Sweet jeebers am I ever tired. Too many new toys, too few hours in the day, too little too late. Anyone got a shot of adrenaline of something similar that I can borrow? I have a dozen syringes in my lab-coat pocket; all I need is a vial of chemicals. Sunday's blood pressure at Virgin Active, the site of my current but outgoing gym membership: 134/76 aka fucking good. Tuesday's blood pressure(s) at Planet Fitness, the reason I am Virgin no longer as procalimed in my last entry, at yesterday's preliminary "lifestyle assessment:" 196/137 and 131/93 (2nd reading taken with manual sphygmomanometer as opposed to crappy Japaiwanese electric meter). Aka very fucking bad. Both times. Hot damn, are they bad! Net result: "You are not medically fit to train with us yet, (you filthy waste of human tissue)" said the sweet, slender consultant at the assessment desk in Planet Fitness in Plattekloof's temporary pre-sales office while they build the monster gym in the adjacent lot. But first, some back-story: **The Utterly Woeful Ordeal of Dale's Terribly Unfortunate Blood Pressure 1999-2004 - A Hero's Tale** It was high, we noticed one day before the Department students embarked on a money-making endeavour known as Clinical Trial Day (our unit evaluates blood drug-levels of new or reformulated products on the market (eg aspirin powder vs aspirin capsule), and we are emplyed from time to time to draw blood from our volunteers and generally run things on the day. It's worth millions, literally, to the Department), and we were practicsing our blood-pressure-taking on one another on a sunny Friday afternoon back in '99. "Hey, your BP is a little off," said my office mate, who was a fully qualified paramedic doing his PhD with us and so he called one of the Department's 6 doctors to confirm the result. And yea, for high it was indeed. Like waaaaaaaaaay high. Like as high as very tall building which has been fired into the stratosphere on the back of a Space Shuttle. Like through the fcuking roof. You all with me? Think ER and George Clooney saying things like "Wow his BP is like way out of range" or something suchlike. And whoo boy, was it ever. 120/80 is normal for the average human, or in my case, abnormal humanoid; if your lower reading is about 90, they panic and medicate. The upper value is not usually panicked about - as you get older, it becomes 120+your_current_age as a norm; so at 40, 160/80 would be a good enough (although 130/80 would be better) score. I was but 22 and mine was 195/130; or high enough to shunt a blue whale through the tailpipe of Barbie's bright pink Corvette. Panic stations. Well, they did every test in the world on me (except a pregnancy test; although I did have to have an ultrasound - a horror story in itself involving me, a very small hospital gown, a brusque older consultant radiologist with cold hands, a wating room being painted, a tube of weird, warm, conductive jelly out of a microwave oven and a particularly lovely young nurse, with no qualms at all about touching everything on, about or attached to my lower torso. And I do mean *everything*) including the radioactive technetium kidney mapping (twice, no less - and after the exam is done, you can have good fun using the simple tools of your glow-in-the-dark body and a portable Geiger counter) and 24 hour adrenal gland secretions and blood work-ups and EKGs and the upshot of it all was... they couldn't find it. No underlying cause whatsoever known to man or man-beast; I had a week of caffeiene deprivation and all sorts of horrific anti-Geneva convention human rights abuses (ie no coke or chocolate either) and I have the scars to prove it. They didn't want to medicate without knowing what the story was, since BP drugs tend to be things you have to stay on for ever and they weren't sure why my BP was so high when I was but a wee lad of 22, as mentioned previously. I digress... in the end, I had to switch to low-fat milk-everything (cheese, milk, all dairy stuff) and cut out salt and that just kinda did the trick. The proof of the proverbial pudding was me plugging my arm into the VirginActive BodyIQ terminal after every workout and seeing that yes, indeed, my BP was still under control. And has been from July '99 until Sunday 29 August 2004, which was when the last reading was taken (and I was a gym-bunny of note of the weekend, having trained and satisfactorily BPed on Saturday the 28th as well). Needless to say, I was Die Moer In yesterday when I got the results from spunky Planet Fitness consultant lady. And their tape measure it also in its poes - I *know* I stand 192cm tall in my socked feet or 195 on a fluffy/bad hair day, and their heightometer thingy reckons only 188. So I've lost 4cm and by inference my BMI (height-weight ratio) has climbed from "normal" to "chunky fat bastard," since their scale also weighs me 4kg heavier than Virgin's. This all means one of three things: 1. Either Planet Fitness, fastest growing gym chain in the world, and builders of Planet Fitness Plattekloof (the largest gym in the southern hemisphere) need to buy new equipment. Already. And the gym is only due to be opened at the end of the month, so there's a blip on the curve if ever there was one... 2. Virgin Active are even more up to shit than previously suspected - one of the many reasons for me ditching them - and they need to buy new equipment instead of fannying about with new paint, new carpets and red Leatherette sofas for each of their 60-odd gyms nationwide. I already have bailed on Virgin - we are in the 60 day contract severance notice period after 4 unholy years together - as a result of ideological clashes between our philosophies, hence my trips to the new Planet Fitness on Sunday and Tuesday to sign up for membership and finally give thos arrogant bastards at Virgin the middle finger I haven't been able to in the past. 3. My BP hassles are back with a vengeance. [Insert further kidney-prodding from disgruntled radiologist here. Also spunky young nurse with roving hands, in theory, so maybe not all bad; we'll have to see later.] Luckily, 3 of the 6 doctors here at the department are happy to pass me medically fit to train there. I mean, I do karate 3 nights and week and swim the occasional mile at the gym and I haven't had a stroke yet, so hopefully I'm okay. Hopefully. In other news, well, the First of Spetember is when we here in .za celebrate Spring Day. Do you guys north of the center do Fall Day? Or Autumn Day in Europe? So happy [your season] Day, everybody! It's pissing down in Cape Town - hooray! And I have managed a grand total of about 7 hours' sleep since Sunday night - Monday's boy's night out and last night's too much playing-with-new=mobile-phones (my sister and I both extended our contracts since they are running some super specials) and playing-with-new-4MP-SonyCyberShot-digital-camera which came as a freebie from Sony-Ericsson with my sister's new phone. My own fault for not sleeping, sure. Still, how's that shot of adrenaline you promised me coming on? -D-