What Was I Saying...?

Instead of going to the gym, this is what I've been doing all week:



Video not by me, but I've reached comparable scores (and look very similar in freestyle!). I've managed to 5-star the hard mode on "Poker Face" — it's the easiest song in the game, but 5-starring it is still not too shabby IMHO. ;)

So far I haven't hard-moded any of the other songs yet, although I've beat a handful on "medium" and several on "easy." It's a fun game — doubly so now that we've mounted the Kinect sensor to the wall above and behind the TV, and it can actually see most of the room (unlike our initial setup, which tended to chop us off at the neck).

Only problem is it makes my feet hurt. I'm wondering if I need new sneaks.

-TG

Been a while since I've done one of these! But it's all part of the whole "get back into the swing of regular exercise" bit.

( Numbers below. )

I need to remember to weigh myself after the workout; I also picked out a machine to add a chest press to the routine, but didn't actually do any sets on it, just tried enough to be sure I could get into it. (My arms were pretty wobbly by the end!)

Sport and Health was also giving out samples from their food plan; it was good stuff! lythandra and I are probably going to start using it for a few lunches and dinners at least every week — our lunches are currently particularly bad due to the limited nature of our easy choices. It's not like Nutri-System or something like that: the food plan isn't "diet food" in any way, but it comes in balanced, pre-planned portions for either a 1200- or 1600-calorie diet, so you know what you're getting up front and all you have to do is warm it up. That will make portion control easy.

When I went through my "smart start" with the trainer, his opinion was that my daily caloric intake was probably too low (and of course, too carb/sugar-heavy), leaving me with a slow metabolism. So hopefully having a pre-made food plan ready to go will rev up the engine a bit and make fat burning happen.

Also, while I'm at it: for Christmas, I got lythandra an X-Box 360 Kinect plus the system's equivalent to DDR. We played with it quite a bit over the weekend and it's a lot of fun, although I wish the music choices were more appealing. Benny Benassi's "Satisfaction" is the best thing on there, with various Lady Gaga chart-toppers being next in line ... most of the rest is just crap. There are unlockable songs and you can download paid add-on songs as well, however, so maybe we'll find some better stuff. The only real problem is that to play with it requires moving all the furniture, which is kind of a pain in the hinder.

That's all for now! Catcha later. :)

-The Gneech

EOM.

-TG

If you liked "Move Your Dead Bones," try this on for size!



Or if you'd rather have the original in Flash, go here. But that wasn't embeddable in any way I could figure out.

-The Gneech

In our old apartment, some combination of the creaky wooden floor, the old Red Octane pad, and the X-Box utterly failed to work -- always the "back" button would fail. Strangely, the Playstation versions worked fine ... but the X-Box version had all the best music! D'Oh.

Since one of the old pads didn't fare well in its various storage/carrying places, we ended up having to toss it, and buying a new one.

Have you tried to buy a DDR pad lately? It's not easy. 0.o We eventually ordered one directly from Red Octane and, figuring we have a nice concrete foundation downstairs now, I tried it out.

I worked beautifully! :D X-Box DDR is BACK, baby! Look at those C's and D's turning into A's and AA's! YEAH!

Phew. Now I need a shower. 0.o

-The Gneech

The band "Aqua" is already hyper and squeaky enough without you playing the song at double tempo. That just makes them sound like "Alvin & the Chipmunks" performing "Real McCoy" songs.

Please. Chill.

Sincerely,
The Gneech, drenched in sweat

Tonight: 45 minutes of DDR. I'm amazed at how high our scores were, actually, considering that the back buttons don't work.

And now ( for some artwork! )

One of the many ways that the Westin sucked was that on Sunday, when Vince, Himura, Lanny, Bauske, Confused00 and I all planned to workout in the Westin gym, I was foolish enough to assume that being "a guest of the guest" would be enough.

Not only was it not enough, but the guy snapped at me like I was trying to steal towels or something for daring to show up when I wasn't a hotel customer.

Keep in mind here, that they have day-pass rates -- which I didn't know at the time. He could have said, "That'll be $8 please." But no, he was too busy being a jerk about it. (Lanny also says that the weekend rates are supposed to be free -- which makes the guy's behavior even more bizarrely inexplicable.)

So, I get four apologies from people for getting turned away from a party I didn't even try to attend, but get my head snapped off by the Westin gym guy without even so much as an "I beg your pardon."

Life is weird.

Anyway, I felt bad about the whole thing, so I told Lanny I draw him a sketchie to make up for it.

-The Gneech

PS: Yes, I know, I could have lied and just said, "Yeah, sure, I have a room at the hotel." But (A) I don't like to do that kind of thing, and (B) it didn't even occur to me that I would need to! The Westin is supposed to be this swank hotel -- they've got no business not allowing people to bring guests to the gym. It's just cheesy. But I suppose after the "I'll fix your door when I get around to it" and the "you can't get there from here" stairwells, I should have just gone in assuming the worst.