BC 37-40: In Which I Become Increasingly Annoyed with Boot Camp

Let me just say once again for the record that after this week's weigh-in, I am completely over boot camp and incredibly happy that I have only 3 days left here.

Fitness: biggest accomplishment of the week was finally doing the hike, and kicking the asses of the two younger girls (21 and 23) who I was hiking with. From what I hear, the incline is significantly steeper than the mountain trekking I'll be doing in Ethiopia, so I'm feeling like I'm all set. Unfortunately, I twisted my ankle and was stuck limping around and doing the recumbent bike most of the day after the hike.

More news: we changed from the Santa Monica pool to a pool in Culver City, which isn't heated. Unheated pools are no fun in December, even in LA. The other down side: much deeper pool with longer lanes (and far fewer), meaning crowding and fear of death by drowning. Fortunately, Thursday was my last day at the pool.

Interesting development on the trainer lay-offs: I had no idea why they fired a good trainer the same week they hired a new (not so good) one, but recently, all has become clear. Apparently, the genius-y owner of my boot camp is in the process of expanding his fitness empire and was looking for an attractive woman willing to appear in fitness videos. The female trainers on staff were not willing to appear in his videos, so he found someone who would, despite the fact that her skills as a trainer are not on par with the trainer he let go. Just another example of his willingness to put the clients last and his own interest first. (Speaking of which, he has forced the chef to cut his budget to the point that he's using ingredients that many people wouldn't feed their pets, solely in order to increase his profit margin. It seems he needs a new Maserati.)

My fellow campers: the greedy Obama-basher is gone, but only for three weeks. She is addicted to boot camp and can't exist for more than a few weeks without it.

The lazy girl with the potty mouth has been rubbing me (and everyone else) the wrong way: today found her whining about having gained two pounds this week, despite the fact that she's had alcohol, McDonald's, Wendy's, M&M's and Twizzlers, and has skipped half of her scheduled workouts (or shown up and just sat around). The best part: one of the trainers called her mother (who is paying) to rat her out, both for gaining weight and for cheating.

The slow, racist camper who dropped out a couple of weeks ago? Never had a grant. She duped the idiot owner into thinking that if he let her come and filmed her, they could both get grants from the NIH. Naturally, neither one of them got a grant, but I'm thinking that racist camper may have been a little less of a moron than I thought, since she managed to con him into giving her three free weeks of boot camp (a $12,000 value).

The crazy bird sound lady has been up to some pretty wacky tricks, too. When she's not busy dancing, she's reacting to upsetting odors. One new camper made the mistake of wearing aftershave, which caused her to swoon. Now, aftershave is verboten. Another troubling scent: cleaning supplies. These give her such a headache that the only way to remedy it is to make the trainers and masseuses come to her apartment for private sessions (even though the cleaning supplies have been used in said apartment). The woman is a crazy hypochondriac, but she's smart enough to get worked out without having the leave the comfort of her own bed.

That's about it. Tomorrow is my last beach boot camp (yay!), my last visit to the crappy diner, and my last Saturday circuit. A week from now, I'll be writing about the journey to Addis Ababa!