The regularly scheduled episode of The Modern Gal’s weigh in will not be broadcast tonight.

With Weight Watchers, you get one mulligan for your session. You turn in a little pink slip when you’re supposed to weigh in and voila! no weigh in. It was like WW gave me my own birthday gift this week.

I told my mom I was skipping the weigh in today, and of course she told me to face the music and save the free pass for later. I argued that I had a very good reason to opt out of weighing in this week (ahem). I shouldn’t feel the least bit guilty for having two one really kinda largish slice(s) of ice cream cake to celebrate my birthday. On the weeks when I have absolutely no good reason for having gained everything back I’d already lost having a minor relapse into my old ways then I absolutely should have to deal with the guilt of stepping on the scale.

And it’s not like I didn’t weigh myself in the privacy of my own home this morning. I know exactly how much I weight right now, I just didn’t want that weight recorded in ink in my little tracking booklet.

You know what would have helped this past week? Exercise. The exercise I haven’t bothered to do in about a month and a half, ever since receiving that offer on my house. I mean, I’ve been waaaaaaay too busy to bother with any exercising since then, right? Yeah, that excuse is about to lose it’s validity as I have about two boxes left to unpack and one wall to finish painting.

It’s time for me to get back into the swing of exercising, and I’ve decided it’s time to add some variety to the old go-to-the-gym routine.

By the time you read this post, I will have died from successfully survived Operation Boot Camp. I’m attending the Thursday morning session as a guest of Em’s, who swears by the benefits of boot camp. I’m thinking it’s going to absolutely kick my ass, but I suppose that’s a good thing. And much different than the old go-to-the-gym routine.

I also forced myself to go buy an appropriate workout swimsuit. The kind that I can wear to swim laps in the pool at the gym. I hate trying to fit into one pieces, because they’re never tailored to properly fit gals like me who have a teeny top half and a voluptuous ass. But, I feel it wildly inappropriate to wear any of the two pieces I have for when I go to the lake or beach, so it had to be done. I found a cheap Speedo suit at Sam’s (yes, Sam’s) that I didn’t even try on, but turns out it stretches and shrinks in all the right places. So my second way to deviate from the old workout routine is to hit the pool and swim some laps.

Method three in shaking things up is to literally shake it up: The Modern Beau gave me Dance, Dance Revolution for the Wii for my birthday. I’ve tried it once on the most basic level, and let me tell you, it’s way harder than it looks. The grading scale kept giving me Ds. On basic. Ds on basic. So it might take a while before I work my way up to making As on the expert level, but it should be a fun and weight-loss-inducing trip.

The MB is toying with the idea of training for a marathon, and if I get really ambitious I may try to take up jogging. No marathons in my future, but perhaps enough to do a 5K. That would be a big enough step as I can never keep my mind into the whole jogging thing long enough to make it to the 5K point.

Also, I want to be fit enough by next spring/summer to achieve the hike up to LeConte Lodge. For the un-locals, LeConte Lodge is atop Tennessee’s second-highest mountain and the only way to get there is to hoof it. There are several trails of varying degrees of difficulty, but they all take several hours to conquer. Fortunately there’s a whole national park full of hiking trails near by on which to practice.

But enough about me, what are the rest of you doing in your summer workouts? What should I be doing that I’m not?