Never get your hair cut at a wig shop!

My husband gave me that advice when I was searching for a new stylist. I had seen a cute shop, great downtown location, inviting storefront but Steve said "no, you absolutely must not go there!" and when I asked him why he pointed to a display of wigs in the front of the shop and said that you must never never never get your hair cut at a wig shop.


I see his point.

I was thinking of these words today not because I was looking for a haircut but because I have been looking for a gym. Currently I workout or at least say I'm going to workout at the gym at the college where Steve is employed. It works out nicely when Steve and I can coordinate our workouts and see each other during the day, but that doesn't happen very often and so usually it's me and a handful of really old alums or really young coeds. Neither of those groups are very appealing. So I did what all modern, computer-savvy-types do and I looked online for a gym in my area. The first website that came up was for Curves, a national chain that caters just to women. This gym may be an excellent place to workout, but their marketing pictures may need some work:


The image of these out-of-shape-and-much-older-than-me ladies did not inspire much confidence in the results I could expect.


So I tried a few other websites but was uninspired either by the gym's location or the 'Silver Sneakers Program' promotions. Finally I broke down and asked Steve if he knew of any gyms. It's not that I don't want Steve's advice, it's just that I have been staunchly resisting all his attempts thus far to get me more involved in the classes held at the college gym that are attended by his female co-workers. Not my scene, thank you. As it turned out, Steve had heard of another gym, (recommended, of course, by one of his female colleagues) that allegedly catered to the younger side of 40 and was the place to be during the summer. Today I went to check it out and while I will definitely use my free one week trial membership this week, let's just say that the initial impression was of this:



In fact the lady who gave us the tour was so slow going up and down the stairs that I wondered if we should be installing one of these:












Now you may be thinking: hey, this is ageism! How dare you judge a gym by its geriatric employees! Well, you'd be right, I'm withholding my opinions until after I have actually taken a few classes there. AND the octogenarian who gave us the tour may actually have been an extremely fit centenarian...

...I'm just sayin'...