"And ladies if you follow these instructions exactly you might bear to pull you a rapper"

I wasn't planning on going to the gym today. I was planning on lying on the couch, feeding my coffee addiction and continuing to relish in my depression induced by being an unemployed twenty-three year old with the most useless degree in the world since I never went into it with the notion of teaching rug rats. If I have to be that unemployeed girl with knowledge of the technical terms for all things politically correct in the world (because what else did I learn in Feminist Theory besides how to charm the lesbian professor with my witty writing), I might as well look good.

Did I ever mention that it is the tiniest gym ever? At first I thought I might have accidentally walked into an assisted living facility. I was the youngest person there by fifty years. I felt very left out of the cool kids club, thanks to their icy stares.

I think the cardio machines are hand-me-downs from the 80's. I don't think. I know. In true Amanda fashion, I had to try every cardio machine, just because I was so amazed that this technology still exists. The most stable would probably be the treadmill but I find that to be so dull so I hopped back onto the elliptical, but the one with buttons. Not the one where you have to crank the knob to select your desired resistance. It groaned and creaked under all 108 pounds of me and at any moment I was ready to jump and roll to avoid any flying parts that might come my way. As my iPod battery decided it wanted to torture me by dying, I only spent 12:18 on the animated, volatile machine.

I headed over to the weights, which seemed a little more promising and up to date. Unfortunately, they didn't have my favorite machine in the whole wide world - the twisty abdominal one. The abdominal one they did have was another left over, this one dating probably to about mid 1990's but I'm not sure because my form of exercise back then included kick ball and not weight training.

To sum up my experience - thank goodness it's only $20 a month.