Tylenol? Check!
I hurt. There’s a good chance I won’t be able to use my arms tomorrow.
Ryan got me a new boxing game for Valentine’s day because he knew I was getting very bored with the Wii Fit.
So today I got my first taste of Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout. It’s a weird game where my avatar looks like a bad-ass sailor moon, and the music choices are pumped up, digital remixes of songs intended to get me going – and really, you can’t go wrong with “Eye of the Tiger“, even if it’s played on a synthesizer.
It’s strange, but fun.
From the beginning of my Wii Fit Challenge, I have really enjoyed the boxing game. But I also always wanted it to be better.
With the exception of having the workouts extended to an un-enjoyable, and possibly unreasonable length, Wii Fit boxing doesn’t get any more challenging to correspond with my increased ability.
Each time I would have to watch the “teacher” demonstrate a move. Then I would give it a try for a few rounds, and then wait for further instructions – even if I was just going to be shown the exact same move over again. I don’t know about you, but I like to think I’m pretty smart. If the move is left, right, block, I think I can manage without a demo every time.
After a few training exercises in Gold’s Gym I just got to punch a lot. I like to punch.
They didn’t insult my intelligence.
Along with points (which you get but they’re so inflated that it is hard to appreciate) you’re rewarded with gold!
With that gold you get to buy stuff! I love to buy stuff. I got myself a snazzy new pair of virtual gloves.
Now if only they would let me buy my way out of having such an inflated virtual figure.
I don’t have a lot of experience with personal trainers in real life, but I’m pretty sure people pick their trainer based on some set of criteria. Whether it is a type of exercise, or simply personality, a trainer is meant to be someone you can count on to help you to reach your goal.
My virtual trainer apparently had somewhere better to be. He stood me up. Instead, greeted by the female trainer, I got this: “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ll be training you today.”
Where did my trainer go?Did he have some sort of commitment? Was he up too late last night?
Who is this other trainer with annoyingly flat abs and high-pitched voice?
I don’t know about you, but I think that at the very least you should expect and get reliability from a digital person.
The Nintendo Gods are mocking me right now.
So after 6 weeks of searching I was finally able to get my hands on the Wii Fit Plus. They’re still sold out in the big stores but after numerous phone calls, I found one at a Shopper’s Drug Mart off the beaten path.
I was looking forward to the plus for several reasons: routines, multiplayer and new games.
One major benefit of the “Plus” is the ability to easily switch between users. In the past you had to go out to the main screen and then back in as a different Mii. Now, you can switch in about 3 seconds. It’s much better for playing with friends, but doesn’t offer a competition mode like I had been expecting.
To my disappointment, it turns out that there aren’t new exercises exactly – all the same ones are available — but there is the addition of “Training Plus.” These games didn’t exist on the original Wii Fit, but they’re not what I would describe as part of a workout. Mostly they are low-intensity games, but I’m loving the variety.
The first activity I tried was the “Rhythm Parade”. I marched in place while, I kid you not, my Mii played instruments and other Miis followed. The task appears to be shaking your remote at the appropriate time to hit a target.
Now I’m not sure if I have mentioned this before, but I am really REALLY bad at reacting to things on the screen. I can’t play Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution. My brain just doesn’t work that way.
My “Rhythm Parade” score was respectable, but I had a [very typical] meltdown half way through when the complexity of the moves exceeded my abilities.
Good news of the night: Lowest Wii Fit age ever today. 28! Sure, I’m only 24, but I started at 39.
I have lost about 4 kilos since started. Hurray for my pants fitting again.
I admit it: I only did 20 minutes today.
It is 11pm and my legs are still aching from all the record breaking yesterday. Who knew how hard my legs had to work to catch a fish while in a penguin suit? So I while I feel slightly repentant, I am also inclined to give myself a break (not my strong suit).
Without the Wii I wouldn’t have been exercising at all tonight. There is not a chance in hell that I would have made it to a gym after getting home from work at 7pm. It just wouldn’t happen. Not to mention that I can make weekend plans with Ryan while I box. A+ for multi-tasking.
I am definitely growing bored of this version. I tried very hard to acquire a Wii Fit Plus, the updated version with routines, multi player mode and more games, but no dice. What the hell, world?
I can totally understand why they would have been sold out right after Christmas, but I can’t understand why the distributors haven’t been able to get a handle on this supply issue yet.
Some people will obviously wait it out. But some people will lose their post-Christmas exercise high (or find an alternative) and then everyone loses.
I wasn’t much feeling the cardio tonight so I decided to obliterate records in balance and strength games instead. Hello, high score in ski slalom, jumping, penguin fishing, and leg lifts.
I didn’t think I could do it with the slalom. It had defeated me over and over again. Every single time I would manage to get through the first through gates, and then they would come too quickly and too close together and I couldn’t make the turns. My legs or my balance are clearly getting stronger.
After all the record breaking I was revved up for some cardio after all. So then I rocked the boxing and the step class.
I’ve never felt this confidant about exercise. Thank God no one is watching.
The Wii asked me “what do you think of Ryan’s posture lately”? With a click of a button I responded “It’s good.” Not because it necessarily is, but because I hadn’t realized it was something I was supposed to be check on my boyfriend. Also, I was concerned that a wrong response would elicit more scolding from the machine. Did I mention that it makes you account for any weight you gain?
Unfortunately, none of the reasons available are “weighing myself in the morning makes a difference of 6 pounds!”
It sounds freakish, but now that I think about it, my Wii morning weight is about the same as it was at the doctor’s office earlier in the week.
New recipes, like sex positions, need to be practiced. You’ve got to get the basics down before attempting to go it alone.
But I am a terribly impatient person, and I can’t follow a recipe. More accurately, I refuse to follow a recipe.
It’s not that I think that I am somehow more qualified than a trained chef — though I often refuse to use the suggested amount of fat — it is because I just can’t be bothered.
For the most part, it works out OK. I tend to make things like stir-frys that really can’t be ruined by experimentation. But after receiving a new Vegetarian cookbook for Christmas, and after realizing that I will never lose weight on diet of bagels and bananas, I decided to expand my cooking repertoire.
The first night I made a noodle-free lasagna. I didn’t think to actually check how many zucchinis I needed for the base layers. Nor did I feel like buying all the obscure ingredients on the list. And then, despite it not being a part of the recipe, I mixed up some cottage cheese and spinach as an alternative to a sauce layer. But I didn’t have enough cottage cheese, so I used some leftover tofu.
In the end it wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t lasagna.
The next recipe I decided to tackle was Falafel. Normally I would have attempted anything fried, but because it appeared to be a reasonably healthy choice (merely pan fried, not deep fried), I thought I’d give it a shot.
I was at work when I made the plan so I didn’t have the list of ingredients when I went to the grocery store. I had a rough idea of what I needed, and I consulted some internet recipes to come up with a list. It was mostly right, save for some obscure spices I wasn’t going to bother buying to use only a teaspoon of anyway (another problem I have).
But when I got home, I discovered that I had misread the recipe – it called for two cups of cooking oil, not two tablespoons, and the mixture was supposed to chill for 2 hours before cooking.
They were edible, but I didn’t learn my lesson.
All I really learned is that I am too lazy to shop properly, and don’t like complicated instructions.
Luckily for me, there’s an app for that.
The Scots waste a lot of food – about $800 Canadian dollars worth a year. So a British company has released an iPhone app called Love Food, Hate Waste. It allows you to look in your fridge to see what you already have, put that information into the app, and find a recipe that won’t require a big shopping trip. It also has a portion size planner to avoid making too much.
Maybe it will help me. Sure, I might refuse to do a few of the steps, but at least I don’t have to make a special trip to the store.
Even if it doesn’t make me a better cook, with all the money I’ll save on food I could actually afford an iPhone.
I am totally bored now.
Now that I have unlocked everything, the only thing I have to look forward to is the promise of new games on the Wii Fit Plus. Please let the stores stock some soon.
Today I just did the longer versions of the things I’m good at. Six minutes straight of hula hooping is really hard. I was pretty sure I was going to fall to the floor and die. It is becoming clearer now that this is exercise, and as such, I need to consider form. I injure easily.
I am already concerned about my knee. It is an injury coming back to visit from my running days. I have been wearing a knee brace just to walk to work, but I don’t think I can blame the Wii for that. Just exercise in general.
Of course I should be doing my physio exercises – but I only remember 1 of them. Any physiotherapists out there wanna hook a girl up with some knowledge?
In the interest of calorie burn, I boxed for 10 minutes. But six or so minutes in my mind started to wander. Upgrading from beginner to intermediate was good — I got a few new routines, and a slightly longer time. Advancing again just meant recycled routines and a longer time. Is that all you’ve not, Nintendo?
One great thing I did discover today was that the ridiculous pockets in the back of cycling technical shirts (for water bottles???) are perfect for the running games. Wii suggest putting the remote in your pocket while you jog on the spot so that it can accurately pick up your movements. Since spandex pants (the gear motivates me) rarely have pockets, I always jogged with it in my hand (a Wii suggested alternative). The trouble with that is that movements were only recognized with big hand gestures. Lagging behind? Just shake your arms faster. Not exactly useful.
This time, remote in pocket, I jogged laps around my living room. It was far more interesting than standing in place (even though the running course on the TV wasn’t very stimulating) and provided a much more consistent pace. 76% burn rate instead of 35% – and I could feel the difference.
Weight? Back up to where I started. I am going to try to take a few minutes to weigh myself in the morning instead so my meals don’t skew the numbers so much. But since I am short on time and patience EVERY morning, so no promises.
Cineplex Entertainment has made a brilliant, yet terribly unpublicized, decision to host a “Digital Film Festival” this week in Toronto.
For one week only, the Scotiabank theatre will be showing some all time faves: The Godfather, James Bond, Terminator, The Wizard of Oz and my personal favourite, Labyrinth — I immediately bought tickets.
This morning, in preparation for a day of Nostalgia, I watched another cherished movie from my childhood: Disney’s Beauty and The Beast. Immediately I broke into song — singing “Bonjour” along with Belle as she dances through the village.
But something was nagging at me. Maybe my feminist-sense was tingling. Or maybe it was just the feeling that looking back, things are rarely as good as they once seemed.
I didn’t realize it as a child, but this movie that seems to epitomize true love, is really a sad representation of a woman stuck between choosing the better of two abusive men.
Gaston is the obvious villain in the film; he’s crude and misogynistic. But the Beast isn’t a lot better.
Throughout the movie, the Beast is reminded to “mind your temper”. He’s not only angry, but aggressive and violent. He shouts orders at her, and smashes furniture to scare her.
When he stops shouting so much, she falls in love with him.
There is something truly perverse about that. And I can’t blame it on an outdated story, written in a time when women were often considered property, because it doesn’t happen that way in the original story.
Instead, Beauty must learn to love the Beast despite his looks. He is terribly ugly with the head of a beast, a trunk, and huge tusks. But the Beast is never cruel. Beauty never has to forgive his violence in order to love him. He is truly a good soul, trapped in a monster’s body.
In the movie, The Beast has to change in order to win Beauty/Belle’s love. Instead of a story about overcoming the shallowness of physical love, it becomes a story about loving a man enough to make him good.
Really, the fact that “Beast” is an animal (and to most people, that’s not usually a turn-on) doesn’t seem to be an issue in this movie at all. He was cursed for being shallow, yet his attitude is the only thing holding him back from lifting the curse.
The intended conflict in this story was spelled out in the title (there is no guessing with a name like Beauty), so why was it necessary to add in such a violent character when a nicer one would have done just fine? Afterall, Gaston is enough villain for anyone.
Some people would argue that it is just a movie, and as such, we shouldn’t read too much into it. But the trouble with that is that it is entirely possible to make a cheesy, frivolous movie with good songs and fairytale that does not teach young boys and girls that violence is always forgivable as long as he is sorry.
Disney made a choice.
I hate my virtual trainer.
His voice is meant to be encouraging, but after a long day, it is just irritating. “You’re a little unsteady” or “You need to work on your strength”.
Just like any exercise regimen, I am one week in and my momentum is waning. It is not that there is anything really wrong with the Wii (except maybe the virtual trainer), it’s that it is exercise. Combine that with a busy life and it quickly becomes a burden.
When I got home at 9:30pm, all I wanted to do was check a few emails, get my stuff ready for tomorrow, and curl up in bed with Ryan. Instead, I put on my workout clothes, went to my living room, and got prepared for some digital abuse.
This is also why I love the Wii.
In any other situation I would have been able to talk myself out of exercising completely because it was late, cold outside, or I might get mugged my a clown on my way to the gym (far reaching excuses are sometimes necessary).
There are no excuses in my living room. So I did it, and somehow still managed to set new boxing and step aerobic records. Shocking.
The goals and records are my favourite part. As a person who never really likes to try anything I don’t already know I’ll be good at, I am goal oriented and like constant affirmation that I have done well. If you’re like me, you’ll like Wii fit. There are things I am much better at than Ryan, and vice versa. But even within those categories, I keep striving for a new high score.
Seeing a first place finish in boxing made me feel good enough to continue for another 20 minutes. It wasn’t the hardest I have ever worked out, but it was a good effort. And as always, it was better than sitting on my butt like I did for the other 10 hours of the day.
After a 2.5 lb weight loss yesterday, I was up another pound and a half. This isn’t shocking seeing as I weighed myself before dinner last night, and tonight I got home after gorging myself with meat pie knowing that I had to make it though a 12 hour fast for blood tests in the morning. Still, I am a pound lighter than I was when I began, and that’s pretty cool.
Adam Giambrone is dropping out of Toronto’s Mayoral race. I admit it, I didn’t see that coming.
Since he first announced his campaign I was convinced that he didn’t have a chance. People in Toronto are just too angry with the TTC and they need someone to blame. Not to mention, men his age, with very little to show in the way of leadership experience, rarely get to be the big dog.
Since the news broke on Monday that Giambrone was having an affair with a young girl, people have been going crazy on the internet defending or attacking him for his transgressions. Some people suggest that politicians private lives shouldn’t affect their public lives — or at the least our perception of their ability to lead.
Here’s why I think they’re wrong.
People cheat. I think it is gross, but I think that lives are complicated and that it is not really my business.
But anyone who works as hard to be a politician as Adam Giambrone knows that their lives are under the microscope. They also know that when they run for a hotly contested position, like mayor of Canada’s largest city, anything bad they have done will come out. It’s common sense. And if you don’t think so, you need only to look at the recently smeared political lives of cads Elliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, or John Edwards.
So while the actual act of having sex with others while publically showing off a trophy partner isn’t, in itself, evidence of one’s inability to govern, it is evidence of one’s stupidity.
If you can’t understand that this is going to be a problem for you, you probably can’t understand other important issues.
The other issue, which hasn’t been confirmed by Giambrone, is that sex in your office at City Hall is a bad idea. It shows an abuse of power, flaunting your stature, and is… well, just bad hygiene for the next guy who gets that couch. It is also a good way to get caught.
I just can’t respect a guy who a) humiliates his partner this way (and because of the afore-mentioned obviousness that this would be revealed, he knew it would), particularly when he flaunts her like a play thing in his dream political life and b)lies about the issue when asked. If he had simply shut up for a few days until he figured out what to say, I could respect that. But his actions were impulsive and poorly thought out. Not a good sign of a leader.
I liked Giambrone’s politics. As a fan of David Miller, I wanted someone who would build on those ideas. I looked forward to the months ahead to see if he could convince me that he had the skills to get the job done.
When it comes down to it, I never thought Giambrone would win. But to see how easily he fell… well, I’m less than sad about the situation.
Is anyone else feeling like they’re watching American Idol on fast-forward this season?
Something seems to have changed. I don’t know if it is actually a shorter show, or if it is just more time wasted on stories and tears and less on actual singing, but I’m not diggin’ it.
I watch Idol because I love music, and wanted to be a singer from a very young age. Luckily, I realized I wasn’t cut out for a career in music, but Idol lets me pretend like maybe I could have been. That being said, if you’re not into music, why would you bother watching?
There are dozens of shows on TV about people’s sob stories, and that delight in people’s misery. Why does Idol have to one too?
Bring on some music!
On the plus side, of the few musical performances they actually showed, several were amazing. Check this rendition of Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up” (55 seconds in):
I had to take yesterday off entirely because my body ached too badly. My arms and shoulders from the boxing, and my hips from the step and hula. Signs it is working?
What is keeping me going, besides my intolerance for failure, is the points. I am very goal oriented, and the points make me want to do better. They also make me want to beat Ryan.
The thing I like the best about the Wii fit is definitely that I can come home from work, have dinner, hang out with Ryan, invite guests over, and then do my workout at 11 pm without having to put my boots on and go to the gym.
I used to go to a gym that was on my way home — between the subway and my house. The idea was that if I walked by then I HAD to go in. But I was always starving after work, and tired. I needed a break. Of course if I went home for a break, I never went out again.
Con: I was working out for a super long time today- about 50 minutes. But I realized that at some point, my time counter had been reset. Turns out, Wii decide the day changed (10 minutes too early) and it was counting my workout as the next day. This is not the end of the world in the greater scheme of things, but for doing an experiment, or for anyone accurately recording info, it’s a pain. If you’re like me and didn’t think to check the options (also don’t read instructions or follow recipes) then you wouldn’t know that you can set it for “night owl” for exactly this reason.
Pro: I unlocked boxing today and it is wicked fun. The more complicated moves (that you have to unlock after doing it twice) are hard, but once I get the rhythm down I’ll be cool.
Between the hula and the boxing I totally broke a sweat today. I’m kind of awesome.
I skipped strength training completely again. I know it is important, but it makes me feel fat and weak. Tomorrow I will guarantee some strength training time.
For the record, I weighed myself on an actual scale today to check to see that the Wii is accurate.
Sadly, it is.
I don’t really know why huge facets of the American media are so unreasonable (also sensationalist, racist, ignorant, inaccurate, and irresponsible). I also don’t know why Jon Stewart speaks brilliantly, so infrequently.
Stewart joined the ranks of the right in their den at Fox News — to Bill O’Reilly’s show to discuss the state of America, and his thoughts on Obama. Watch the video here (but be prepared to buffer!)
Jon Stewart is a very smart man, though you wouldn’t necessarily know it if you’ve only seen his show occasionally. While it clearly takes a good brain to make thought-provoking jokes, it’s often difficult to take Stewart seriously when he’s criticizing a president, or a news organization in a stupid voice.
But then there are those brilliant times, like this time with O’Reilly, that I really have to stop and catch my breath.
I’ve reached a point where reasonable, intelligent words coming out of American media hosts is completely unexpected. Sure, not all of them are nut-bar, Teabaggers, but it is extremely rare to see anyone making points, whether positive of negative, without a hidden agenda.
Maybe I have low-standards, but Jon like this makes me swoon.
Watch the latest news video at video.foxnews.com
