FSM nod

Well, kinda. I feel famous again. Two of my flickr photos from the solstice parade got linked from the official Flying Spaghetti Monster site. They had an entry about the “float” in the parade. My pics are #’s 4 and 5 in the “bunch”. They’ve had 61 click throughs from the site so far. I’m still disappointed in myself for not getting up to be touched by his noodly appendage

Wii Fit Day 1

I acquired a Wii Fit today. I had been looking around, signed up for some alerts, etc. to no avail. I gave in and spoke to my contact (who shall remain nameless) and learned he could get one to me next week. (I had asked a bit late in the day and didn’t want him to go out of his way.) Well, to my surprise, it was sitting in my chair when I arrived at work this morning. Woo-hoo!

I kind of wanted to just grab it, turn around, and go home to try it out, but I stayed like a good little worker bee. When I got home (after picking Kipper up from his day at the vet with 3 new prescriptions even though his urinalysis results were normal… don’t get me started… sigh), I fired it up.

Everything set up very quickly, had to sync up the new balance board. I discovered that it tucks perfectly under my coffee table. Bonus! I then logged in, told it which Mii to use, and began my tests. My BMI came in at exactly 24.00 which made my Mii jump up and down with joy for being normal (even though it’s on the high side of normal). I set a target of 22.99 (It’s very specific, but only shifts in certain increments) in, I believe 2 months. (maybe 3 months?)Unlikely, but it’s something to target for. That means a loss of 6.8 pounds. I’ve lost about that in the last few months, but those pounds I’ve lost are mostly in the range of my normal fluctuation. The next pounds are *much* harder, and I have very low expectation of losing them, at least in a timely manner. I’ll try, but I won’t be disappointed if it doesn’t happen.

Anyway, I learned my center of balance is a bit to the right and quite a bit far back, so more of my weight is on my heels than should be. I did the test at the beginning and at the end of the workout, with nearly identical results. Interesting.

Because it was my new toy, I wanted to try everything. I did all of the games that are unlocked to start. During the process I unlocked at least three other games, but I resisted temptation.

Yoga

I’m a good deep breather, apparently. That’s what the first one was, and I got 4 stars (the most). Woo! (I have no idea what they measure for that.) I got 3 stars and some fairly high scores on the other 3 yoga poses. I think I did surprisingly well on them. Only one of them was of the challenging variety.

Balance

On a few of these I didn’t “get” everything I was supposed to, so I decided to repeat them once I realized whatever it was I missed. For example in the ski slalom, I was doing fine with left and right through the flags, but i didn’t realize I should have been leaning forward as well to speed up until I was nearly done. Second try, much better, but still a bit meh. Overall fun, but I’ll have to practice these a bit to get them to work correctly. This was definitely where I was weakest.

Aerobics

This part was extra fun because your other Mii’s show up in here, so it’s a little like working out with others. The step aerobics type game had, I think, all of them lined up along side me. In the jogging, I was jogging along and, hey, there’s Paul waving at me. Oh, there’s a stormtrooper running along side me. Oh, hey, it’s Willow and Xander. Oops, looks like Heather tripped up ahead. Then a crowd welcomed me at the finish line. Pretty cool. It also was nice, because it forced me to pace myself. I was supposed to stay behind the Mii I was following. I think that’s been part of my problem with running. My ingrained pace is the pace I used to be able to do. Now that pace makes my heart want to leap out of my chest. Slower is good, but hard. It was just a quick 3 minute jog too, but I didn’t want to die.

Strength

I did surprisingly well here. I got 4 stars on at least 2 of the 4 exercises. I suspect this also has to do with however they measure it. I really don’t understand how the push up/side plank, which was not good, but I got the max points. shrug.

Overall it was a lot of fun. It also kept track of the total time exercising and cheered when I passed 30 minutes. Total was 33 minutes on the day. I love the idea of making exercise a game. Some of you might have noticed I’m a wee bit competitive. This thing is perfect for me, assuming I keep it up consistently. It was actually a pretty good workout.

Dancing, one last time

Matt’s new video came out early this morning. I’ve watched it more times than I’d like to admit. I seem to catch something new each time. You can also go directly to YouTube and click on “watch in high quality” below the video for vast improvement.

Some favorites (yes, I realize this is most of the video)
Christmas Island crabs, Iceland, Guy falling down in Paris, Istanbul, Solomon Islands crack up, Yemen, DMZ Korea, Tokyo girls, Papua New Guinea, Tonga waves, Gurgaon India dancers, Seoul (12 days before arsonists burned down the ancient gate), NY/Tokyo similarities, Tonga whales (hard fought clip), Montreal, Zero G (also problematic), and of course Seattle.

And here’s a handy guide to finding my few pixels:

ETA: I just noticed this video as a response. It’s a documentary about the gasworks filming day and is surprisingly good. Also, I appear in the background a *lot*.

Update: Dancing

Matt Harding updated his blog with info about the dancing thing on Saturday. His is much more entertaining than mine, though he used half the pictures I posted on flickr (with my permission).

Read it!!! I command you!

Where the hell is Kelly?

I took a little break from reality today to go down to Gasworks Park so I could be a tiny spec in an upcoming video. I first saw Matt Harding’s second video shortly after it came out. My oldest brother sent it to me and said I’d like the last location in the video. I loved the video. After running across it several more times, I looked into it further. That’s when I found out that was the *second* video. The first video was made without sponsorship awhile before.

Most interesting to me was probably the three part lecture series he did in Vermont. I highly recommend it if you have an hour+ to kill. He has a very dry sense of humor and provides interesting insight into places he’s been, how the videos came to be, and talks about certain clips in the video.

He also released an amusing outtakes video last year and announced his plans to travel around again and this time to include others in the video. I signed up right away to be notified. It felt a little weird. He lives in Seattle. He’s here a lot. Still I assumed he’d want to continue his tradition of including a Seattle clip. The first clip had him dancing with his oldest niece at Pike Place Market. The second had his then two nieces at the Troll.

Well, he just wrapped up traveling around this big blue marble once more. He got back into town from South America yesterday and had invited everyone down to Gasworks to film the last clip to close out the next video. As usual I took pictures. While there, I met one woman up from Olympia wearing a Mutant Enemy t-shirt who had gone down to help picket during the writers strike. She marvelled at walking the picket line with Joss Whedon, Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, etc. Then she asked if I could direct her to the Wayward since she was up this way anyway. I also spoke with another young woman who has done a lot of travelling herself. She’s been to all seven continents and has spent a lot of time on several of them with the peace corps, teaching English, etc. She was very impressed that I brought up the Macedonian naming controversy when she mentioned having worked there. Sometimes it does pay to be up on current events in far flung places of the world.

But the main purpose of the event was to dance with Matt. I showed up about 5 minutes before he did. When I first got there, I saw a big group, all in costume. I wondered if I’d missed the memo about dressing funny. I quickly surmised these were cosplayers. Apparently they were there for their June photoshoot. I made my way to the place marked with an arrow in the email. Some people were milling about, but it was hard to tell who was there for what purpose. When Matt, his girlfriend Melissa, and a few others connected to them came around the corner it became clearer. He came over to each person, “Are you here to dance?” “Absolutely.” I introduced myself to Matt and Melissa and then let them get set up. There were various other family members and friends of both of them scattered about as well. They started registering each of us. Release form, picture, wrist band. KING and KOMO were both there as well. The cosplayers all went to set up for a shoot on the hill. Afterwards, many came over to see what was up and ended up registering. So, it’s going to look like Seattle is full of people in costumes… Hmmm…

Sadly, Waldo did not opt to be in the video.

Matt’s newest niece made it into the world just in time for the third video. She’s 6 weeks old. So, all three of them will be specs in this one.

He said he thinks this is the most people to come out from anywhere he’s been in the world. (I have to wonder if that would have been true if not for the cosplayers…) We were told the boundaries of the shoot and spread out to fill up the shot. I was pretty close to the middle. Sure enough, when Matt and his family types moved in, they took over the spot I had inhabited. Instead, I stood between his mom and the cosplayers. Interesting.

We did a few dancing clips and then broke up. He said he’d stay around for pictures and stuff and also reiterated not to hesitate to ask him to dance. So, I did. I think I was the last of the day.

Edit: WordPress apparently doesn’t like flickr video and stripped it out during the migration. Here is the link to the video of dancing.

Plus a plain old picture too.

The next video is due out June 21st, though it may come out a day earlier.

He mentioned plans to go back to the South Pacific. Looks like he’s off to get the rest of the Afunakwa story. I’m so relieved!

Time-travelling me, needs shampoo, lives in NY

I signed up for some subscribe and save products via Amazon last night. I felt it was a little silly when I got a tracking number for shampoo. It was even more interesting when I clicked on it and it said “Delivered”.

Further investigation reveals it was delivered about 1.5 years ago, to NY. The extent of tracking info:

HORSEHEADS, NY, US 11/16/2006 2:25 P.M. DELIVERY
US 06/03/2008 1:50 P.M. BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED

Delivered On: 11/16/2006 2:25 P.M.
Location: PORCH
Delivered To: ELMIRA, NY, US
Shipped/Billed On: 06/03/2008
Service: GROUND
Weight: 5.00 Lbs

I’ve never seen that before, except for the shipping notification I received just before that. Apparently I also frequent Greenville, South Carolina an hour and a half later that day and really want some Annie’s pasta.