First off, Happy Fourth to all Americans!!!

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I've come to the conclusion that communist trained athletes and trainers are sadist. I don't mean Italian communists, which the new BMW in their backyard, I mean real communist countries. I've had plenty of experience with them to know by now.

1. My ballet teachet. It was the 70s. He had defected in Paris in the late 60s while on a tour with the Bolshoi. He could not understand why parents of six years olds complained that their daughters went home with blisters and bloody feet. He told them and us, repeatedly, that if we couldn't take the pain we shouldn't do ballet.

2. My gym teacher in high school. She had defected from Romania in the late 70s. She started teaching in my school in my first year. We didn't have much in the gym, but we had uneven bars. She taught us a routine and it didn't matter if people were afraid or not, if they had done gymnastic before. A school year, multiple sprains, one dislocated knee and plenty of fake doctor's notes later, she managed to teach the routine to the surviving class members.

3. My current personal trainer, Skifter, was part of the Albanian olympic team. He came to the US after Enver Hoxha's death. He doesn't understand just how much I despise that Stair Master. Really, he doesn't.

Now, I know that all of these people grew up in regimes that as Skifter eloquently put it 'sent you to jail for life if you didn't compete well', but really, I joined the gym to make my husband happy, not because of any masochistic tendencies.

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I was looking at temperatures for California to decide what to bring in terms of clothes. Here is the forecast:

New York 80°-63°; 81°-65°; 77°-63°; 78°-65°; 80°-67°; 85°-70°; 83°-70°; 81°68°; 79°-68°
San Francisco 60°-52°; 60°-52°; 58°-52°; 60°-53°; 62°-55°; 64°-56°; 64°-57°; 65°-58°; 63°-56°
San Diego 73°-63°; 72°-64°; 70°-64°;70°-64°; 71°-65°; 71°-66°; 72°-58°; 72°-66°; 72°-66°

There are no words for how wrong this is. San Diego should not be colder than New York, and nothing should be this cold in the summer.