I am one of those people that always stops to read the “Community Info” boards pretty much everywhere I go . . . you know, the bulletin boards covered with fliers advertising an alarming number of people offering instant weight loss drugs, rooms in their home in exchange for “favors,” and other slightly disconcerting things. I think I read these in an effort to collect data about my environment. Totally nerdy, I know, but this helps me keep a finger on the pulse of the communities of which I am a part.

Anyways, this data collection habit has exposed me to multiple solicitations for research participants, and because I am a researcher myself, I feel like it is somehow my duty the put out good “research participation chi” so that I will karmically receive some of my own (was that too many references to Eastern religious principles in one sentence)? So, I signed up for a “Forearm Weightlifting Study,” cause there’s nothing I find hotter on a chick than enormous forearms. A chick with enormous forearms and 75 extra dollars is twice as nice.

Today was one of two baseline data collection sessions. I’m not exactly sure what baselines they were taking (the researcher refused to explain anything to me so as not to spoil the results), but it did involve wearing something under my shirt, a pulsoc thingy on my middle finger, sonar wave emitters on my forearms, cuffs on both biceps and an ultra sound on my brachial artery (at least I think that was it . . .) They did lots of different things to me (I think to measure my response to stress), the most intriguing of which involved placing an uninsulated plastic bag full of ice directly on my forehead for 2 mins. This was supposed to mimic the “arctic response” of penguins jumping into glacier water–um, what? There is no part of me that is a penguin, and there is an even smaller part of me that enjoyed being subjected to that.

After what seemed like 15 secs my thought was “This could result in death.”

45 seconds: “Seriously, death.”

50: “Penguins can suck it.”

65 seconds: “We’re done? Ha.”

Next baseline session is Friday, after which I have to come in 5 days a week for 3 weeks (20 mins at a time) and squeeze a stress ball thing. Although the researcher took great pains not to call it a stress ball, which makes me think that this is actually a stress-related study. My only hope that it is a stress reduction study and not a stress augmentation study, or I am sh*t out of luck . . . .