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JerseySmarts.com

No More “Healthy Tax” in New Jersey!

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The state legislature passed a budget yesterday that does away with the “healthy tax” that was ridiculously instituted last year in New Jersey. This tax imposed a monthly 7% surcharge on the cost of gym memberships. Some people thought that we should all shut up and be quiet about it because of various theoretical explanations on the need to tax all expenditures equally.

Bullshit on that!

America’s health care system is overburden by people who are unhealthy because of their lifestyles. How can someone sleep at night when they openly and freely choose to tax the method by which people can free themselves from this sedentary lifestyle? Maybe getting into that car crash knocked some sense in Governor Corzine because he was all for this tax last year at this time.

Rolling back this tax is a good thing and I think New Jerseyans will be very happy to have this “healthy tax” finally taken off of the books and put to rest where it belongs.

Now let’s start working on restoring that 6% sales tax… 🙂

New/Old Gym & Swimming Again

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For those of you who have been reading this blog for the last few years, I feel sorry for you. Ha ha! You may remember that I used to attend a gym in Ocean Township (I hate Ocean Township) where I was completely creeped out by some of the gym-goers and their gross behavior. I stayed at the gym because they were the only one in the area with a swimming pool and swimming was a large part of what helped me take off all of the weight.

Well, it was about 2 years ago that they closed the pool “for the summer for renovations.” And since no one ever really knows what they’re doing when they “renovate” a property in New Jersey, you can imagine what happened. The summer turned into the fall, which turned into the winter and then the spring and we were at the full 1 year mark and the pool was still closed. At that point, I canceled my membership and joined the brand new gym right on the Atlantic Ocean.

The new gym was fun and it was nice to be at a place that was brand new. But I never really caught on to working out there. Maybe it was the 5:30am workouts or maybe it was the fact that at 5:30am they STILL had the music blaring throughout the place. I’m not sure. What I DO know is that my old gym finally got their stuff together and re-opened the pool. So, a few weeks ago I canceled my membership at the new gym and bought a summer-only membership to the old gym with the pool.

Last night I went for my first swim in the pool. It was great! Of course, there really wasn’t anything major done to the pool in terms of renovation (or at least nothing that I could see). It makes you wonder why they shut it down in the first place, but I digress.

Anyway – I went swimming and it was fun. I win.

Creepy Fool Gets Arrested at Monmouth University

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My alma mater had a really gross incident occur yesterday. In case you haven’t heard, a creepy old goof ball was arrested at Monmouth University yesterday for planting a video camera in the men’s locker room. What a filthy, disgusting scumbag this jerkoff was, huh?

There are so many issues here that it’s not even easy to discuss all of them in one sitting. Why was this creepy old bastard allowed to join the gym at Monmouth University if he wasn’t an alumnus and wasn’t local to the university? For those of you that don’t know, he wasn’t from the local area.

Further, why was he allowed on campus in the first place if he had an old access card? If the guy’s sole purpose is to go to the gym because he’s a “member” and his card indicating that membership is expired…then shouldn’t he NOT be on campus?!

And what really pisses me off is the reaction that one of the students had to the entire thing:

“Doesn’t bother me,” he said. “I really don’t care.”

That pretty much sums up 99% of the students that I’ve ever met while at Monmouth University or that I’ve met since I’ve become an alumni advisor to my fraternity at Monmouth University. I deal with kids who go to school all over this state and virtually none of them would have had that completely uncaring reaction. And good Lord, if I had my way I’d take this pervert and give him a few minutes with some of those guys that he so desperately wanted to see naked.

I have no problem with the fact that this weirdo likes dudes, but I have a HUGE problem with him invading the privacy of these unsuspecting students to get off. That’s just disgusting and I hope he get what he deserves.

Late Night at the Gym

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Since there aren’t really any crazy stories coming out of my gym visits any more (which is actually a nice change of pace), I don’t have much to say about my visit to the gym last night. The only odd thing about it was that I got there at 10:00pm which is about 10 minutes away from my usual bed time!

I don’t know – sometimes you just get the urge to go to the gym and go for a quick run. It made no sense and I’m tired for it now (the infamous “day after”), but it was actually a good, quick 45 minute workout to end my day.

The only thing that took me by surprise was that two of the guys that I advise (Scotty J and Ebony) were at the gym lifting weights at 10:00pm last night, too! As I said to them last night – who the hell lifts weights at such unGodly hours?!? Well the answer is – they do. And they’re in great shape because of it. Both of those guys have great commitment and I was impressed.

And now I’m tired.

80’s Rock Out at the Gym

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Tonight was a fun night at the gym. Finally, some weirdness to write about on my blog! It seemed to me that the requirement to be working out at Gold’s tonight was that you had to either have a mullet or a 1980’s metal band crazy hair style.

Actually, it was kind of funny to watch from the upper level on the cardio machines.

And I’d much rather write a blog entry about people at the gym having weird hair than I used to write about it my old gym – creepy old men who stay around the locker room a bit too long…

On a side note, I got a nice workout in. Good times.