I signed up for a year of personal training at the Goodlife Fitness gym here, at no little cost. While I sign on the dotted line and mentally add the price to our burgeoning monthly budget, I mentally castigate myself for lacking the willpower to do the workouts on my own, like the wiry seniors and buff young people I see routinely on the gym floor. But then I tell myself -- sternly -- that the trainer not only prevents me from hurting myself, as I have done in the past, but also ensures that I get my arse to the gym in the first place, and that I do the exercises I don't like as well as the ones I don't mind. (I can't honestly say that I like any of them.)

So much of the fitness industry's rhetoric is about finding something you love to do, or find amusing ("fun"!), but when I'm honest I have to admit that the activity I like best is sitting and reading, followed closely by doing the New York Times crossword puzzle. In third place is cooking. None of these pass-times does a darn thing for my cardiac efficiency or the capability of my waning musculature. Damn it.

It has just finished snowing after two days of accumulation, and the temperature is hovering around the freezing point. Rain is in the forecast for tomorrow and Thursday, which means that the highway from Stratford to Kitchener will be quite unpleasant when I set out on my monthly pilgrimage to the doctor for my dose of the magic anti-asthma drug. The GPS always directs me to the county road that parallels the highway a few kilometers to the north, but in foul weather that is a terrible idea; the last time I took it going east, the wake from a west-bound farm truck doing no more than the speed limit literally covered my windshield with slush. The heavier highway traffic will have cleared most of the crud off the asphalt by the time I leave home, so the extra driving time the highway route requires will pay for itself in stress reduction.