finally something cheers me up

I had a great workout at the gym today. It was an especially good session because I'd made an appointment with one of the trainers for a free introductory lesson, and he spent over an hour talking to me about strategic workouts for optimum calorie- and fat-burning (lots of weight training first, then 40 min. of aerobic such as treadmill). I weighed in at a heart-stopping 65 kg, which is close to my all-time high, just short of the blimpweight I registered when I worked for a year in a commune kitchen.

That's it, girl -- you goin' DOWN!

I was fortunate to have a cute trainer who didn't make me feel like an old, fat cow. In fact, he said my body-fat percentage was normal (ha! his fat-reading device didn't get a look at my belly!) and that I was unusually strong. Talk about psychological advantage: every time he put me on another machine, he set the weight much too low and kept acting impressed when I asked him to raise it. Just what I needed to bolster my self-esteem ... and to give me the motivation to get there 3 times a week.

Meanwhile, upon leaving the highly air-conditioned gym, the heat hit me like an oven-wave. I don't think anyone actually reads or pays much attention to weather reports in this country (at least not from May to September), unlike Canada, because we all know that a) there will be absolutely no precipitation (and precious few clouds) for 5-6 months, no matter what; and b) all they ever say is "HOT" -- with variations occasionally, such as "hotter than usual" or "slightly less hot than the seasonal average" or on a really bad day, "major humidity"; and c) the weather barely even changes when the sun goes down, so it's basically ALL HOT, ALL THE TIME. The only exception, and I always feel it before I hear about it, is when it's SUPER hot, as in "heat wave" -- a day or two when the condition is known as "sharav" in Hebrew, also known as "hamsin" in Arabic. Today and yesterday, for example -- 34 degrees celsius (in the 90s, fahrenheit) -- without air conditioning life is really not worth living. You step out your door and you already need to peel off your clothes and take another shower. But there's good news: in 2 days the temp's going down to high 80s!