This Week's Ninja - And Then I'm Tossed Into the Deep End!

It's the beginning of my fifth week in Victoria, so I've created a new ninja lid. As it is the beginning of the week, I don't yet know what theme is appropriate to it. I suspect there will be something about focus and determination, but it's hard to predict. It'll be fun to see what comes out of it.

And in case anyone was wondering, this is the lid to a water bottle. I originally came up with the idea so I could easily identify which half-empty (or half-full) bottle of water was mine. It wasn't until the third one that I realized I was doing one a week and that it was fun to apply themes to them.

This week certainly started with some adventure in any case. As I mentioned in my check-in for yesterday, I was supposed to start my new swim class, an intro course designed for adults who haven't been swimming in a long time. Unfortunately, we misread the schedule and showed up for the end of the class. For a minute I was afraid we'd have to go home feeling really, really sad, like children who had been offered ice cream and then didn't get any. Fortunately, there was some kind of aqua-fit class that we could join instead, and it was starting right away, so we popped over to try it out without asking too many questions.

What ensued was one hour of gruelling aerobics where we ran, kicked, flailed, and churned at maximum effort. It was the hardest workout that my lungs have had in some time. Normally, such high-intensity work causes my lungs to seize up, but I was able to balance the load perfectly and got one hell of an aerobic workout. We were wearing floatation belts (Mark apparently found he could use his like a seat) which made it harder to drown, but it didn't do all the work. It only helped. And then we were given anti-matter dumbbells, so described because they really want to float, and you are then instructed to swing them around down under the water.

Mark just looked up this aqua-fit class on the schedule, and apparently it was the advanced deep-water aqua-fit--an interesting suggestion for a couple of guys who were late for the "please teach us not to drown" class. Talk about being thrown in the deep end.

But we made it. We actually loved it, which is why Mark looked it up on the schedule--we're thinking of going back.

Sometimes the unexpected adventures are the most interesting ones.