Open Mouth, Insert Foot

Back in May, I joined a health club so that I would be able to continue to run.

Yes, I know that sounds weird, so a bit of background. I don't sweat. I get a tiny bit of glistening on my upper lip, but that's about it. Needless to say, doing things in great heat tends to cause problems for me. I've passed out before, and I have long ago learned that if I exercise outside, I need to drink a lot of water while doing so. Running outside in the heat and not sweating, not a good idea, I decided.

I investigated a couple of local clubs in the area before joining the one I did. This one cost far less than the one that's technically closest to me that most of my friends belong to, and it had free childcare for two hours a day. Sold. Oh, and the offer swim lessons (that are better and cheaper than what we'd been doing previously). And I can do all my yoga and any other class I want as part of my membership... which is just about what I was paying for my classes alone.

The club I belong to is a chain, and they recently (as in two weeks ago) opened up a branch near my office. A few friends at work were going to join it, I knew. I was interested to hear what they thought of it, for a few reasons.

Obviously, I wanted to validate my choice that it's a good gym and that they like it as much as I do. That one's a given, right? But the new gym is a fancier one. It has cherry lockers and granite countertops and slate floors and three levels instead of the two at my gym. So at work I asked my friends what they thought of it, and we discussed the merits of it. A fourth person joined our conversation who isn't up on the gym situation.

Sean: So you belong to the same gym?
Diane: Kind of. It's not the same gym, but it's part of the chain.
Melanie: Right. We can go to her gym, but she can't go to ours.
Sean: Well, why not?
Me: My gym is a gold level club. The new one is a black club. I can go to any gold club or below but no black clubs.
Diane: Well, if you wanted to pay for a guest fee, you could.
Me: That's true. But I didn't join the black club because there are enough gold clubs near me that I could go to one of them if I really wanted to go to one that isn't mine. I didn't see the point in paying more for a single membership than I do for my whole family for the privilege of going to the black club.
Melanie: (frostily) It's onyx.
Me: What?
Melanie: It's an onyx level club, not a black club.
Me: Oh. Ummm, I can see why that would be a distinction. Sorry - when I joined, my membership guy talked about the gold clubs and the black clubs. I had no idea.

We all played it off from there, but anyone want to take a guess as to why Melanie was irritated by my erroneous (and I swear completely unintentional) use of black club?

Yep, just one of those moments when I wanted to slink into the floor. Oops.

Bad Brain!

I have official proof that my brain needs some time off.

Today I was working from home, as is typical for me on a Wednesday. Also typical is the regular weekly meetings I have -- my staff meeting, a project meeting a lead, an update meeting I attend, etc.

Well, four o'clock came around, and I had a meeting to attend. I clicked on "Done" when the meeting reminder came up on Lotus. As a quick side note, I absolutely love the reminder feature. Anyway, I clicked Done at 3:55 when it first popped up.

At 3:59, I flipped over to my calendar, grabbed the number for the meeting at 4 o'clock and dialed in.

There were two of us on the call to start. The other guy on the call is a guy who I don't see very often anymore, so we chatted awhile waiting for others to join. I was a little surprised that he was on the call, as I didn't recall him having been on the weekly calls previously, but who am I to question this?

At 4:04, another line joined in. Really, for this meeting (which has a good twenty or so people invited) that's pretty late to have only one other person having joined, but ... whatever. It was Laura and Shawn. Shawn is usually on the call, and Laura sometimes joins in, so I was back on track. Shawn had stepped out of the conference room for a moment, but when he rejoined he started the meeting.

"So you may notice that you have some questions arising from your teams on recent goings on-"

Uh-oh.

This isn't my meeting. This is my boss's boss's staff meeting. That would explain why the first guy was on the call. I quickly looked back at my calendar to figure out how I did this.

Oh. Yeah. My Monday 4 o'clock meeting is with my boss's boss, of course using the same dial in number. Apparently I can't read the days of the week anymore, nor apparently the names of my meetings.

Needless to say, I dropped off without a sound and dialed into my real meeting.

"You are the first caller to this conference." Wait, what? Did I mess this up again? I IM'ed the leader of the call, only to discover that the meeting had been canceled for today. It figures, right?

I just about signed off for the day, figuring trying to do any more work was going to be counterproductive. But then I remembered how much more I had to do yet. Thank God I'm going to Florida in a week and a half!

PS My husband just tried to describe Aldi as "Trader Joe's without the cache." Ummm, no.