As I get fitter, I get crankier. (Project 190, Day Twenty-One)

I hit my swimming goal today: Twenty minutes, solid, of swimming, so in just three weeks I went from not being able to swim for more than 13 minutes to now doing twenty minutes and I probably could have done a little more but I was pretty annoyed at (A) the world (B) Heavy Breathing Guy and (C) all the people who made me swim in the lap pool because the fact that I swam in the lap pool twice in a row now means that I pretty much have to do that all the time, based on the way my mind works.

I was only going to go 27 laps today, but at the end of lap 27, I looked up at the clock, quick, and I was on 19:40, and so I did the 28th lap, to push it above 20 minutes, because if you're not working out for 20 minutes, you're not really working out.  It takes 10 minutes for the body to realize that leftover pizza it stored over the weekend has to be shared, another 8 to find it (it's hidden behind the spleen) and then 2 minutes to distribute it evenly over the rest of the body.

I had to swim in the lap pool because the sport pool, which had always been my first choice, had something called "Deep Water" going on, and whatever it was, it looked a lot like that old game Red Light Green Light only played by old ladies carrying those little styrofoam barbells that the lifeguards never let us play with.

The outdoor pool had those same two old ladies as last time, just walking around, and it's a narrow enough pool that I didn't want to try to share it because I don't want to have to talk to people or interact with them in any way, ever, let alone at 6:00 a.m. on a morning when the coffeepot malfunctioned because the filter-thing wasn't in far enough, so the coffee overflowed and I had to clean it up and didn't get coffee AND IT WAS THE LAST OF MY COFFEE BECAUSE WE'RE OUT, so I went to the warm water pool where I saw the same two women who had been vigorously debating the weather last time, this time joined by some guy who also was just standing there.

Question: Who gets up before 6:00 a.m. to go stand in a pool?

But they were, they were just standing, not swimming, not moving, and they were spaced evenly so that it was impossible for me to create a lane to swim, and there were no lane markers.  Here is how they were set up:

That is a to-scale drawing of the warm water pool.  The lower left is the stairs where you enter.  The two people in the upper left are the women, and the lower right is the man, and I've captured exactly the impression they made.

They were talking, as I walked into the pool, about the "North Side," which is many Madisonian's idea of a "bad neighborhood," in that someone died there once.  Having lived in Milwaukee and Washington, D.C., I don't think the "North Side" is particularly a bad area, although it's a little rundown.

The guy (Lower Right) was saying how sometimes they will have a shooting

[Once, I thought as I was walking over to the stairs and overheard him.  Once there was a shooting]

and he said:

"You know what's really scary? When the detectives go to the funeral, you know, to see if the killer shows up."

I was getting in the water, then, and thought "Oh, so you've seen an episode of Law & Order."

Then the guy said: "That happened to us once," at which point I was in the water and I practically exploded because I was realizing that there was no lane to swim in because of how they were spaced out, and I had the choice of asking him to move over and let me swim, or leaving, and I knew if I was going to talk I was going to say "That NEVER happened to you you never had anybody murdered and had the detectives come to the funeral you are a 40-ish guy in wire-rimmed glasses who lives in Middleton and probably the most exciting thing that ever happened to you is that time you thought you saw a bobcat in the backyard and I've got to tell you, John, it was the neighbor's dog."

So I got out and went and swam in the lap pool.

Today's workout: Swimming, 28 laps, 20:20.
Latest weight: 251.
Song that might have helped me be in a better mood if I'd had time to listen to it before working out:

Love Today, Mika.