iPod Armbands: Only for People with Limbs Like Tree Trunks

Everyone who knows her admits it: my mother is an exercise fiend.

She loves it. She gets to the gym at 8am and works out for two hours, comes home, and continues her day. On the days when she can't make it to the gym, she works out on the two pieces of exercise machinery she bought before her days of gym membership. She can't rope me or my father into sweating it out with a bunch of other middle-aged women in a group cycling class or "relaxing" in a posh yoga class, so she uses the word "exercise" at least seventeen times in each conversation until we finally go treadmill or use the elliptical. She has great intentions. I kind of wish I could get as jazzed about cardio workouts as I do about Beethoven. Her enthusiasm makes my love of Beethoven look like a kindergarten valentine.

Anyway. My mother is always trying to find something that will encourage a lazy-ass like me to exercise. If I'm home, usually I just watch an episode of Law and Order SVU and I'm fine. It's when I'm at the gym at 8am and there's an exceedingly peppy instructor yelling at me and a pumped-up exercise rendition of Linkin Park's In The End playing (I kid you not) and I know I'm stuck there sans-coffee for two hours...then we have a problem.

Luckily, iPods were invented. Probably for this purpose.

If you haven't already, download the Decemberist's newest album, The Hazards of Love. I know I'm, what, nine months late on this album, but OH MY G-D. It's seriously the best album I own. It tells the story of William (Colin Meloy) and his love for Margaret (Becky Stark) and various abductions and mishaps happening to Margaret by The Queen of the forest (also William's mother, sung by Shara Worden) and...argh, I can't possibly describe the storyline or the musical amazingness that accompanies it. Regardless, this made me want to extend my stay on the crossramp trainer to 58.6 minutes. I felt cheated when I had to hit pause on my iPod and get off after half an hour.

If Ithaca ever buys a crossramp trainer and I can figure out how to prevent my iPod from tumbling across the gym floor, I am going to have the best ass ever. Thank you, Decemberists. But within my 30 minute, 275-calorie-burning stay, I saw at least three iPods tumble from the unstable ledges of various treadmills and elliptical trainers and...whatever the hell those other things are. Luckily, numerous brand names have attempted to fix this malady with the iPod arm band. Great idea? Yes. In practice?

Not so much.



I'm a relatively normally-sized female, height notwithstanding. I'm not small. I took Tae Kwon Do for nine years, and thus my upper arms are relatively strong. Why then, can I not tighten the armband of this wonderous device so that it will stay on my arm?



The reason is this: here's the length of the arm band and the tiny splotch of velcro at the very, very end:



And here's the smallest the armband can be tightened:



Really. I'm all for New Years Resolutions (if anyone still remembers theirs) and trying to get down to a healthy weight and yadda yadda yadda, but really?

Thank you, Belkin, for catering to New Years Weight Loss Resolutions. Now pardon me while I go eat more, so my limbs can become tree trunks...and then I can listen to the Decemberists while working out.

And thank you, Decemberists...now I want to go work out. I guess it's not so bad after all.

Update: it won't stop!

Also, I continue to be unable to go anywhere in middle Georgia without seeing someone I know, except tonight it was in astonishing quantities. At Ingleside Village Pizza alone, I managed to see:

-someone from my high school academic bowl team
-one of Maxine's childhood friends
-the above's very tiny compatriot
-the woman who cuts my hair*
-Katy Newcomer's mother

*She's about 65 and always seemed too proper for pizza. I'll bet she dabs it with her napkin. And eats it with a fork. Classy.

Friends, coffee, and all the single ladies...

I keep expecting my life to either turn into Sex and the City or some really terrible romantic comedy.

First of all, I am in this group of three friends that I hang out with in Macon--Shannon, Maxine, and myself. We frequently meet in coffee shops, go bargain shopping (or just trying on ridiculous outfits) together, and basically gallivant around middle Georgia. Shannon, I suppose you could say, is like Charlotte. Eventually she is going to meet a nice Jewish boy and get married. Maxine is a writer, so now I suppose she has to be Carrie. I'm an irascible person terrible at functional relationships who's a lesbian in real life. I suppose this makes me Miranda. Okay, so we don't fit the character stereotypes, but the idea is still there: we're a group of single ladies drinking coffee, eating classy salads, and basically just tearing apart the streets of middle Georgia looking for something to do. And despite what relationship situations may or may not befall us, we've got each other.

...yeah, cue the cheesy friendship music.

I have to admit, though--it's nice to have a group of currently-single friends that you can go around town with and complain about how complicated (or non-existent) your love life is with. It's kind of nice to know that I can still have fun with friends now that everyone is pairing off. Which brings me to my next point:

Single people seem to be a dying breed.

Seriously. Nearly everyone in my life has had a relationship in the past three months or is currently in one. Or is about to be in one. Regardless, there are options there and experiences to be had. I hate to complain, but why am I not a part of this statistic?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, eventually it'll happen. But in the meantime, where'd the single ladies go? I'm not just trying to find ones to date (though that'd be nice), but ones to be friends with on group date nights. I'm not saying my friends are going to abandon me--they're excellent and already plan not to do so--but sitting at that coffee table with two other members of that dying population, the three of us joked about our lives turning at that moment into a cheesy romantic comedy. You know, Shannon, who is tied with me in clumsiness, would spill coffee on someone and end up dating him after she nursed his second degree burns. Hipster boy would notice Maxine's Swedish-winter-prostitute boots and it'd be love at first sight. The other middle Georgia lesbian would walk into Barnes and Noble--

Oh wait, that happened. She was with her girlfriend.

Regardless, here's the point: it'll happen when it happens, but in the meantime, it's nice to have your single friends to make it easier. As Sex and the City dictated, your friends are the ones that'll get you through the both being single and the soap opera that is being in a relationship. End cheesy post here.

That being said, I'm calling for an endangered species list for single people.

...and the thing is, I don't live in THAT small of a town.

I cannot go anywhere in middle Georgia without seeing someone that I know.

Most of these happenstances have been pleasant, but pleasant conversations don't make usually for very interesting stories. Regardless. First, at our friendly neighbourhood Barnes and Noble, I was drinking my soy/espresso drink (yes I know I am a hipster thank you for informing me of such) and waiting to meet two friends. In the process, I ran into two people from my old marching band who were generally unfriendly and waved politely while sipping their Frappuchinos and a girl from my youth orchestra who wants to go to college in Ithaca. We had been planning to meet and converse about living in the frozen tundra of the country, so seeing her at Barnes and Noble was convenient and provided me with great conversation.

The only reason this is funny and not absolutely ordinary is because that night she posted a Facebook status asking what she and her friend should do in Macon the next day (yes, it is difficult to find things to do in Macon), and I jokingly commented "run into me again, of course." What are the chances that she, who lives in Forsyth, and I, who live in Bibb County, would meet again the next day?

Apparently around 100%, because the next day at Kohl's with my mother I was delighted to see her waving at me from across the store.

Wow, my life is mundane.

The next day, I went to get gas. I figured this was relatively safe, as WHO MEETS ANYONE AT A GAS STATION? Apparently I do. As I waited, listening to Borodin's second symphony in my Honda Accord, a giant, mud-crusted truck pulls up to the pump on the opposite side of mine. Out pops the LAST person I expect to see on my break from college--my absolute polar opposite and high school antagonist. Needless to say, I was thrilled. He politely waved as he began fueling. I reluctantly turned the volume on the Borodin, gulped, and drove up to my pump. The dialogue went as follows:

Him: Hey Rachel, how've you been?
Me: Good, you?
Him: Good. School's been hard. You?
Me: I love it. I'm loving my music major.
Him: Well that's good.

(thankfully, my tank is now filled)

Him: Y'see, that's the difference between driving a car and drivin' a TRUCK.
Me: Hmm?
Him: I've been fueling since before you got here and you just finished.
Me: Nice to see you, have a good break!

(exit Rachel, thinking "and the other difference? My fuel economy is measured in miles to the gallon rather than gallons to the mile.")

The verdict? Making small talk with people I went to high school with isn't so bad. I'm getting better at making polite conversation. But if you wanted an example of sensible social lies, that's it.

Later that night, I left fashionable North Macon for downtown. I met at a friend's house, waited an hour and a half for my best friend, piled in a car, drove back to North Macon to pick up another friend while trying to figure out my best friend's defroster (not to mention trying not to be terrified of her driving, with some success at her credit), picked up said friend, made him drive us ALL THE WAY back down to Cherry Street, and ate at the new tapas/men's clothing restaurant/store called Dolce Vita. Delicious and decently priced. I figured, being all the way downtown, that I would not run into ANYONE else I knew. I thought I'd filled that quota.

Not so.

I was delighted to run into a friend that I vaguely know through a pit orchestra and my youth orchestra. She's a fantastic flautist and I seem to see her one out of every four times I go downtown. The odds were with me this time.

Ithaca is turning me into a hipster at breakneck speed. My friend Maxine had undergone this transition YEARS ago, in addition to actually knowing what's going on in downtown Macon on a Tuesday night. So we drove down to the Golden Bough, quite possibly my favourite bookstore on the planet. To our surprise, we met up with EVERY SINGLE OTHER HIPSTER in the middle Georgia area for an indie concert in the (tiny) back room. While I love this bookstore to death, I uphold that it is a TERRIBLE place for a concert, due to the fact that the back room where concerts are held is about the size of my dorm room. And, in addition to every other hipster in Middle Georgia, who did we run into?

Three people from Maxine, Shannon and Allaine's school, one of my best friends named Dustin, and the rest of his band, one of whom is a friend of my family, another I speak with online all the time, and a Midsummer Macon kid.

Oy.

Here's the thing: Dustin and I can't manage to see each other when we plan it. And between all of the other people we knew in this very tiny backroom with very loud but good music playing, there were so many connections, including pseudo-exes and I-kind-of-know-yous and awkward sideways glances that made me want to scream "MY LIFE IS AWKWARD!"

So I suppose the point of this VERY long post is that sometimes you want to go where everyone knows you. Sometimes that's unavoidable. And sometimes it would be really nice to be anonymous again.

Some Sort of Introduction

Hello, internet.

I am terrible with introductions, so I will make this as brief as possible so we can get to the actual blogging process. I'm Rachel, my age is way too much or way to little depending on how I'm acting, and I wear glasses. I like quoting Neil Gaiman. I like black coffee and travel mugs and writing and I have a soft spot in my heart for nice paper. I am wearing brightly coloured pants. I play music, which doesn't even begin to describe the all-consuming aspect of that. I love music, I study music, I listen to music, I write music (poorly). I am music. Anyway. I think that's enough for an awkward self-introduction. Besides, if you're reading this, you already know who I am.

Let the blogging begin.