HARASSMENT TRAINING: Every two years my job requires me to take an online sexual harassment course. The running joke is they want to be sure our harassing skills are up-to-date. I know it is a serious subject but it is hard for me to take it too seriously. For one thing I work remotely. I haven’t seen anybody I work with in six years. Most of them I’ve never even met.

Aside from that I think they teach the wrong thing. The focus is on awareness. Knowing what harassment is. For example, we learned that hiring strippers for an office party could be considered harassment and that it is not ok to offer someone a raise in exchange for a date. Glad we cleared that up.  

It is pretty obvious when someone makes you uncomfortable. Like the other day when an old guy shooting hoops asked a trainer if she wanted to play shirts and skins. No in either direction, buddy. Recognizing harassment is the easy part. Where people seem to be lost is how to handle it. I reported someone for harassment once. You want to know what happened? I’ll tell you tomorrow. To be continued…

THE YOGA NAP: I have done yoga before. The yoga I did required the use of every muscle. It was exhausting. The goal was to calm yourself under extreme stress. Not that different from CrossFit actually. But if there is an opposite of CrossFit, our Hot Stone Restore Yoga class on Day 14 was it.

The goal was to lay on the ground in a stretch and try not to use any muscles. To totally melt while you clear your mind. In the middle of a CrossFit workout it is impossible to think of anything else but what you are doing. But when you sit in a dark room in silence thinking only about breathing it is surprisingly difficult to keep your mind from wandering.

Despite my jokes about hearing the dinner bell and humming a little tune together (she played symbols and we ended with an “aummm”) I came out of there feeling pretty great. The clearing the mind thing might be worth working on. Maybe after a CrossFit workout when everyone collapses on the ground they should hand us a pillow, turn off the lights, and give us a few minutes.

THE AUSSIE: My stepbrother is visiting from Australia this week. Back home in Melbourne he had a hobby of collecting discarded trees and turning them into wood chips for barbecuing. It turned into a pretty big business and the demand there is going crazy. So while he is out here the family has been eating at every barbecue place they can think of so he can talk his way into their kitchens for inside information. What a fun way to spend a vacation! A local restaurant tour sounds like a good goal for November!

SPIN CLASS: Last time I went to a spin class I was a member at 24 Hour Fitness. They turned the lights off, cranked up the music, and spun me into the ground. I loved it. It is one of the reasons I kept my membership going for so long. Knowing I have been trying to come up with something different every day in October my buddy Nicole suggested I join her for a spin class last night. What a blast!