Vacation

I'm on vacation from work right now, which is fantastic. It is great to not have to stress about going to work for nine whole days. My only plans for vacation were to not go to Wal Mart. So far, so good.

However, I'm also dying of boredom.

EA Active - Week 1

I'm a day late in my update for my progress in EA Active, but the good news is that I've lost four pounds as of yesterday. All I've been doing is the 30-day Challenge, and it's been working great. Now that I'm comfortable with most of the exercises, it only takes me about twenty minutes everyday; this is great since I'm usually already dead tired when I get home from work. I'm really excited that I got such good results without making any major changes to my diet or other habits.

The ideal weight for someone my height is around 110 lbs., so I still have a pretty long way to go. Hopefully, I'll continue to see results like this ^_^

Meetings from Hell

I don't know if any of you (all two of you that would read this) have ever had the pleasure of witnessing the odd ritual of the daily Wal Mart associate morning meeting. If you ever see a large group of people dressed in blue and khaki standing in a circle, slowly turn and walk the other way: we do a customer sacrifice for the finale.

Really, though, these stupid employee meetings are just tortuous. First of all, every manager starts off by saying "Good morning associates," and everyone there says good morning back, claps their hands twice, stomps their foot twice, then says "woo." We do this for every manager...seriously. Then the managers tell us how sales were (down, by the way), tells us who has a birthday, or anniversary on that day (it's pretty sad hearing about someone who's worked for Wal Mart for like 20 years), and then they tell us what kind of discounts we get for being Wal Mart associates (usually things we can't afford anyway because sales are down and they're cutting hours). At the end we do another cheer in which we spell out Wal Mart letter-by-letter. The customer sacrifice is really pretty boring compared to the rousing Wal Mart cheer.

Thankfully, I mostly stand on the periphery and avoid doing the embarrassing clapping and cheering. Who really wants to cheer about Wal Mart at 9 o'clock in the morning?

EA Active - Beginning

Today I purchased EA Active for the Wii, because...well...I'm definitely not in the best shape I could be in. I grabbed it on the way out of my lovely place of torment...erm...employment (i.e. Wal Mart) for 59.92. I figured it was a pretty good investment, since that's how much I usually spend on just a game for the PS3, and EA Active comes with the game, a leg strap, and a resistance band. It's also compatible with the Wii Balance Board that came with the Wii Fit (which I bought and used for three days before I was bored with it), but it also works just fine without it. One benefit of having the Wii Fit is the benefit of being able to track your weight with Wii Fit.

So, I brought it home, busted it out of the box, and started it up. You begin by creating your fitness profile, where you enter your gender, age, weight, and height. You then create an avatar that looks like a person, instead of using the Miis like Wii Fit. You get to customize the avatar with skin color, hair color, body type, and their outfit and shoes. Then I started the 30-day Challenge, where it gives you a set of exercises to complete everyday (except for a rest day). The first workout takes longer than it says because it doesn't count the training videos. If it says it's going to take 20 minutes, I would figure for at least 30. Thankfully, you only have to watch the training videos the first time you do any certain exercise.

For many of the exercises, you insert the nunchuck into the provided leg strap; make sure you have the nunchuck properly set-up, or the exercises won't work right for you. I had a problem with the leg strap falling off, especially while I was running. This was kind of annoying, but I eventually got the it on tight enough so it stopped falling off. As I started getting into the exercises I learned that this game is no joke. After the first exercise (running), I was already breathing hard. I figure this is a pretty good indication that buying this game was a good idea.

The exercises were good, at least to me. My heart rate was up, and I was definitely sweating. The on-screen trainer was easy to follow, and I didn't really have any problems doing any of the exercises. After doing the exercise for the 30-day Challenge, I did another of the pre-set exercises. I did the 20 minute exercise on easy, which took around 30 with some training videos for new exercises. After doing both sets of exercises I feel tired, sweaty, and sore. Other than that I actually feel pretty good, I'm glad that I feel like I accomplished something. I think I'm going to try to keep a record of what I eat, so that I can keep track of how many calories I'm taking in compared to how many I'm burning. I think my biggest challenge will be soda, because I'm completely addicted to it. I really don't like drinking water, but I'm going to try. I think I'll post an update in...a week maybe.

Back From The Grave

So, this blog kind of died...after only two posts...Therefore, I've decided to turn the focus of this blog away from my obsession with Japan, and instead focus on complete and utter randomness. I'm pretty much going to write about whatever I want to write about. I figure that will usually fall into one of four categories: games, books, Asian culture, or the vileness of  Wal Mart.

For this first post of my newly resurrected blog, I would like to talk about the new and improved name: Lysistrata. This is the title of a book that I studied in a philosophy class. It was written by Aristophanes, and is set during the Pelopennesian War. The title character Lysistrata, whose name happens to mean "she who disbands armies," decides that the war has gone on long enough. She comes up with an ingenious plan: for the women to withhold sex from the men until they decide to end the war. Even though the women also suffer because of Lysistrata's plan, they are victorious in the end.

The moral of this story? Well, I'm just telling you the background of my blog's name. However, this does teach a valuable lesson to guys: make love, not war.