In Between Sets

Until just recently, when I exercised, my time between sets was used for memorizing Bible verses. That was before we bought a house with a basement. Upon closing, my exercise equipment was immediately banished to the creepy, crawly depths of the underground. Against my will I was forced do something else with my no-more-than-30 seconds between curls or lunges.

It started one early morning when, bleary eyed and semi-conscious, I descended into the basement. I flipped on the light, and when I reached the bottom step, a giant spider like you'd see on The Lord of the Rings was gripping the wall in front of me about chest level. It stood perfectly still, not moving a muscle, like all poisonous animals that are ready to strike. For a micro second, I stood frozen, terrifed, unable to scream. Then, my instincts kicked in, and with a move too quick for any camera with today's technology to capture, I karate kicked the spider against the wall with an audible crunch.

It was a bloody mess, which, in my opinion, needed crime scene tape. With the dead spider still hanging on to the wall by a leg, I proceeded to go about my morning exercise routine, wondering how many of those things had made it into our bed as we lay helplessly fast asleep at night.

Since then, I've noticed that our basement is quite the den for an assortment of bugs (some of which are possibly yet to be discovered by Science), spiders and, yes, even an occasional snake here and there. So, these days it is not unusual to find me in the basement lifting weights and stomping on bugs in between sets. Why, just this morning, after a hard round of push ups, some poor bug with a million legs got a taste of one of my infamous bug-crushing karate kicks.

Joe - 1, Bugs - 0.