No Viper for you, Cambridge lady.

I went to McGym last night and tried to find out who there is in charge of buying equipment for the Cambridge gym, so that I could make an appointment with that person and try to talk them into buying a Viper. I was super friendly and made sure it was clear that I had an idea, not a complaint. However... it turns out that the person who would make that decision isn't in Cambridge, isn't even at the district level, but is even higher up in Corporate. The two guys I was talking to were like "geez, we only wish we could just make an order". They liked the idea of the Viper, too. I guess there are 400 McGyms and not-so-many people who decide what goes in them.

Point is, they're paralyzed! I can't believe it. McGym must not really respond to local competition -- they can't, because of the way they're set up. Oh... how crushable! How my little gym could run circles around them just by responding to local requests!

Don't worry if you can't tell how serious I am -- I can't either. I continue to look into this though. I have two lunches set up with people who used to own gyms, and one book on the way. That's the rational thing to do, yes? Look into it and see how it would actually work.

the world's first completely self-contained artificial heart

I dreamed I had surgery and got one of those AbioCor artificial hearts that are back on the market now. Yes, I remembered the name in my dream. To keep it warm they put a tea light in my chest... and I couldn't figure out how often I had to check on the tealight, put in a new one and so forth. I couldn't figure out why they hadn't told me not to do handstands or anything like that (wouldn't that make it hard for the candle to keep going)? That was kind of confusing and anxiety-producing, especially because I had to cut myself to get at the tea light and I had no way of telling whether it had stopped burning.

I didn't have a heartbeat anymore because AbioCor is a continuous pump rather than a periodic one, and that was creepy (something I've read about in articles). I was thinking a lot about what it would be like if I were panicked and my muscles expected a flood of energy but my heart rate didn't change, or if I got really emotional but my heart didn't skip a beat. But I didn't really get upset until I remembered that nobody has managed to live with those hearts for more than a few months. Then I started crying on L-dawg, who happened to be around (though I was at work) and was trying to get one of the cats to cuddle with her.

L-dawg: are you okay?

Flexy, seeing Dan the Cat walking by: Um, I will be at 10:00 when the meeting starts, but it's not 10:00 yet. No, I'm not.

Alarm clock (playing Deep Forest): YA na na na na, na... na na na na!

Flexy: Wha, whoa? Ahhhhhhhhh, thank goodness.

Home workout

Do five sun salutations to warm up.

Stolen from Crossfit:
With a continuously running clock or timer, do 1 pullup during the first 60 seconds, 2 pullups during the next 60 seconds, and so forth.
Break into sets as needed.
Go until you can't complete the needed number within one minute. Fail when n=7.
Experience strange aching in triceps. Try to figure out why. Decide it's because of trying to go behind doorframe instead of hitting head on it.

Timed L-sit: 13 sec again. Play around some more with keeping one leg bent, then the other.

Pretend to do a ball planche as toes remain stubbornly attached to the ground.

Use parallettes to practice yoga jump-throughs and jump-backs. Stop often to pet black cat, who is suddenly very interested in this part of the floor. Pretend to press handstand onto parallettes; succeed in making feet slide a little.

Do a few handstands on parallettes. Do 10 handstand pushups with the smallest range of motion ever seen. Ditch parallettes. Tuck up, but fail to get feet to wall. Fail to straddle up.

Use the ab wheel. Try ball planche again. Get closer. Try to figure out what's missing.