Miscellany: WiiFit and Books

We have had our WiiFit for 50 days now and actually used it about 40 of those days (-7 Sundays and a few sick days). The WiiFit is a glorified scale ... but it's actually not that reliable. My weight will fluctuate by over 4 pounds from one day to the next! Up 6, down 5, down 2, up 3.... This makes it difficult to rely on it to tell us how much we weigh. What we put a little more faith in is the overall trend. For both of us, it's slightly down, but not by an incredible amount.

We enjoy the aerobic workouts most, Joy on step aerobics and I like it's boxer and the step aerobics. We have a regular challenge to see who scores best on the steps. "I'm ahead again! I got like 629 or something like that!" Hmmm, the bar is raised again. They also have some comfortable yoga stretches, some strength training exercises, and I enjoy the balance games.

The WiiFit also tries to calculate your BMI (body mass index) which is your weight in kg divided by your squared height in meters. The idea is that a person at 22 is ideally healthy. The problem is that the weight that would give us a 22 is NOT our ideal weight! For me, it thinks I should weigh 150 pounds. Now when I weighed a mere 196 right after my mission, I had a handful of people telling me I was unhealthily thin. My nutritionist says my actual ideal weight is 215. That's because I have a lot of muscle and other lean mass. Joy has a similar miscalculation, though hers isn't as large a miscalc as mine.

So we have a way to fool the Fit. I calculated the height of a person who would have as their ideal weight our ideal weight. We created two new characters (mine is named Alter Iigo) who we then claimed are that tall. So the Wii thinks I'm 6'11 and tells me I am merely overweight rather than grossly obese. The Wii stays alive longer that way.

The important question, though, is whether or not the WiiFit has helped us exercise more. The answer is yes. Before I started walking to campus every day, about half of my exercise was done on the Fit, and most of that wouldn't have happened without the ease of having it in my house. "I'm kind of a funny exerciser. I feel guilty/selfish if I spend too much time exercising. But the Wii helps me feel like I have permission to exercise, and I LOVE to be healthy. So I'm enjoying it. I especially appreciated when Derrill figured out we could do the free form step aerobics faster than it counts and it would still count our paces. Then you can go as fast as you want."

"I really like jackknives. It's my favorite ab exercise, and I learned it on the Wii. One thing I really like, since I have a baby, is that it will let you log in 5 minute increments. And you can add exercise you do outside of the Wii.

It is anticipated that it will be of the greatest help once the snow is here "and even on days when it's too hot in the summer."
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Joy and I finished reading Fablehaven books 2 and 3 together, interrupting The Wishsong of Shannara to read them both. We loved them! Joy's greatest complaint about them is that Book 4 isn't out yet. I don't much care for the teenage love interest (Gavin) that was introduced in Book 3 for the lead female (Kendra). I'm secretly hoping that he's really an enemy so she doesn't have to be with him.
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Projects completed:
We moved our bed to the other side of the room. Granted, this is about 6 inches, but in the process we took everything out of the room, cleaned it thoroughly, and then re-constructed the bed on the other side of the room to reduce the chance of mold formation on the outer walls. We also moved the couch away from the outside wall for the same reason, which meant moving two bookcases as well. "It wasn't a major clean up of the garage, but it took us some time."

We had a plumber here to fix the emergency water shut off valve that didn't shut off anything.

I still need to install some more insulation under the trailer where we thought there had been a leak, and there's a VERY LONG list of projects that have been on my honey-do list for months.

"And then we're going to be sending away our computer." The laptop has been waxing old. Dell has kindly offered to examine it to see what other damage they can do, so we may not have the internet in our home for the next week or two. "Given when our service contract ends and how many times we plan on being out of town with it, it makes sense to have a thorough check of it done."
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Dates:
We went to Watkins Glen to tour the falls and leaves. Hyrum loved it, bouncing up and down the whole way in his frontpack. (It would be a backpack, but it's on my front.) Our date to the third game of the World Series last night was canceled due to rain delay.

Joy bought us a second Wii Remote (Wiimote) "and Derrill soundly whooped me in all of the Wii Sports. Good for him." I hear tell if I keep it up, she'll challenge me to boxing, cause she knows I won't him a woman. "I'm pretty good at that, aren't I?" You are quite engaging to watch.


This is Joy hidden behind a waterfall at Watkins Glen. The light was fading pretty bad and the flash doesn't seem to have done much. Oh well. Go to W.G. and behold the back side of water!