Um, before I tell everybody what the big surprise is, would you like to tell me what you think the big surprise is?

Remember way back, when I told you the hilarious story of my rock star friend?

Well, she's back. And she is not the rock star of this story (OK, there is no rock star of this story), but it was too hilarious not to share with you, nonetheless. I heard it yesterday, and am still laughing about it 24 hours later.

me: tuesdays tend to be big meeting days
just got out of my fourth and last of the day
RS: ugh. that is a lot of meetings. we just had a weird forced surprise birthday celebration for 25 people. it's really ridiculous to try to surprise 25 people at the same time
me: ha!
yes
is that everyone who has a birthday in the summer?
RS: june and july
me: ah
RS: but it was totally silly. because several of us were told we had to some how get our boss, plus 5 colleagues up to a conference room 4 floors up on a floor we never go to
me: heh
how did you do it?
RS: we just told them what was happening and to pretend to be surprised. because we could NOT figure out how to do it and also it was a rescheduled surprise party from last month that they all knew about the first time
me: hee
RS: when we all got upstairs, the "surprisees" were herded into one room (with no explanation) while the surprisers went into another room. and then the surprisees filed in sloooowly about 3 minutes later as we said surprise 25 times.
me: omg
wowsa
RS: yes. it was like an episode of the office.

Train the trainer

I've been working out a little more lately. Yeah, I'm pretty awesome.

I started running about 6 weeks ago, and recently decided I needed to add some strength training to that. I am very gym-phobic, which is bad for someone who wants to add strength training. But I work at a college, which is good for the gym-phobic, because personal trainers cost $40 a semester.

My trainer is adorable. She's young and tiny. She dots her i's with circles. She wears sweatpants with things written on the butt. I try to get past these things, really, I do, because I know my dismissiveness is both harmful to the trainer-client relationship, and is also just a sign that the patriarchy is leaving its mark on me.

And yesterday, at our second session, I had gotten over them. We'd had a great workout; she's fun but also on top of things.

And she works in the evenings, which at a college gym in the summer is a boring time. Since she was bored, and since I irrationally love fitness tests, we decided to do a bunch of them yesterday. Including a skin-caliper test, which she was very excited about, because most people don't want to do them.

Afterward, we chatted about my body-fat percentage, and what a healthy percentage would be (25%), and what a really fit percentage would be, if I wanted to be more serious about my running (21-22%).

"But you don't want to go below 20%," she said. And I could hear her gearing up for the anorexia talk, which I was very pleased to hear her do, because I think that's just good responsible training. "Once you get to around 17%," she said, "you stop —"

And then she paused.

"I would normally talk about losing your period when your body fat gets too low," she said. "But at your age, I know, menopause..."

People?

I am 38 years old.

And yes, that makes me twice her age, literally. But come on.