I go to the gym at least once a week, and sometimes I manage to go 2 or 3 times, which (not to harp on a theme or anything) is really good for my incredible body. The reason it’s always at least once a week is that we have a personal trainer we work with once a week, and that really makes you drag yourself out of bed in the morning, if you’re paying for a training session whether you show up or not.

Our trainer is this tiny lesbian Canadian firecracker who’s certainly stronger than I am on a proportionate-to-body-weight basis, and quite possibly on a much more straightforward absolute basis. I don’t know for sure: we haven’t arm wrestled or anything. Yet. She has me doing strength training these days, so it might just happen that I get stronger than her by the time we’re done. Stranger things have happened. But this isn’t about our trainer, it’s about the gym.

Cool thing about our gym: a lot of movies get made in Atlanta these days, and it seems like word is out on the movie-star circuit that our gym is the one to work out at when you have to be in Atlanta. Since shooting usually starts at some ungodly early hour, they work out at an even more ungodly early hour. This means we get to hear stuff like “Oh yeah, Hugh Jackman was in here earlier. You missed him.” How cool is that?

Another gym thing I’m grateful for is this: for a long time, there was this weird transdimensional collision thing going on where the men’s locker room and this one guy’s apartment would actually intersect each other in space and time. It was the craziest thing: you’d go into the locker room, and this guy’s clothes would be everywhere, and he’d be sitting on the bench in the decommissioned handicapped shower between the two working shower stalls, in his street clothes, just reading a newspaper and drinking coffee. We could see him, but it didn’t seem like he was aware of us at all. Wild, eh?

But that stopped happening. I haven’t seen that guy in a couple of months. So there’s that to be grateful for.

I have a new car–I got it this past summer. It’s still very new to me, though, because I don’t drive it much. I may have mentioned that I walk to my job every day, which means among other things I’m still figuring out how to work the audio system in my car. It has Pandora, though, which is cool: I can pair the car to my cellphone via Bluetooth, and control Pandora on my ‘phone via the car’s dashboard, so I always have music I like playing in the car.

My car has a backup camera with superimposed distance markers on it, so I can back right up to something without touching it. This is great for scaring the bejesus out of the person sitting in a parked car behind me when I’m parallel parking. And the camera also gives me a great view of the expression on their face!

There’s another camera in the right-hand rearview mirror that comes on when I signal for a right turn, that shows me everything along the right side of my car, also with distance markers on it. This is really good, because it means I don’t run over a woman with a baby in a jog stroller who’s overtaking me on the right. (If you’ve ever driven in Atlanta traffic, you know that it isn’t hard for a woman with a baby in a jog stroller to overtake you.) You can also turn on the right-hand rearview camera manually, if you’re going straight ahead but you want to check out the woman with a baby in a jog stroller anyway, without turning on the turn signal.

The camera view is displayed on a screen on the dashboard, and it’s full color and fairly high resolution. It’s a gorgeous picture, actually, especially around the magic hour right before and after sunset, but very attractive at other times of day. I could just drive around for hours looking at the dashboard display of the right-hand rearview camera. You’d be surprised how good you get at steering by watching the lane markers behind you.

There’s plenty of things about my job to be grateful for: it pays pretty well, it’s a fifteen minute walk from my house, so I walk to work almost every day, rain or shine, which is good for my incredible body. Particularly when Mr. Sun is up and about. The people I work with can be fun, too. My team and I have a weekly status meeting (called Story Time) where the final item on the standard agenda is Books & Movies, which leads to some interesting discussions.

I think the main thing to be grateful for, though, is that my days would be so empty if I didn’t have to get up every weekday and go to work for 8 hours. I would have to fill my time with pointless activities, like, I don’t know what! Writing another novel, or recovering my hard-won ability to draw, or learning to play a musical instrument (some day I vow I will learn to control a piano–I will!).

I might even have to resort to just lying naked on a beach somewhere letting Mr. Sun bake my incredible body.

Thank goodness I have a job!

That’s right, I’m grateful for the glowing ball of thermonuclear fire that hangs overhead drenching us with deadly rays for roughly half of every day. Sounds crazy, I know, but as Stephen Morillo once famously observed, all life and energy on our planet comes from Mr. Sun. So we really should be grateful. Plus, you don’t want to make him angry.

Actually, when you think about it, I should have made Mr. Sun Day One of the Hundred Days of Gratitude. But I didn’t think about it, so here he is, Day Two.

I’ve decided I’m going to try out this new thing I read about: I’m going to post 100 days of gratitude. For 100 days, every day, I’m going to write a brief little essay about something I’m grateful for.

This is going to make me a happier person. Or so I’m told. Not that I’m unhappy now. In fact, there’s some risk that this will make me insufferably happier than you. All I can say is, you have a hundred days, too. Get crackin’.

Here’s the essays. Naturally, the list will grow. Stay tuned!

 Day 1: My Incredible Body

Day 2: The Sun

Day 3: My Job

Day 4: My Car

Day 5: The Gym

Day 6: Growing Up in New Orleans

Day 7: The Miracle of Fermentation

Day 8: Lunch

Day 9: Time Off With My Sweetie

Day 10: Sex

Day 11: Urban Wildlife

Day 12: Science

Day 13: New Earth

Day 14: Constraints on Capitalism

Day 15: People (in General)

Day 16: Unfair Advantages

Day 17: Five Useful Things to Do Around the House With Unexploded Ordnance

Day 18: Colors

Day 19: The Big Game

Day 20: Oat Coocher

Day 21: Guinea Pigs

Day 22: Dreams

Day 23: Brevity

Day 24: Slack

Day 25: America

When I think about the things I take for granted that I ought to be grateful for, the first one that pops into my mind is my body. Probably because I tweaked my shoulder exercising last week, and today in the shower I noticed it wasn’t hurting anymore. It’s incredible, my body is actually self-healing! It’s like it’s a living thing!

I have a pretty good relationship with my body. I’m comfortable with it. Sometimes I feed it good things, like blueberries and home-made yogurt, even though I’m not really hungry, just because it feels good. And I admit, sometimes I take it out to a neighborhood emporium and dose it with colorful and delicious poisons, just to show it who’s boss. And then I stagger home going, whoo, I think I poisoned my incredible body a little too much! But hey, it’s self-healing, I’ll be OK!

I’d post a picture of my incredible body, but Facebook just takes those down when I try it. You have an incredible body, too, so look at that and you’ll get the general idea. Except mine is probably hairier. And if you’re female there are some significant structural differences.