Hi. Guess what? It's not too late to make plans to go to the Haypenny One-Year Anniversary!

**********************************************

There is this girl. And she's always at the gym. And she isn't me, or one of my friends.

And if she offered, I wouldn't want her to be my friend.

Know why?

Because she's always at the gym.

My friend Claire W., who patronizes the same gym, has noticed the same thing. She once heard the girl say to a friend, "Last night I was here until 10:00." Claire was there the night before as well...at 6:30 p.m.

She's about Midwestern height (5'3-5'6), with a pale complexion, the sharp nose and mouth of Kirsten Dunst but with beadier eyes (like two black dots), and long thick dark red hair that lies in limp, stretched out curls and plasters itself to her neck when she sweats, which is always.

She's always there, working out. If I'm in the cardio room, she's pumping away on the elliptical. If I'm in the weight room, she's always waiting for a machine. And after every work out, she marks it all down in her little purple book.

I've never known exercise a holic. In fact, the very concept of it, to me, being addicted to exercise, is one worth mocking.

"Oh, I can't go out, I'm going to the gym for the next six hours."

"Claire, please, can't you see, you're addicted to cross training!"

"I know! But I just can't help myself!"

So actually having found one is a bit curious.

I can't really deny anybody the right to physical fitness, just because I personally don't enjoy it all that much. And, to her credit, she does have a very fit body. Not an inch of fat anywhere, all ripply pale muscles and cut abs.

You know, blah.

But this girl never shuts the hell up. She's always talking to somebody at the gym. Me, if I could work out in a dark closet, it still wouldn't give me enough privacy. I don't like speaking to people at the gym, or hearing people speak, or being watched by people.

But Get-In-Shape Girl is always talking to somebody, in an incredibly chipper, teenagery voice. She's either chatting up the cute basketball players, perkily swinging her big-as-an-orange hoop earrings, or having an animated discussion by her sometimes-workout partner, a brown-haired girl who appears to do a lot of listening. Yesterday she was talking about how much she wants her sister to start having children. Two girls. No boys. At least one had to be a redhead.

"I would be a bomb-ass aunt," she declared.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not eavesdropping. I am already overstimulated by the 14-pound InStyle magazine I lug about, the usual gym noises, the overhead speakers, and a television. But you can't avoid her conversation.

Which is why I wanted to punch her in the face once she started up with "I really wish I could just go to the gym for like, a half hour a day, five days a week, and forget about it."

"I also wish I could not watch what I eat constantly," she said wistfully."

This may seem cruel, especially to men who don't know how the female brain works. But this is what this girl was doing:

She was bragging.

She was bragging about spending all day and all night in the gym and being an obsessive eater.

The strangest part about her, though, isn't so much how much she's at the gym, but you wonder how much she sees. She seems to know every man who works out there. Does she mentally know every girl, too? Does she watch me? Does she think of me as that girl with the long ponytail who always wears T-shirts and oversized shorts to the gym, usually in spurts of three weeks straight and then with the same amount of time off, reading magazines and throwing subscription cards on the floor, only wiping down the machines when she thinks someone is looking, pushing around a few weights, rushing through her abdominals and running home?

It's weird. Like I sad, I don't like being watched when I'm at the gym. And maybe the thing I don't like most about that girl isn't rooted in jealousy or concern, but just that I don't like that she might be watching me.

**********************************************

Do you have somebody who is the bane of your existence and who doesn't even know it? Please regale me.

You have to admit, it's been a while since I've asked you to write stuff for me.