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.

Old Sauk Trail #728 review

We’ll see how far this goes, but I thought I’d make an attempt to review my hikes this year. Hopefully there are lots of them to cover.

Distance: 6.0 miles r/t
Elevation profile: fairly level
Crowd: Low
Date of hike: 5/25/08, Sunday of Memorial Day weekend
Companions: Adam, Michelle, Maddie, Kaylee
Location: North fork of Mountain Loop Highway, near Darrington
Current geocaches: Two
Highlights: Spring vegetation, river, easy, good early season hike
Official link
Official conditions: 05/22/2008: OPEN Trail cleared of windfall trees (4/17/2008 )
Photos

For the first hike of the year, we, the somewhat out of shape, decided to start with a hike recommended for senior citizens. The beginning and ending elevation are both at 600 feet, however, it is not a flat hike. The ups and downs are pretty minimal, but it is definitely not railroad grade. It follows the Sauk River. The trail itself is never that far from the road, but you’d never guess it while you are hiking. The hike was also chosen due to being free of snow, which is a rare feat right now on all of Mountain Loop Highway.

We had a fairly slow start, probably mostly my fault with my need to take lots of pictures. I couldn’t help it as it was full of very interesting spring plants. There was a lot of new life in the form of newly unfurling ferns and other plants. It looks like it will be a very tasty hike in a couple months once the huckleberries are out.

One way this hike differs from many others is that it is not a destination hike. The real goal is just to take a nice walk in the woods by a river. We travelled all the way to the end and were rewarded with seeing the road in a different spot and an informational sign about salmon spawning.

Sadly, this hike for senior citizens had me aching afterwards and turning into a bit of a zombie. I partially blame my use of a Power Puff Girls backpack and not a real daypack. It’s amazing how much of a difference good equipment can make. It’s possible that silly backpack felt heavier than the 50 pound pack I used last August for camping.

Notes for the future: buy a real daypack

First mead review

Last night, I had the opportunity to try a variety of new meads. It was fun to get to share my somewhat obscure interest with my co-worker friends. We had more meads than we were able to try, but I enjoyed the rare opportunity to try a variety.

On hand we had three traditional meads, three melomels, and two raspberry wines. Of those, we only tried two traditionals and two melomels.

A melomel is a mead with the addition of fruit. (Some specific fruits lead to specific other names, such as pyment for grapes and cyser for apples.) I had never had a melomel before, so I was very curious.

First up was a Sky River Semi-sweet traditional mead. It is the only “local” mead we had, coming from Sultan, WA. I suspect it was the overall favorite of the night. It was fairly simple and not overly sweet. There isn’t much to say about it, and I think that’s a good thing. I’d give it a 9/10.

Second, we jumped to a melomel. At least I think it’s a melomel. It was the Black Raspberry Nectar from the Redstone Meadery in Boulder, CO. Apparently the raspberries are added post-fermentation. I was surprised to see that it was sparkling. This is achieved by bottling it prior to completion of fermentation. I can’t reconcile those two facts with one another. Thanks to the raspberries, it was a red color, similar to a ros鮠The carbonation was an interesting experience. There was a definite honey fragrance, but no real honey flavour. Interesting. Not my favorite, but it did pique my curiosity to try more. Probably an 8/10, but I reserve the right to change my mind…

Third up we went for another melomel, the Peach Mead from Mountain Meadows Mead. The peach mead doesn’t appear on their website. There was only one bottle remaining where I acquired it. There were many of the others. I suppose it is on its way out… I was not a huge fan of this one. I think it was my least favourite of the night. There was no peach character to it. It was like a sweet traditional mead, but something seemed off about it. It was still drinkable, but I probably wouldn’t seek it out again. 6/10.

Our fourth and final of the evening brought us somewhat full circle back to the other Sky River mead, the sweet. As the name “implies”, it was, in fact, sweet. It was actually more sweet than I remember from my past experience. This could be based on batch to batch variance. Another possibility is that in comparison to the others, it seemed sweeter by comparison. Now, I’m a big fan of the sweeter drinks normally. Usually you can’t get it too sweet for me. I realize that is often seen as a sign of being unsophisticated, but it’s what I like. I’m glad I got a chance to compare these two head to head finally. I definitely preferred the semi-sweet to the sweet. Other than the sweetness, the simple character of the two were similar. I think others were quite startled by just *how* sweet it was. Heh. 7/10.

We did not try the Chaucer’s mead. We had planned to try some chilled and some steeped with the spices. I’ve had Chaucer’s before, since it is the most widely available commercial mead. I won’t review it though since it’s been awhile. We also didn’t try the Cranberry mead from Mountain Meadows. I’m curious about the “sweet and tart” descriptor.

The non-meads that we didn’t try were Bouteille Call, with the name that amused everyone, and Chaucer’s Raspberry Wine.