You can take the rat out of the gym...

At last, we have joined a gym.

It was not an easy task. There are a lot of them, and when we think of joining gyms, we think of paying about a dollar a day to do so, since you can join very decent gyms at home for that much. Here, every gym we visited was more expensive, so we kept brushing them off, thinking we'd uncover a better deal. Not so much.

The good news is that most gyms let you go month-to-month, and many don't even charge a registration fee -- like the one we decided on. It's about six blocks from our apartment, not the gym of anyone's dreams but perfectly adequate.

It's a little on the smaller side, particularly the weight room. On the first day, there were four of us in there, and it felt packed. Luckily, working out during the day means you won't see it much busier than that. They also have a variety of fitness classes, though most of them are in the evening -- when it is much busier.

It feels so good to be sweating and sore again. The break was good for my system, as I was definitely overdoing it for the last year, but as I learned through some weird bug bites under my arm and on my back (Chile, circa the entire month of July) that also resulted in my face breaking out in fury, and a weird stomach unrest right after we got to BA, I don't know the out-of-shape body very well. It's been gymified for so long, for really most of my life, it becomes very unfamiliar when it goes two months with little more than long walks. I understand it from a fit perspective, and I feel that if I had been running through the bug bites and tummy trouble I would have known how to handle those things and get over them quickly. As it were, I did not. So, I am relieved to be getting back on good terms with this body, and back to a state from which we understand each other.