Oh balls. I couldn't make a decision on what to do today;

A) drive to Welland to watch WODs
B) go for a paddle
C) go to the gym

so I ended up...

D) lying in bed, reading and drinking coffee.

Just now, when I decided that a paddle is what I really need, there was a loud bang of thunder and the sky has turned completely black! Even a squirrel who was in mid-scamper has frozen on a branch outside the stairway skylight. Now the rain is pelting down, there's continuous thunder and lightning and I guess I should be glad that I didn't leave 20 minutes earlier. Being caught out on the lake in a thunderstorm of this magnitude is heart-stopping. Worse than going to the beach after watching shark week.
I can't even catch up on computer stuff. I've too many photos stored on my harddrive to risk frying it so I'm shutting down for now.
ciao.

So I went down to the end of the road. No lightning but I did get this interesting shot of a cloud formation. The lights in the bottom right corner are on the pier at the Petro-Canada plant.



Immediately after this, a pure blue sky emerged from the clouds. I went for a paddle and just played in the waves. Lots of fun, especially since there were very few Sunday boaters.
Earlier in the day, I'd gotten a call from the gym I just joined. They wanted to know when I could come in for my "personal fitness assessment" so I said today! Now in my experience, personal fitness assessment really means, " when can we do our sales pitch for personal training" but I have to say - this one took 90 minutes and they made me work HARD. Needless to say, it's the first time I've actually pushed myself since I stopped training and, good god, I've really let myself go! If they had actually tried to sell a personal trainer at that moment, I might have signed up. However, it also reminded me of how much I love training so I am suitably motivated.
The reason for joining a new gym is simple. I've been at Revolution in Oakville which has been awesome. On the plus side, Larry, Chanda and Eve have also been there and we trained together. However, Eve broke her wrist, Chanda and Larry were coaching sports at school so by the end of last winter, I was mostly there on my own anyway. On the minus side, it's in the opposite direction from work so if I don't get there by 6:00am, it's barely time to do a proper workout, no one else in the group needs to get up that early (teachers bah!) and I stress about traffic on the QEW. Especially in the winter.
The new gym is about 3 minutes from my work, is bigger (more cardio equipment), has a pool and a ton of classes (cardio, pilates, yoga, spin, kick-boxing). Oh yeah and it's a 24 hour gym! And, the other thing I forgot, school board employees get a huge discount so I get all that for about $350 per year. I am so looking forward to missing rush hour traffic every morning and being able to run at lunch all winter long (on a treadmill). No shame there.