Mrs. Cohn Zohn had been complaining about my sedentary lifestyle. She said I was out of shape and gaining weight, and she was absolutely right. Grant leaped into the discussion and said he and I should sign up at Gold’s Gym in Oakland and we’ve been going to that delightful place for three weeks now.

Grant works out upstairs with all those weights. I ride the stationary bikes downstairs like a madman — I’m up to about 35 minutes now and counting.

Here are the assorted phenomena I want to discuss.

1. Sweating: It’s been a long time since I sweated doing physical activity. This may seem really obvious to you, but sweating is fun. It’s satisfying and it has been rewarding for me to rediscover the pleasure of sweating because of enjoyable physical activity.

2. The shower: When I’m done working out and sweating, I go upstairs and take the post-workout shower, something else I haven’t done in decades. It also is rewarding, a gift you give yourself after working hard.

Now I come to another, vaguer topic. Last night, Grant and I went out to eat after working out and showering. We walked down Grand Avenue across from Lake Merritt — with all those lights glimmering it looked like we were in Europe — and we sat at the bar at Sidebar. Sidebar is terrific.

This I noticed. It’s a lot of fun to eat dinner at the bar. You get to talk to the bartenders and the other people at the bar. It’s festive. We got the burgers and we drank Chinon — a red wine from the Loire Valley.

This I noticed. I have a desire to know the bartenders because as they do their jobs they seem cool. I bet the same applies to ski instructors, lifeguards, etc. There were two bartenders, a guy wearing a fedora and a woman wearing an appealing black top — not revealing, appealing.

For some reason, they seemed like the most interesting people in the world. I have encountered this phenomenon before. When you talk to people as they do their jobs, they seem fascinating. I suspect they would not be quite as fascinating if you met them, say, at Costco.

Have you ever experienced the phenomena of pleasant sweating, the post-workout shower, or finding people fascinating because they work at a bar or something like that?