Pretty Sassy

On Wednesday I called my local Gamestop asking if the WiiFit had come in.  They had!  I did feel out of sorts when I noticed at my lunch hour that everyone who carried the WiiFit briefcase box was female.  I’ve been succesfully stereotyped.

Out of the box there are two things that are apparent. 

1.  The board is very sturdy but the top covered in a white, pebbly textured plastic. 

2. The white pebbly plastic attracts dirt like crazy.  Ours is already looking a little grimey.  I’m planning on picking up some Mr. Clean Magic Erasers today to help with the fight.  Why couldn’t they make it a darker grey so it wasn’t so obvious?

The games are a good workout.  While they aren’t the same intensity as Gym visit you sweat and you breath hard and you get endorphins. 

The Jogging was the game that sold me on buying the pad.  What I didn’t know is you actually don’t use the pad for Jogging.  You either hold on to, or put the controller in your pocket and jog in place.  You have a coach slightly ahead of you that acts as your pacer.  Just take my advice, don’t try to out run him, he punishes you for it.

The tightrope and hula hoop game are my favorites.  In the tightrope game you balance from foot to foot to keep you on the rope while avoiding mario-style traps.  In hula hoop you twist your hips like you are hula hooping and lean from side to side to pick up hoops being tossed at you.

There is also a fitness test you can take every day.  It weighs you, gives you your BMI, checks your balance and gives you an age.  On the first day it marked me 17 years older than I am now.  The next day I improved 9 years and am only 8 years older than I am.  Thank goodness for progress.

With taxes I was out about $90.00 for the pad.  It’s a good thing for anyone that needs more motion in their life. 

With everything warming up I’m starting to notice that the pale limbs that had so easily stayed hidden in jeans and sweaters are peaking out and looking so shockingly pasty in otherwise lovely summer frocks.

I haven’t had much luck with self-tanners.  Between the smell of burning skin a few hours in and a deep-seated fear that I will miss a spot, skill and courage has not been on my side.

A few days ago I saw the Neutrogena foam and decided to give it a whirl.  The foam seemed easier to apply and the instant bronze seemed like it might give me a boost until the tanner kicked in.

I am essentially a self-tanner newbie.  After showering and exfoliating I applied the foam.  It’s light, fast drying and easy to smooth on and the bronzer makes application simply to see where it’s been.  It also doesn’t smell like permed skin, which is a benefit.

The two downers are that it leaves your skin sticky(like you forgot to rinse hand soap off) and the bronzer seems a bit orange-y and can streak a little making it look like your dirty rather than tanned.

I’m still waiting for the final color to develop and will post more when I know more.

Due to the sticky-ness I will probably opt to apply it at night and wash it off in the morning.  I plan on using it until the end of the bottle, but would love any recommendations for non-sticky, non-stinky self tanner.  I hear some good things about tan towels, but I’m always open for recommendations.

Totally loving International Delight White Chocolate Mudslide for it’s awesome way of making my coffee taste like a mudslide from TGI Friday’s..    Mmmmnnn.  We’re crunching at work, so I gladly thank anything that makes my day a little better.

So you may of heard about Cryonics, the science of freezing people(post mortem) in nitrogen or helium so that they can be reanimated at a later date when they cure whatever disease got them down.

I recently listened to an episode of This American Life titled “Mistakes were Made”

The story of how the practice of actually freezing the first candiates is utterly fascinating because of how backwards and wrong it was(not the principal of Cryonics but they way it was just done on the fly).

They interview 1960’s TV Repairman Bob Nelson who joined a California Cryonics enthusiast group and used his charismatic personality to become the president of the group. Also in the group were a bevy of real scientists who were starting up the research. This was until members of the group(many were elderly and poor) started passing away. Without any real science to back him up, any financing, or any deep knowledge, he started doing Cryonic freezings himself.

Some more detailed info

Have you heard the word?  Jellies are coming back.  Yes, the Jelly Shoe.  The shoe that was so unbreathable you might just as well have spigots attached to your feet and so delicate that the little intricate designs would break with no provacation.

Yes, you look cool but you have damp feet(unless you are a genetic freak and then I hate you) and could be left shoe-less at any moment.

There appear to be a division on the Jelly Front.  There are 80’s jellies and upscale jellies.

Here is a pair from Target that are about $8.99 and should be a blast from the past.

Then we have the fancy JCrew $40.00 jellies.  Cute but totally unpractical and unbreathable.

Will this blog change any Teens wanting to get onto the Jelly Train.  Heck no.  Those girls know that plastic shoes are the only way to get the eye of that cute guy in Social Studies.  He’ll know and he will be appreciative and it will reel him in.

I was chatting with this cool guy at work.

Me: Hey when you gonna put that candy bowl back out, I miss it.
Him: I can’t, I’m on a diet.
Me: That’s great that your being so healthy, but maybe you can fill it with stuff you don’t like.
Him: I’ll still eat it.
Me: I bet you wouldn’t eat circus peanuts!
Him: What are those?
Me: Those horrid orange marshmallow-ish candys that are shaped like peanuts.
Him: Those are terrible.

That is why I would like to declare Circus Peanuts the worst candy in the universe.  In Junior High my friend Michelle convinced her now husband(yup, still happens) to kiss her by placing a circus peanut between her teeth and taunting him to bite it.  So beside Junior high romance, it has no purpose.  If you have a potential candidate as worst american candy, please let me know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circus_peanut

So excited.  Put my down payment on the WII Board at ebgames. 

The Wii Board is for use with the WII and utilizes a bunch of sensors to figure out your center of gravity.  The result is you can do crazy things like jogging, hitting virtual soccar balls with your head and tight rope walking.

At $89.00 for the unit and WiiFit I am buying it as a way to get my games in and get a little fitness on the way.  I loved Wii Sports and I hope this is just as cool.  Some girls dream of diamonds, I dream of Wii.

So excited. 

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_fit
Official Website: http://www.nintendo.com/wiifit/en/#/home/
EB Games: http://www.ebgames.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=69536

In Southern California we just moved from summery warmth to a sudden chilled air.

This did not please the right foot and it’s plantar fasciitis.  In fact this injury has given me a sudden ability to detect a change in weather(or at least air pressure).

I go to the orthopedist on May 23rd at which point I will beg and plead for a cortisone injection I probably will not recieve.  They really keep those cortisone injections under a lock and key.

My dance instructor(who is also has a degree in sports medicine) told me that an occasional cortisone injection can be really helpful, but if given too frequently it can be harmful and sort of break things down(she used big people medical words that seem to escape me now).

I got my Footsmart.com order and am pleased to have injury-friendly shoes and a neat Plantar Fasciitis brace that is bringing some relief(but not a miracle cure).

Here is the sassy little brace that both helps my foot and makes people feel a little sorry for me.

I ordered a size small, but the fit gapes a bit on my ankle.

This is Hush Puppies Stellar(I have them in black).   They have a leather footliner(which is great thing on hot days) and are very cushiony.  The straps are tad on the too-wide, orthapedic look.  I don’t exactly look seventy, but I do look in the market for comfy shoes.

Last week I upgraded to wordpress 2.5(which is very cool, but I wish I had waited for the next bug fixes to come in). 

If you’ve run into the bug where you can’t upload pics, http://sybarite.us/puertorico/2008/04/18/wordpress-25-mediaimage-upload-fix/

You’ll need to restart your browser and log back in to get file upload working.

If you haven’t upgraded, hang-on.  Give it some time to stabilize a bit.

I’ve always been a music/audio book freak, in college I schlepped a huge CD(the double wide kind binder between home, work and school.  I couldn’t function without my groove and my my mix cd’s.  I also gave a lot of mix cd’s out to friends and family and my mixes(especially made for you) we’re one of my signature things. 

But then ipods got big and mixing seemed silly since you no longer had to edit.  You suddenly could carry 1000 songs in your pocket and much like this blog, no editing was necessary.  After all with the Shuffle function you could listen to every song you owned on random play. 

Except, see I’m moody.  Sometimes I’m happy, sometimes I’m melancholy and at the gym I mean heart pounding heavy metal, hip hop business.

I still appreciate the joy of the mix tape (now an ipod playlist), but I don’t always have the time to make them at the speed I appreciate.

If you are running into a new genre of music and looking for a cd-sized playlist itunes essentials are collections of songs in specific genres or artists.  It’s nice if you don’t have enough music in a genre, but what do you do if you have the songs, but not the enthusiasm?

Enter stage left, The Filter.  This is a nifty FREE application by Exabre.  After signing up for the service and downloading the application it turns on and you select several songs from your library and based on genre and beats and magic it pops up a playlist.

You can also let it random pick a list, but I prefer a little control.

Downsides?  I like big (60-90 song) playlists.  If it can’t find enough songs to fill a playlist, there will be some repeats.