This morning I woke up around 8am to meet my friend from work at the gym. One of the MANY perks we get is a large discount on a gym membership not too far away from the office. We decided we would go before work and see what it has to offer. That way we would have enough time to shower, eat, and start work at close to a regular time.
The gym is located on a little side street, and is very nice. They have a system in place where you just walk in and scan a little tag they've given you to show you're a member. The locker-room is kind of small, though, as the gym isn't really built to have a lot of people in there at one time. I guess I'm used to the YMCA at home or the gym at school where they expect at least hundreds of people at a time. Here, it's more of 6-8 people in the locker room at once. They have plenty of lockers, though, and you can use them all day by just entering a pin number on the keypad - that means not having to keep track of any keys or tokens. There are also a couple of showers with soap, shampoo, towels, etc. It's great to be able to workout, shower, change, and then basically walk down the block for breakfast. Side note: today's breakfast was waffles. They have that every Tuesday morning, so Tuesday is now my favorite day for breakfast. I had a vanilla waffle topped with chocolate chips, bananas, whipped cream, and maple syrup this morning. Probably not the healthiest thing, but I had just worked out for an hour.
And what a workout it was. To make sure we actually pushed ourselves, my friend and I decided we would attend one of the classes that the gym offers. There are 3 different studios: one with a bunch of bikes/elliptical machines, another with free weights and weight machines, and a third open space. The class was in the open room, and was entitled "New Definitions" and we figured it would have some good core workouts, among other things.
I entered the room just around 8:30am when class was scheduled to begin. There were a couple of women there, as well as the instructor. My friend showed up shortly after me, and by the time the class got going, it was the 2 of us, and about 10 women in the range of 40-50 years old. I'm not sure I've ever felt more out of place. And this was the classic type of class these women attend - light free weights, stability ball, yoga matt, and all. It was not a yoga class (although they have that too), but it was approaching the difficulty that I imagine yoga to have.
Any single exercise we did was not too difficult on its own. But there were little things that got added that made it extremely difficult. Bend your leg this way, keep your back arched, don't let your arms fall below 90 degrees, etc. My friend and I struggled to keep up, after thinking this was going to be a cake walk. There were definitely points where various limbs were burning as a result. Even when we backed off to make things a little easier, it took a fair amount of effort to keep up. All the while, these other women seemed to be having little-to-no difficulty with any of it. Maybe 1 or 2 of them was down at our level, but for the most part, they we leagues ahead.
At the end of the session, the trainer commended us for keeping up with the women, which (believe me) was an accomplishment. Afterwards, a couple of them came up and asked us who we were, why we decided to attend, and what we thought of the session. I found out one woman's son is starting at Tufts in the fall and will also be on the baseball team. She said he's really excited, so I said he could email me if he ever wanted to meet and talk about his future as a Jumbo.
Work was pretty standard today. I was assigned to my first major project, and found out I'll be moving desks as a result. I'm not too happy about this since I like being in the open area with a bunch of other interns (we call it the bullpen). But I'm moving to another, smaller open-area that will be better for collaboration within our team. Having my first real assignment means I also have my first major set of deadlines, which is actually good since I now have a better sense of the pace I'll need to work at. I'll be working on this for about the next 5 weeks until it is completed for the following update release. At that point I'll get another project with the possibility of more responsibilities attached to it.
Sorry for the lack of pictures here. I need to get in the habit of taking my camera to work with me. Hopefully I'll remember tomorrow.
