Rant

Flying from the central time zone to the western time zone is always pretty stellar. You can feel as though you sleep in and you still get end up getting up at a reasonable or early time. For example, this morning I woke up at 5:30 (felt like 7:30 to me) and felt great. When I woke up I organized my stuff (had not had a chance to unpack the night before, really) and did the right thing and tried to go to the gym in the hotel. Hold tight for the rant...

IT COST $15 TO USE THE GYM!!! ARE YOU SERIOUS?! I was already paying $209+tax for the room. It already cost an extra $15 a day for the internet (are you serious?!). Then, for the privilege to use the gym, it was an extra $15. That is so beyond absurd. Ludicrous, really.

I could not stomach paying that much to go to the gym. I would have felt ripped off if it were $5 since I think it should be free, but I probably would have complained about it and moved on. It's really not worth it to me to pay that much to use the gym. I am walking around a lot more here at the conference than I would in my everyday life, but probably not enough to technically call it a workout. Here's my backup plan: use of the pool is free, so I think I will try to walk laps in the pool for awhile tonight to get my exercise on in a low impact, safe way. It will be boring and pretty easy (unless I get ambitious and try to "run"), but it will be good for me and I should do it.

I have to admit I am nervous about seeing colleagues there (who really wants to rock out in a bathing suit in front of people you don't know like that at 255 lbs? Not this girl...), but my health is more important than my pride so I will suck it up and do it....and hope that they are sleeping or out drinking or otherwise occupied when I walk around in my suit :)