The lunch hour

Even though the gym is five minutes away from my office, when you factor in the time to get there, the time to change clothes, the time to shower, the time to change back, and the time to get back, you've got about 40 minutes tops to work out on your lunch hour, and that's if you haul ass on everything. Usually it works out fine -- I mean, you do what you can, right? -- and since I can't shop on my lunch break this week, the only other things to do on my lunch is eat lunch or read, and hell, I can read on the elliptical or treadmill for 40 minutes, so why not do it that way and eat at my desk? Even though I hate eating at my desk. But I digress.

When I go to the gym on my lunch break, the hour is more than accounted for (unless the power goes out at the gym, like it did yesterday, halfway through my elliptical stint, causing an orange, roided-out d-bag to fly off the treadmill he was pounding on, to my merriment) which means no stopping even for a quick errand -- no ATM, no Home Depot, no Borders -- unless I'm okay with running over on my lunch hour. I am sometimes okay with running over on my lunch hour, is the problem -- "I'll just look at the gardening magazines" means I walk out fifteen minutes later with $10 worth of magazines; "Oh, I needed to pick up some wire brads" means I pick up some wire brads and take a half-hour stroll through the garden center, with requisite garden purchases. I have so little willpower when it comes to some things that it'd be laughable if it weren't ultimately a little frivolous, and I am very good at creating reasons to go shopping. Even for things that are arguably pragmatic, it's more mindless than I like to admit, and the opportunity to shop is always in front of me, all the time. I'm actually a little grateful for an excuse to block the "it'll just take a second..." voice out of my head this week.