April 28, 2005 - 6:16 p.m.

Today at work we had the grand unveiling of our new lunchroom, and then most of the company went for a screening of the original King Kong. Sometimes, working here is like working in the midst of that dot-com boom I heard so much about (but did not participate in, alas). Except that we take a different approach to the whole �making money� concept in that, as far as I can tell, we do. (Ooh burn pets.com and Webvan! I am so late-nineties!)

The new lunchroom is nice, and I look forward to not eating at my desk anymore, especially since nobody has yet invented the Space-Age Lunch Force Field that would render one invisible to one�s coworkers while eating. I do not understand what compels some people, when they can damn well see that you�re eating a Lean Cuisine pizza and surfing the web, to walk up and ask you questions about trademarks and grammar. The lunchroom also has, for some reason, a Sopranos pinball machine, which I watched some man play with an apple clenched between his teeth, until the apple fell out and dropped to the floor. It was both gross and fascinating.

I do not know how I feel about the original King Kong, because I did not go see it. I saw the Jessica Lange version in the theater when I was a wee lass, and the only thing I remember about it is that I found a small rubber gorilla at the bottom of my popcorn tub. Since this was one of the first movies I had ever attended, I am afraid the whole experience just set me up for bitter disappointment, as I spent the next several years searching for � and never finding � toys at the bottom of my popcorn buckets. I guess I was a slow learner.

Instead, I took advantage of the fact that nobody was around to give me things to edit and went to the branch (is that the word?) of my gym that is near the office. It was very disconcerting in a Twilight Zone kind of way, because it had all the same machines and things, but in different places. Also, my usual gym must be the low-rent version, this outpost has better lighting in the locker rooms and the heartrate monitors on the cardio machines actually worked.

I try really hard not to pay attention to the readouts on those machines because I know that they are frequently inaccurate and don�t tell the whole story, blah, blah, blah, but I can�t help it. They feed my obsessive tendencies (I have been known to wear a heartrate monitor to walk to a friend�s house for dinner, you know, just to make sure I�m not slacking). And the heartrate monitors at my usual gym either do not work or, when they do operate, inform me that I am most likely dead.

My favorite thing is to see how many �miles� I�ve gone on the elliptical trainer. I mean, technically (and unlike, say, a treadmill or bicycle), the motion you�re doing on the elliptical wouldn�t get you anywhere in real life, right? I mean, you�d just be circling your feet in midair, not getting anywhere, albeit with much less stress on your joints.

I�m overthinking this, aren�t I?

So, to recap: lunchroom, good; Fay Wray, I have no idea; gym near work, fancy; me, a little nuts.

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