The transformation continues.

The weekly beating my body receives in fire class, and my own training efforts, are altering my body in interesting ways. I look, for me, buff. I have actual shoulders, the kind that slope up and are kind of rounded before they slope down. Five-mile runs are causing my legs to mutate into hammy forms I don't recognize as my own. Oddly, the overall steep increase in physical activity has led to inexplicable benefits, like an improvement in hand-eye coordination. Lately I've noticed a strange ability to catch, one-handed, objects that are thrown to me. I'm at a loss to explain why.

But as we all learned from old Twilight Zone episodes, there is always a dark side when humans discover a previously-unknown font of power. Even as I grow more physically strong, the damage to my old form accrues. My spine features a vertical series of grubby red abrasions where the SCBA harness digs in week after week -- the skin no longer even tries to heal up now. After a couple months of crawling around through real and simulated fires, my knees have the callouses of a twenty-dollar suckboy. No day is free of pain, and the people around me are probably getting pretty tired of hearing about it.

On the other hand, I was thrilled to discover that there is actually a downloadable mini-Kamasutra for my Palm III with basic illustrations and oft-cryptic English-as-a-second language text in case I need some sexual inspiration on the road. This use of technology genuinely improves my faith in humankind. I like the idea of an army of technophiles going forth into the working world with their digital organizers hiding obtuse descriptions and funny little drawings of people Doing It.