Bulking up... on weight-lifting, India-ness and wedding gifts.

This is going to be another post about the India trip and I know, I know- you're sick of it already. First it was francefrenchfrancais all the time and now it's iheartgandhi. Well, that's how I run, folks. I really like getting INTO something and, at the moment, I'm reading Indian fiction and kind of pissed at the British and storing various Lonely Planet guides under my pillows, which I fall asleep reading every night.

Not knowing much about the place, India already sounds GIANT. People are giving me this kind of advice:

"X town is only 6 hours away from Y town, so you can totally do that and get back in a day."

That seems like a long time in a vehicle to me, regardless of whether that vehicle is a bus, train, driver or personal chauffeur who will carry me on his back while I drink chai tea lattes. Someone kindly recommended a very adorable hotel in Delhi and I have half a mind to have a stay-cation for all four nights prior to the wedding in Bombay and explore the closest cities. Because packing up my stuff EVERY MORNING and moving to the next place? Well, that sounds like traveling in my early 20's. Ha.

*

Last night I printed out some arm exercises and hit the Weight Area at the gym. For the first 20 minutes, a crazy-toned Asian girl with tattooed arms lifted some odd heavy bar in front of me in the mirror. We ended up in one of those awkward positions, where every time she stooped down to drop it, there I was behind her, calmly doing bicep curls. I was like her lame-tastic double, sans body art and giant lobe holes. Also, I was rocking out to The Killers and, I can only assume by how angry she looked, she was using something a bit more heavy metal as her lifting muse.

I happened to glance over at a personal training session and almost laughed out loud when I saw the trainee had folded her arms across her chest and was sulking, which the trainer explained why xyz exercises were good for her. Listen up! If you have enough cash flow that you can pay for personal training, how about you NOT SULK? It makes you look like a royal jack-ass and if I were a less polite girl, I would have gone over and asked to use her 60-minute session, since she was so clearly not.

*

2010 is shaping up to be The Year of the Wedding. Four friends have already proclaimed their engagements and I am starting to think about bulk-shopping for blenders and champagne.

Some of you have been to 15 million weddings (Katherine? AB?)... any advice on how to budget for such massive de-single-ifying is welcome.