Mon., Feb. 22

Today I had an appointment to see Dr. Bush. Once a week all patients meet with their doctors. Being a doctor he wasn’t there today, so I met with his Resident Physician. My time will be at 2:40 PM each Monday.

Even though my body said “don’t go to the gym” I went anyway. I worked out on the weights for awhile and then decided to ‘man up’ and go to the Yoga class. I was interested to see how they were going to mesh Western Christianity religion and the mediation aspect of Buddhism and Yoga. Yes, there was still the “Standing Dog” and the “Bent Cow” but it was intermingled with the soothing background music of Yanni. She didn’t say anything about Chakras though, maybe she forgot.

When I took the rubber workout pad from the stack and placed it on the floor I scared myself when I looked into the mirror that was along the front wall. I was much wider than I originally thought. Since I was wearing light-colored shorts and a white T-shirt, I kind of looked like either the Pillsbury Dough Boy or maybe the pudgy Michellin tire guy. But then I looked again, and what I was really looking at were where two mirrors came together. I stepped to the side and everything improved. I was much slimmer. Not much, but it helped. Thank goodness for inferior workmanship.

Doing the exercises I felt like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. The ‘Standing Dog’ was OK, but it got kind of hard from there on out. Meanwhile, the instructor looked like she could have been a stand-in for that toy, Gumby. I don’t think that she was too impressed with my lack of flexibility. I told her I was over-muscled and men with a lot of muscle don’t stretch very well. She didn’t buy it. Of course it’s a similar story that I told the trainers in the weight room, “You wouldn’t believe how well I stretch, I just don’t have a lot of muscle to go along with it. (Not really, I just made that part up.)

I think that the best approach is somewhere in the middle. I’ve seen statues of people that mediate too much. All their weight stops at their stomachs. Of course I’ve seen people who run to much too. They look like a bunch of skeletons running down the road.

My appointment for ‘the treatment’ was at 3:15 PM today. Seems that the guy who usually has it at that time had to do something really important, probably finish his golf game or something. Mine is back to my freshman time of 10:15 PM on Tuesday, unless the guy has to play another 18 holes.