Gym bunnies

Mills and I have joined a fancy-shmancy new gym. Everything is computerised, and our personalised gym programmes are memorised on a computer chip.

I'm not much of a gym bunny at the best of times, so the little memory stick does come in handy - it tells you at the beginning of the sessions exactly what you should be doing, how many sets on each apparatus, how long on the bike/treadmill etc.

At each apparatus, you insert your computer stick and the programme automatically loads for you. For the weight machines, it tells you what weight you should be on, how many you have left (handy for people like me who stop counting after seven), whether you should be doing them faster or slower and if you're over-extending, etc.

The bikes and other cardio machines all have TV sets in them, with headphones for each gym user. When you change from bike to treadmill, for example, the TV jumps to the channel that you were watching on the last machine. Like I said, shmancy.

Beautiful and simple, right? You get your programme set up for you by a personal trainer, they load it onto your memory stick; all you have to insert memory chip and you're off for your training session...

And it works just fine when Mills uses it. But when I use it, things go awry.

"Invalid selection" was my favourite on the leg press yesterday. What selection? There is no selection to make, you insert key, you do the sets. Somehow my computer chip decided that I had made the wrong decision.

Put it down to technical fluke. I move to the abductor machine. I start the first of my sets. One, two, three... beep beep beep. The computer informs me that after three crunches, my 2 sets are complete. Huh?

The really annoying thing is that at the end, the clever computer tallies up your results and plots them on a pretty graph, compared to what you should be doing. Because it didn't register two of my exercises, I have 'underperformed'. Computer says NO.

Still... I'll try to keep it up, I do quite enjoy watching cable movies on the bike.

Back home from the gym, I pounced on my boyfriend in a playful and energetic way (no euphamism on pounced, it's quite literal. I generally wait until he's watching his favourite program on TV). In my enthusiasm, my foot managed to knock over the full jug of water HE had left on the side table next to the couch. Full jug of water toppled off table and onto, over and under the extension cord and plugs next to it.

During the clean up operations that followed, Mills and I had the following debate: Who's to blame for this?

He maintains: Koekie did it, Koekie should take responsibility. End of story.
I maintain: Mills failed to Koekie-proof the house. After 6 years, Mills really should know better than to leave a full jug of water near my play area. Mills should be blamed.

What do you think?