Happy International Women's Day

Today is International Women's Day, and I'm almost late with this here, but that's okay. Throughout the day I collected articles about IWD and favorite female blogs and all sorts of things. I love women (and not just in the pervy sexual way) and want to celebrate women. Plus when I got home from the gym (oh, I have a gym rant coming up, if I take the time to post it, damn gym), I taught my mom about IWD. Which, very cool, because she taught me a lot about being a strong woman who stands up for herself and goes after what she wants (in some ways because she didn't do those things when I was younger, but also because of the way she turned herself around and taught herself to be strong and stand up to men).

So anyway.

International Women's Day is the universal day that connects all women around the world and inspires them to achieve their full potential. It's a day to love women, to encourage them, to honor the work of past women, to take stock of what still needs to be done, and to celebrate women. We shouldn't need this day, every day should be a celebration of women and men, of life, of all nationalities, but it's not. Along with this, March is Women's History Month.

So I give you links about International Women's Day. Go tell the women you know how strong and wonderful they are, and how many great things you know they can do.

( links below, updated as I see more )

I was going to do a post of my favorite women around livejournal, but that's going to have to wait for another day. I think you're all wonderful smart and powerful and inspiring and dangerous, all my favorite things in the world.

gym bitching

Why didn't I know Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events was such a beautiful movie? I've just bumped the books closer to the top of my to buy list; I read the first five or six (maybe even seven or eight) when I worked at the bookstore, and I really enjoyed them, I just never got around to purchasing them.

Oh, Netflix, sometimes I love you.

I'm really behind on fic reading (and writing), so if you've written anything in the past week or so, I'd love a link to it. I'm going to try to get caught up Friday night, but you know how that goes.

I think I'm going to have to change gyms. I go a whole year without hardly any feedback (which isn't a bad thing, I am the Antisocial Woman at the gym), and then in the past three visits, three different workers have told me three different ways to do the squat machine. Today someone started to tell me another and I blew up, told her to go back to the others, come to a consensus, and until then to leave me alone, because if they didn't know how to do it and teach it, how the hell were the rest of us supposed to use the machine properly? (I think I just became the Antisocial Bitch, but you know, I'm paying them money, they should be able to all explain a machine the same way.) (Also, I hate the squat machine, because it is set up to have your arms out in front of you, which is NOT WHERE THEY GO! I really miss squatting freestyle, with the bar behind my head and having to work to keep my balance and all those things.)

This desire to change gyms has been building for a few weeks now, because all year I've missed having an actual full weight room (I have a bench and free weights at home, but I miss a full weight room), better music, actual classes, and, you know, trainers who know what they're doing. Plus I was always conflicted about Curves anyway, because of some of the things the owners support.

My year contract is up this month, so I think I'm switching. Plus I did some research earlier today, and the local health center is actually quite a bit cheaper than Curves (over $100 cheaper if I do a monthly payment and even more than that if I pay for a year's membership all at once). Their classes cost extra, but not a lot extra, and I wouldn't have to do classes. Plus, a pool. And a weight room.

I was going to try to hold off until after Wiscon, because most of my extra money is going into savings for it, which I don't want to touch. However, I don't think I can make it another couple of months. When I've been there longer than everyone who works there, and I've been a member a year, something's wrong.

The rest of the night was pretty good, and now it's time for bed.