. If I had a blanket, I'd be sound asleep, like a toddler in a pram being pushed down a crowded city street. I envy their ability to sleep anywhere; or perhaps just the fact their yummy mummies pump them full of Benadryl before going out on a shopping spree.

As best I can tell, the story is about a trip to a safari park and a woman feeds her apples to an elephant, who then gets his trunk stuck in her car window.  Drama ensues. Lucy and Ethel go to the safari park.

I don't recognize many of the words, but can suss out enough key phrases to figure out the order of the story. While my partner wastes time looking up words in the dictionary (it's a race, remember?) I drag the cards across the carpet into some semblance of order.  Classmates' whispers of English and Spanish translations breeze through the recycled air. Lupe walks above us, in sandals instead of her usual white go-go boots (she's fab), answering ¿como se dice? questions.

The cute Ibiza boy, who you may remember from a previous Spanish post, is on the floor next to me. He's working with his friend, my namesake, who's not only a member of the team, but could very well be a team captain.  Yup, Spanish class is pretty much a gay bar.

We finish ahead of the other teams. Lupe checks our answers, we made no mistakes, and I want to fall into a celebratory, ¿como se dice coma?.

No sleep til Brooklyn...

Ugh. Last night I was in bed with lights off at 10:30. And 11:00. And 11:30. And 12:00. And 12:30. It was awful. I ended up messing around on the internet from 12:30 - 1:30, and finally fell asleep for another fitful night. These are not good sleeping days.

Day 4 - Yoga, Good Times!

Just finished up yoga and wow do I feel good.  If every day were like this I could see it getting addicting.

I did yoga before bed last night, but even so woke up feeling tense and stiff.  My mattress is crap, which probably helps explain why I feel so rotten in the morning.  All those kinks are worked out now though.  Whoowee.  The crappy mattress could work in my favor for this challenge thing.  If I wake up feeling rotten I'll need yoga, right?

Ok, off to have a great day.  Hope ya'll do too!  Namaste.

Press Ups Away!

It's Wednesday, and i've completed Week 1 Day 1 and Week 1 Day 2 of my quest.

In a word? "Ouch"

For my 'off day', i did a bunch of random abdominal crunch-like sets and what not after pumping up my neglected yoga ball.

i'm feeling it. Oh, i am DEFINITELY feeling it.

Three days in, and i'm on my way. Not over doing it. Just doing it.

Day 3 - 2 Year Old Yoga

The balance was worse than ever tonight.  I have the balance of a 2 year old anyway, but tonight I could barely stand on two feet.  Geesh.

Mission accomplished though.  I'm freshly stretched, freshly showered, and ready for the sleep of the dead. 

Good night all!  Namaste.

Success!

I did it! I went to bed by 10:30 last night... earlier even, maybe. I think I was asleep by 10:30. We were in a hotel in Indianapolis, so we could arrive when they opened at 10am, which would have been hard if we had had to drive 2.5 hours first. Also, adding a cheap hotel stay into it made it feel like a vacation instead of just a museum trip.

Anyway, I went to bed early but slept terribly because the bed was too soft and the room was too moist. I don't know what to say about that... it was just really humid in that room, and the air conditioner seemed to make it worse. Opening the window helped, but I had to close it halfway through the night when I realized that the sun streaming in would wake the kids earlier than I wanted.

So, I did it, but woke up a million times, so I'm still tired. I'm hoping for better luck tonight in my own bed.

Day 3: Hace dos días

What I saw:

1. towel draped over side of bathtub
2. people on line outside coffee truck
3. traffic on Old Street
4. new students, some very cute, registering in lobby
5. my class waiting for me in room 409
6. oooo backpack on floor of glass cube
7. my clothes hanging on door of shower room at gym
8. my iPod plugged into the gym's stereo
9. Upper Street full of post-work commuters
10. dinner dishes in the sink

8. My iPod at the Gym

I start my warm-up on the treadmill and trainer John asks me how I'm feeling. The speed reads 11 which is fast for a warm-up. I say I had a cranky weekend for no real reason and he pushes the speed button up to 12. The whir of the machine at my feet slap against the canvas.

He says music helps when he's like that. I say I've been looking for new tunes and a man in jeans and a dress shirt walks in front of the treadmill, heading to the physio office. John speeds up the pace and my stride follows suit.

"I want to hear a Bob playlist," he says, and when the warm-up is over he sends me for my iPod. "DJ Bob is in the house," he announces as he plugs it it.  I'm sure the red-shirted trainer boys have better things to listen to and won't like it.  My "long run" playlist.

"It's eclectic," I say, hoping the first song on shuffle won't be too homocentric.

We go to the chin up bar and a disco re-mix, keeping the homo in homocentric, comes on. A remix of Will Young's first song. Evergreen. It was a ballad when he won Pop Idol (or X Factor, or whatever it was called back then) with it. Trainer John is singing along, his hands just above my waist as he gives me an assist to finish the set.  He knows the words. N is coaching his client through a series of walking lunges. Better him than me.

We move to the bench for reverse pull ups. Super sets with press ups ('cause I'm in the UK, remember, and they're not push ups here). In between sets, W (who I had a a trainer affair with while John was on holiday), blows me a kiss while he checks his phone between clients. These are the gayest group of straight boys I've ever met. The banter and camaraderie always makes the hard work more enjoyable. They all seem to genuinely love their work. It creates an amazing energy. And fit lads flirting with you never hurts.  "I miss you," W silently says from across the room. John says 10 more seconds rest. Time to get back under the bar and pull.  Back days are hard for me.

Another set and N is now tapping his foot to Born To Run — not a re-mix,  told you it was eclectic — while he checks the form of his client's plank. 

It's strange to hear my music on the loud speakers. I never listen to this mix unless I'm running. What is usually just in my head is now the whole gym's soundtrack.

Fast forward to end of session. It was a tough but excellent work out. I get more than my money's worth here. I'm showered and changed and head to the stereo. John's with his next client, putting him through warm-up paces on the treadmill. "See you Thursday, Big Bob," he yells across the gym.

I turn down The Killers mid-song, and unplug the pod.

"Booooo," yells N.

W chimes in with another "Booo" and soon a half dozen red-shirted trainers (all who knew my name by the end of my 2nd session) are boooing me, and some of the clients as well.

"You've changed, Bob," N says. "You used to be such a nice guy.  And now you take away our music?"

"Did you want me to leave my phone here till Thursday?"  I pull the top CD off the stack next to the stereo. It's a compilation of Christmas songs. Random. I hold it up. "Shall I put on a little Christmas?"

W re-racks the kettleball he'd been making his client swing. "It can't be Christmas if you're leaving," he tells me and gives me a wink goodbye.