A Writer's Dream

Last week was an exciting week at Jazzercise. Many highly entertaining things transpired, (about which I could write volumes) culminating with the TV folks arriving on Friday to tape the 8:15 class for a business profile spot. Sometime soon y'all can tune in to Charter channel 10 and see for yourself the high concentration of talent in the dance arts that thrives in the Taylors Jazzercise center. We even wore makeup on Friday so that we could look beautiful right up until the point when it all slid right off our smiling faces in a river of sweat.

But, I am so excited about where I'm at right now, that I'll have to tell you more about all that later. Jim (you remember my wonderful husband) is working in Vermont this week, and because I was working up to a huge pout about missing him and all, he brought me along. Now, Vermont is beautiful, and in the evenings, we will go out and have dinner and see some of beautiful Vermont, but the most exciting part for me is the hotel. Now, you might be surprised that someone could get excited about a Hampton Inn. But I do my best writing in Hampton Inns and/or Holiday Inn Expresses. Here's why:

Hampton Inns and Holiday Inns go a long way to attract business travelers. They actually have fairly nice hotels. The ones we stay in have beds that are at least as comfortable as the ones at home. They are insanely clean, and (most of them) brand spanking new, and because Jim spends more nights in their hotels than our home, they tend to treat him really nice.

There are zero distractions. My cell phone will only ring when I turn it on (unlike the one at home--and if I take that one off the hook, folks who love me come knocking on the door. Let me say here how grateful I am that I have folks who love me enough to care and come knocking. Unfortunately the ratio of calls is one from them to every ten from people doing surveys and such.) The peace and quiet in a hotel room is delicious.

Someone else cleans the room.

I cannot do laundry, run errands or battle possessed refrigerators.

Anytime I feel like a stretch, I can ride the elevator downstairs to the cozy lobby and get an always fresh cup of one of three kinds of coffee with my choice of flavored creamer or a cup of one of about twenty kinds of tea, and a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie (or an apple or banana). All of this is free.

I have my laptop. I have wireless internet access. I have peace. I have maid service. I have cookies. Life is good. I am wallowing in it.

Peace, out...

I Feel Skinny Already

Thanks to Casey's little green book--in which every morsel that passed my lips in the last week has been recorded--and, of course her Personal Touch torture sessions which should seriously be considered for interrogating terrorists, I have lost 1.8 pounds in one week. Yippee!!
This in spite of the fact that I ate like a pig at the trough at a dinner party Saturday night. The day I turn down homemade cheesecake and strawberries dipped in chocolate is the day you will know I have been kidnapped and replaced by a clone. It just isn't going to happen. But apparently, I was careful enough the rest of the week that I still lost a little, even if I didn't reach my goal of losing ten pounds the first week.
The last week hasn't been a good one for writing. Too much static in my life. Also, I am trying--with limited success--to get my body to accept 5:45 Jazzercise. This means getting up at 5am, which would be okay if I could get to sleep by 9pm, but that's not likely. So, I've been operating on 5 - 6 hours of sleep which makes me fuzzy headed and not very creative. If my brain function doesn't stabilize this week, I'm going back to 9:20 classes.
Someone suggested that I should take one of Julie's classes, so I could blog her. Let me tell you, back in the days when I first started going to Jazzercise--over at the Faux Greer center--I took hundreds of Julie's classes. And actually, I have taken a few more recently in Taylors. Julie is a breed apart. Julie is hazardously perky. If the energy behind her Jazzercise routines could be harnessed and used to power cars, we would be forever free from middle eastern oil.
The danger, to the average Jazzercizer, is that that perkiness is infectious. It causes one to exert more energy than one actually has in the tank, which can lead to passing out. This has only happened to me personally twice. Just kidding. But all that effervescence does induce me to over-exert myself. I'm better off with the mean instructors.
Having given you the scoop on Julie, that only leaves me with two un-blogged instructors at the Taylors Jazzercise Center: Donna and Jenny.
Donna is Wendy's sister, and I've only taken a couple of her classes. She usually teaches at 4:30. She gets teachers after school's out. Most of these ladies, as you might imagine, have frustrations to work off. But Donna is the most serene of all the instructors. This defies logic since she is a school teacher herself.
Jenny is the newest of the instructors. She is one of those young women about whom people say things like, "She's just so sweet," and "Isn't she just the cutest thing!" Both of these things are true, but more relevant is this: she's Casey's sister-in-law, and is being trained by the Queen of Pain herself. Just wait. Remember what happened to sweet little Michelle when they gave her a microphone. It's only a matter of time before Jenny-the-cutest-little-thing morphs into Jenny-the-Jazzer-Nazi.
On a more sober note, it's been 27 days since my last Mega Moo Mocha Moolatte. Having discovered that there are 884 calories in one of these divine dairy and caffeine concoctions I have sworn them off. I resigned myself to ordering Starbucks venti non-fat mochas instead. Then I found out there are 375 calories in one of those. How do they do that? How can coffee and non-fat milk have 375 calories? I think there is a conspiracy afoot to make Americans fat. Extra calories (probably in the form of lard) are being stirred into everything we eat. It's the only explanation that makes sense.

Talk to y'all tomorrow. Meanwhile, beware the lard conspiracy. You never know when your physique is under attack.

Peace, out...