thanks everyone. yeah . . .i'm kinda canadian. the username is a long-running joke with an american friend after all those years of being taunted about the exchange rate. so now i'm making it work for me. 'i'm 132 pounds today . . . but those are CANADIAN pounds.' just please don't say 'aboot' or 'eh' and i'll be fine. i've never heard anyone but a yank say the first one, and i can't even pronounce the second one right.

@rps67 . . . thank god for another anti-social ;-) i'm not unfriendly at all, just very . . . reserved. fortunately i've found that gyms have room for both introverts and extraverts, usually. the insies just do their thing quietly in among all the outsies and it works out most of the time.

it's an extra challenge at the beginner phase when you do need to interact more, though. organized-exercise culture just seems so damned PERKY :laugh: . the couple of pros i've tried to work with gave me the impression they were trained in only one style of interaction which isn't really copacetic for me. having someone in my face being peppy and 'motivational' while i'm trying to figure something out just baffles and overwhelms me. i find i have to exert extra personal energy to just avoid barking to make them back off, and if i fail they don't seem to take it too well. so i can leave more drained by the challenges involved in the people factor than i ever was by the weight.

r.a.'s been . . . i'm lucky so far in that mine seems to be inactive atm (touch wood). and i had no actual deformities at the last check, aside from a tiny bit in my hands. even 'trained' people don't really get it - which i don't fault them for, but it does mean they can only be of limited help when i have any questions that are specific to it. so i have to do a lot of figuring stuff out for myself. it's a perceptual barrier more than a physical one. your personal experience of r.a. can be so very personal and specific to you, having to do that pretty much comes with the turf.

thanks again to everyone.