Last night, I dreamed that my friend, the choreographer and dancer Garrett, was in Iraq and for some reason I had gone to visit him. He was being his usual congenial self as he showed me around the base, which was shelled continually while we toured. Then, as he was loading the civilians — me included — into a large transport helicopter, his demeanor broke.

He was suddenly as terrified as I had been as the walls shook around us. He looked at me with the face of a child and said “I don’t want to be here, Chris. I wish I could go home.” Then, he immediately straightened up, nodded solemnly at me and waved as the helicopter lifted me away.

I don’t think I know anyone who is in a war zone right now, but for my friends and students who are currently enlisted I feel a certain sense of pride and pathos. I doubt I could have that kind of courage. That’s not to make any political statement. I just feel for those kids that are dealing with things that would make this grown man quiver and cry.

This morning as Clare and I drove to work, we nearly struck a strange lump in the road. As we passed, Clare pointed out that it was a turtle trying to cross the road. Glimpsing it in my rear view mirror, I could see its legs pop out and it tried to Frogger its way to the houses across the street from the park for ends only a turtle could understand. Let me say this: that turtle was hauling ass.

Another driver passed over it, swerving slightly to get the thing between her tires. I lost sight of the turtle, but I do hope it successfully completed its seemingly senseless sojourn. This alliteration was brought to you by late night cake web site programming and weird dreams.

Somehow I gained 6 pounds overnight. That’s definitely disheartening, since I came home from work at 10 last night and still made myself go to the gym for a full workout. Bah. I just feel like it’s a lot of work for no benefit at this point. I know I am making myself healthier, but I’d like to drop the rest of this fat, too.

My workout last night commenced at 10:45p.m. I figured that late on a Monday would give me pretty much free reign of the gym. No. Despite my grousing, I typically feel pretty good about my physical self. I am strong and enduring in ways that hearken back to my youth. And when I walked in, the gym was split between me and a bob haircut reading a woman’s magazine.

As I sweat it out on the fake stairs, I let my mind wander, imagining a conversation that might occur between us as she climbed out of the recumbent bike and smiled a sweaty greeting. We would make small talk about the odd hours before turning our attention to our respective weight machines. Nothing would come of this, but the mild flirtation would give us both a little more energy, a brief bolstering of spirit that all this work meant that we were making ourselves even more attractive. At the very least, it distracted me from my waning energy reserves and the way my shirt clung to the lowest part of my belly. It was a pleasant fiction.

Then, in came the tattooed muscle-t, thumping out a testosteronic tempo on the treadmill. I could see the body language of the biking woman change, a subtle shift in her seat that indicated she could see him and she wanted him to see her. I had no real investment in this woman, obviously. Just an image to focus on to pass the time. His arrival was no fault of his own, his hunkiness certainly no shame. It just broke my stride a bit.

I lifted for the rest of my session, my endurance draining away too rapidly. Another fellow, half my size, in a weight belt and sweatshirt dwarfed my meager weights and needed none of my whooshing breaths and strained faces. I’ve been at this for some time now, vascillating between thinking myself at the brink of breaking into the WWE’s top ranks and finding myself hoping to win the Clint Howard look-alike contest. I don’t really know what I’m trying to get out of it, I guess, but it’s just one more aspect of the kung fu of life.