So my cardiac C-reactive protein is slightly more than twice "normal". So that puts me in the highest "quintile" for risk of Sudden Keeling Syndrome. So a little bird landed on my shoulder on Monday evening and screamed in my ear, "YO! TIME FOR A CHANGE, ASSHOLE!"

So I'm gym shopping. Actually, before that, I bought a basketball months ago with an eye toward actually using the thing. Really. As a basketball, too.

I pumped it up Monday evening and went down to a nearby neighborhood park (our park doesn't have a b-ball court). It was a warm Seattle evening and there were, of course, kids playing on the court. They weren't playing basketball but I'm not going to end their game of Run Around Until I'm Dizzy And Throw Up My Pork Chops just so I can hobble around to play some Waddleball.

So I drove a few thousand blocks north to a pretty big church/school that has a huge, paved playground with multiple backboards. There's never anyone there when we drive by so I figure that's primo. I pull up to the open gate and notice for the first time that there's a sign next to it. The sign says that the open, empty playground in this residential area is restricted to students and that anyone else is trespassing. Jesus loves you too, jerkfaces.

So I drove a thousand and a half blocks south again to a leetle Christian church that has a single backboard set up in their fenced-in parking lot. I waddled around for about twenty minutes, helplessly tossing the ball into the air.

Then, the Cub Scouts attacked me. Ok, they didn't attack me but they poured out of the church and into the parking lot for "Unless We Run These Kids Silly, The Scoutmaster Is Going To Kill Them" time. As I passed the man, he nicely informed me that they wouldn't be very long if I wanted to hang around. I thanked him but told him it was already past my bed time.

So last night I went back to shoot some baskets or, as I like to call it, "Throw The Orange Ball Skyward" and the parking lot was empty except for a cop who was apparently watching the church to see if Jesus was going to show. He waved at me and I commenced to go one-on-one with the asphalt.

(An aside - the house behind the hoop has hugefuckingmongous holly "trees" that hang over the lot fence and have shed a bazillion dead leaves onto the ground behind the pole. Dried holly leaves, if you didn't know, are basically oval pieces of cardboard with number ten sewing needles embedded in them. The leaves stick into the skin of the ball and, I found out just a hair too late, into the skin af the ball handler.)

So I finally drove off the cop when I accidentally got the ball close enough to the hoop to thunk it against the front edge, causing a massive rebounding failure on my part and sending the ball skidding under the police cruiser to meet with its differential, "thud".

Deciding that he wasn't going to become just another statistic in the war against Waddleball, the cop left. I continued throwing the ball into the air until it bounced over the fence and into the neighbor's yard making me suddenly 12 years old and without a clue as what to do.

I finally walked around the lot and along the side of the house to retrieve the ball from under the Killer Holly but I was expecting to come off of the property with either a growling dog on my leg or a new buckshot pattern in my sweats.

But nothing happened.

So I went up to Gold's Gym to see if they had any kind of printed information about memberships but, of course, they didn't. I hate that these places want to sell you face-to-face. I like to get my info and then make my decision. I don't need any help.

Which brings me to why I started writing this entry. 24 Hour Fitness in Shoreline is too god damned aggressive! Way back when Miss Significantly Other and I were gym shopping together (we settled on Olympic in Ballard but that was back in the heady days when we had money), we stopped at 24 Hour Fitness in Shoreline just to gather some info. You know - comparison shop?

The assistant whatever who trapped us at his desk was adamant that we leave a deposit that day. We tried explaining to him that we were still shopping but, of course, he was offering us a deal that couldn't be guaranteed if we waited. After complaining to his supervisor that we felt more like we were at a used car lot than a health club, we left.

Last night I printed out a 7-day free pass to 24 Hour Fitness in Shoreline, having confused it with another gym. Less than two hours later, "Ben" was calling me on the phone, "wondering when they could expect me". Well Ben, if you're going to hassle me before I'm even in the place, how does "never" sound?

OK. Time to go. Talk amongst yourselves.