Saturday, April 22, 2006

Saturday makes me a year older

Not many of you know this about me, but my birthday was this past Thursday, the 20th. Hitler was born on that day, Columbine happened that day, and well, my birth. I am just saying. Lots of horrible things happened that day, but none were my fault, so I try and celebrate the day none-the-less. Hey, Stalin and Mao were born on days on the calendar too, so!

Thursday was a good day, that began with a little lunch with my grandmother on my mom's side. She's a funny lady that will turn 90 this year. Then I got the Shure E4G earbuds, which I am really excited about trying out and telling you all about...and went out to dinner with my sister and brother. Thai, what cuisine could be better?!

I also received the EyeToy Kinetic bundle, which included a game designed by Nike Motion Works, and the eyetoy. This 'game' is actually a fitness trainer that helps you work out with either a personal trainer for a 12-week program (and they have these silly creatures they have named Anne and Matt) that go through exercises with you, and they have little games you can play for anywhere from 3-10 minutes.

As a woman who did yoga for over 2 years, and worked out religiously at the gym for the past year, and then stopped all physical movement except clicking the remote from my couch for the last 4 months, I thought I still had some muscle tone and agility. Boy, that Eyetoy showed me a thing or two.

Now most of you are already aware of the goods and bads with the EyeToy, so I won't go into them, but will rather discuss the Kinetic 'game'. The workout put a hurtin' on my jumping, leaping, slapping, hitting little soul after 4 minutes and 12 seconds. Jeebus! Where do you work your cardio like that? In guam? But I Kept going. And because you are watching yourself hit objects on the television screen, it acutally distracts you from the time you would usually be cursing yourself for torturing the only body you have. And because you're watching yourself, you think, well, if I do a roundhouse kick here, it'll look cool there. And work out my obliques so much better than a simple hit with the hand. Plus the 'personal trainers' edumakate you on all the muscles in your body, as they warm you up for your killer 20 minute workout (stop giggling) and stretch cool down.

All in all, I wasn't really sure what to think about this program, honestly. I thought, well I can just make my lazy ass go outside and run, but really, why do that when there are options? And those options include a tiny camera that lets you play games while jumping around so much on your floor that you 1. work up a sweat that will drown small pets and 2. drive the neighbors crazy.

Two bad things about the game, as uncoordinated as I am, I really don't give a flying f%$k when the trainer comes out and says 'that's ok. It's all about burning calories.' Shut up. And the music. Really music composers? You guys weren't drunk and just spun the bottle to choose those two whopping tracks? Now we all suffer for it. You bastards.