11-11-2000

I have been frustrated at the lack of time I have had in the past four to five months for exercise. I would dearly love to start up Tae Kwon Do again (okay I'm hopelessly uncoordinated and look like a crippled moose when I do front kicks, but at least it's a fun workout). However, my schedule just hasn't made that likely, and with the wedding less than a year away, I really have been getting more and more antsy to try to at least to *something* to get myself back into shape. And I know myself well enough that if I didn't get something that I liked, I wouldn't do it. So after work on Friday, Richard and I headed to the new Galleria mall in Roseville to look at treadmills.

We tried out probably half a dozen of them in the department store while the clerk waited patiently. They're fancy little contraptions with blinking lights and pulse monitors, some with hand weights, some with ski poles. We poked and prodded and pressed buttons, but eventually decided on a model to bring home.

Then the fun began. We went downstairs to pick it up. The guy brought out a box on a dolly. We took one look at the box, he took one look at Richard's car, and we all three immediately realized that there was no way in the world that thing was going to fit. So back upstairs to see about delivery. No can do. Can we order it? Nope - can't do that either. I was just about to sigh and jot down the model number and see if maybe we could find it online when the clerk who'd been helping us called his wife to tell her he'd be a bit late, and then volunteered to follow us home with the box in his truck.

He wouldn't let us fill up his tank with gas. He helped us drag this extremely heavy box into the house. He drove nearly two hours out of his way to help two strangers who could have probably just as easily broken down and rented a U-haul for a day to get this home. We didn't ask - he just offered. Before he left we at least managed to get his name so we could call his manager. We realize that they probably frown on their employees doing this sort of thing, so we're not going to mention exactly what he did. We just want his manager to know how much we appreciated his service. If he gets a pat on the back and recognition from his employers as to how awesome he truly is, then that's the least we can do.

So now we have a treadmill. We set it up last night, peering at directions in tiny print while we attached the legs and arms, all with the oh-so-useful assistance of several curious cats. Most of them were happily distracted, however, by the presence of the huge box in which the treadmill came. I was good and used it this morning, and loved it. I'm hoping that this will last.

On a side note, the box is still sitting in the middle of the living room. The cats are having too much fun with it and we really aren't intending to have people over any time soon, and I always feel so guilty about taking something away from them that they really enjoy......and so just one more of the many reasons why I'm hopelessly in love with Richard is because he doesn't mind if the box sits there for a few days, and not only that, he is perfectly happy to help me build them a boxy sort of maze with it later, when we move into the new house and have more space to put it.

But then, with a guy like this how many more reasons do I need?