Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Stones are rocks

I signed up at a gym 'round the corner. It's fantastic! It is probably one of the nicest facilities I have ever used, which may or may not be saying anything since I have spent most of my recent gym life at UT. Not only do they have your standard equipment and classes (they have ab lab!), but they also have a salon that does facials, nails, massages, and all that good stuff.
It's a neat little place, except for one thing: everything is in kilos. I almost caused the ellipticals brain to explode when I tried to tell it I weighed 145 kilos. That did not compute. It is also a little difficult to use the weight machines when I am not entirely sure how much I am lifting. I am sure it looks as though I have never been to a gym before in my life.
The scales in the locker room measure in stones. Stones! Like that means anything; how archaic. As the title of this entry says, stones - as far as I am concerned - are rocks, not units of measurement. The nice thing about the stones approach though is that your weight sounds so small - "so-and-so weighs 9 stone". 9 is such a nice little number! The bad thing is that I am not sure how much I weigh or how much weight I want to lose or what stone weight is my healthy stone weight. Stupid stones.
This country is weird.

2 comments:

Scotto said...

just so you know:

multiply kilos by 2.2 (or just double it) to get pounds-ish.

(btw, one stone is 14 lb)

I also know forever that one gallon is appx 3.8 liters 'cause most urinals are 1 gallon/3.8 liters per flush, and they print the conversion on the top.

just wait 'till you come across the
hundredweight system. that will blow your mind.

tee hee.

cheers,

scotto

Shell said...

I did immediately come home and google it to get those conversations - but thank you my dear. Come visit me!