Wii Fit Plus

Since Ed and I have a Wii, I finally went ahead and ordered Wii Fit Plus, which is a video game for the Wii that incorporates the use of a balance board (similar to a shallow step you'd use in a step class, except heavier and with electronics inside to report your actions to the game) and is intended as something like a personal trainer. I thought this would be something fun to do at home for fitness. When school is in session I really never make it to the gym at all, and then between semesters it's hard to bother starting.

The game (with balance board) is $99.

When you first register your character, using your little animated Wii representation (called a Mii), it weighs you and tests your balance. (If you're like me, after it weighs you and shows your BMI, a childlike voice says, "That's obese!" Thanks, Wii Fit. I had no idea.)

(This reminds me, actually. Someone was complaining online about the Wii Fit's use of BMI, given its limitations. They specifically mentioned that someone like a trim NFL player could be called obese despite actually just being very muscly. I couldn't help but think this common argument was really silly here - as though professional athletes are really a target audience for the Wii Fit. Hint to athletes: if you are training with the Fit, it's probably time to start asking yourself whether you're really into this whole sports career thing anymore.)

Anyway, once the Fit has finished insulting (or perhaps praising) you for your BMI, it has a variety of training exercises to choose from - perhaps about 100 in all. These fall into four categories: yoga, strength training, balance or rhythm games, and aerobic exercises. Each exercise uses some combination of the balance board and the two remotes that a Wii comes with. For example, the jog uses only the main Wii remote, which you put in your pocket to act as a kind of pedometer while you jog in place on the floor. (You're not supposed to jump on the board, and that probably includes jogging, since you raise both feet at the same time for that.)

I haven't gotten into a lot of the yoga poses, but they seem decent. The strength training exercises cover a nice range of difficulty, from very easy things like a tricep extension holding the remote, to things I can't do like pushups and side planks. So far I love some of the leg exercises (very hard, especially the balance aspect) and the plank (extremely difficult and I shake like crazy, which the onscreen trainer often comments on).

The aerobic/rhythm games are so far some of my favorite. I like the basic and advanced step classes, and I adore the rhythm kung-fu. I went on a jog tonight where I actually jogged in place for far longer than I would have thought possible. Every game or activity gives you a score at the end (which, for the strength and yoga ones, is generally based on your balance and steadiness), and there is a high score list for each one. As you get better at things, more levels are unlocked - for instance, my 30-second plank was steady enough tonight that I unlocked the 60-second version.

Overall, I find it fun and very motivational. A lot of people have complained that you have to keep selecting a new activity a lot (though you can set up a full routine of strength and yoga things to do all at once, or have the game do it for you if you tell it the time you want to spend), but I like that aspect - the fact that I get to continually choose what to do stops me from getting bored or feeling trapped doing something horrible forever.

I've done this for four days in a row now, and every day I am sore in all kinds of places both expected (thighs, shoulders) and not (hips, lower abdomen). I am winded and sweaty a lot as well. So it is fun and a good workout. I can't say for sure that it won't become the video game equivalent of a treadmill used as a clothing rack, but so far, it's working for me.

Christmas in October

This morning when I woke up, everything was covered in a light layer of snow. It looks oddly a bit like a spring snow, since everything is lush and green, but the trees are actually too lush and green for spring, so...well, an early fall snow after a quite wet summer, I suppose.

Ed and I spent essentially all day together. We had lunch out, and on the way home stopped to rent a movie. I mentioned my desire to buy a Wii (which I shopped for but didn't buy the other night, unsure whether I really wanted a Wii more than I wanted the $300 I would spend, including games), and he said, "Want to get one on the way home?" So we went to Best Buy, where I got the console and Mario Galaxy, and he got an extra set of controllers and the Metroid Prime Trilogy (for us to play together).

At home, he checked out some things for work and I hooked up the Wii. The smell of the plastic, computer parts, styrofoam wrapping paper, etc., reminded me of Christmas. And it was a Christmasy day outside, with snow still visible on the trees. I said this to Ed, and he said the day really felt like Christmas all the way around, and somehow his saying it made it so. The rest of the evening really felt like we were living outside of normal time, the way that holidays sometimes do. We didn't give any thought to shopping or chores or homework or any weekend tasks, just played with our new toy. And watched The Triplets of Belleville.

Buying the Wii was also a kind of budgetary triumph. I currently put some money aside every month that I'm officially allowed to spend however I want, but that I have to conserve one month of to cover budgetary excesses. After a few months of doing this, I had more than enough to buy the Wii and the game without hitting this month's savings at all. It's the first thing I've bought with that money. I feel really good that the plan worked out, then.

Ed kicked my ass (unsurprisingly) when we played Metroid Prime - he had played the game before and I had not, and I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to do anything properly while he blew me up a lot of times. But later I got to play the regular game myself and start picking up some skills. (But damn, kids, that game is kind of hard.) After Ed went to bed, I started playing Mario Galaxy.

It was really fun and great to take a day off from life and spend it playing with another kid. (Plus we're having a sleepover!)

Living Among the Humans

Sometimes I feel like I have no idea how to do it.

Yesterday, Ed and I went over to the house of our couple friends to discuss some things that went on between us last week and to play some kind of a game. The discussion went really well and was very reasonable, though my feelings were still bruised from the stuff last week. Then we sat down to play Settlers of Catan. (We played one of the many extensions and we played on a gigantic board.)

Settlers of Catan is a resource-management strategy game that involves dice-rolling and trading cards and (in the extension we played) a barbarian who topples cities. There are five types of resource cards and three types of commodity cards (or maybe vice versa - I forget which is which). There are three dice, all with different import. There is a lot of trading between players. It's actually a pretty fantastically fun game that is not as complicated as it sounds.

One of the things that happens in this game is that every so often, the barbarian arrives on our (collective) shores. One of the things you can "build" in addition to settlements, cities, and roads is soldiers. Soldiers drive off the barbarian. If we collectively have as many soldiers as cities, the barbarian is thwarted, and the person with the most soldiers gets a special reward. If we do not, then the player or player(s) with the fewest soldiers lose a city (it is downgraded to a settlement).

So, at a certain point in the game, Ed and I each had a soldier, Christine had several soldiers, and Adam had no soldiers. We had exactly as many soldiers as cities, which is enough. It was my turn, and I was able to upgrade two settlements to cities! And as a result, when the barbarian came on the next roll, Adam lost a city. Had I not built my two cities, he wouldn't have lost the city, because prior to that point we had enough soldiers.

My experience with Adam is that he becomes very frustrated when any plan he had in a game is thwarted, or things don't go his way. This doesn't normally manifest at the end of a game that he's lost, but happens throughout the game. So on this occasion, Adam was upset that I caused his cities to be toppled, and he was (according to his claims) more upset because I had done this without even considering it. In other words, intentionally exposing him to the barbarian would have been one thing, but doing it carelessly was annoying.

I, of course, do not believe that in a zero-sum game I have any obligation whatsoever to pay attention to possible negative impacts my actions may have on others. At least, I don't have such an obligation to them; it of course may behoove me to be alert so that I can screw them over as much as possible.

So he griped about this a bit, and then we continued playing. And then the topic came up again (possibly as a result of another barbarian attack) and he gave me more shit about it. This wasn't friendly shit-giving of the ordinary kind you might have in a game, but to all appearances an expression of actual annoyance and anger over my behavior.

I got really upset and said, "Fuck you." I almost quit the game, but instead I basically sat there and cried (briefly). I was still hurt from the thing earlier in the week, remember. It of course became a pretty awkward moment around the table; everyone sat quietly and watched Ed's turn. After a little while, things returned to normal.

And then he brought it up again, bitterly. (He would deny that he brought it up. I think what happened was that Christine mentioned that Ed was the only one of us who hadn't been close to winning - the rest of us had all gotten close at one time. And then Adam went off on the barbarian thing again.) Of course, we argued with him each time (we being mostly me and Christine). But this third time I banged my hand on the table (causing pieces to jump) and basically stormed out of the room. (In the interest of fairness, I should report that I shouted, "I am sick of being hated all the time for no reason!") When I came back, we had an argument that eventually devolved into yelling. Christine started to cry. I left. Ed put his hand on Christine's shoulder and Adam told him, "Just go," so he put on his shoes and joined me in the car a couple of minutes later.

Sitting in the car, I was just...wow. Fuming. And very pumped up with adrenaline, like exhaling very heavily and shaking. And a little blood-sugar-crashy. Ed was angry as well (at Adam, not me). I drove us home, trying to kind of calm down and chill out. At home, Ed made me some spaghetti and I continued to mostly feel like crap for the rest of the evening.

It's pretty clear to me that whining and griping about someone's completely legal and predictable move during a game is obnoxious behavior. I also shouldn't have taken it personally and flipped out, but I guess I finally reached my limit of dealing with Adam's bullshit. (I don't flip out all that often, but I wish I would learn how not to do that.)

What bugs me is that I've always basically put up with Adam doing that crap in the past, and maybe I shouldn't have. I want to travel back in time and, every single time he pulls that shit, tell him to stop being a whiny little crybaby when things don't go his way. And then just walk away, quit the game (whatever game it is), if he doesn't cut it the fuck out. Maybe coddling people and tolerating their flaws isn't doing them (or me) any favors, in general.

But how do you get along with people without tolerating their flaws? I have flaws that other people surely must tolerate in order to be in relationships with me. I generally try to assume that people are acting in good faith and working on their own shit as best they can. I don't want to become extremely intolerant and turn into one of those people who heads is all filled up with lines that other people shouldn't cross, etc.

I really do not know how one is supposed to relate to other humans.

Rock Band

Our friend Christine had a birthday party Saturday night, so we went. There were 9 people total, and we spent a significant part of the evening playing Rock Band 2 on (I'm guessing) their PS3. (It might have been the Wii. They have everything.) And it was...awesome. I've never played Rock Band before and I just had a fabulous time.

The way the game works is that you and up to three of your friends play fake plastic instruments or sing into a microphone. (You can do one each of guitar, bass, vocals, and drums.) There is a huge list of real songs, such that almost anyone would know many of them. When you choose a song to play, each person gets to choose a difficulty level for their own effort, and then the song starts. Each instrument gets a track that shows what notes to play when - shown in a style similar to how Dance Dance Revolution or a similar game shows it. The vocalist gets lyrics and a line representing the pitch, and when you sing it shows a little arrow showing where your pitch is, so you can adjust if desired.

For the instruments, how many keys are involved and how complicated and fast the passages are is determined by what difficulty level you choose (easy, medium, hard, expert). For the vocals, all that changes is how strictly you are graded.

I got to sing a fair amount, and found that singing songs that I've sung many many times in the car went very well. I think I got 99% on Expert on Bob Dylan's "Tangled Up In Blue" and a similarly high score on songs by Blondie and Fleetwood Mac.

In a funny moment late in the evening, I chose to sing "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden (since I know it and have enjoyed dancing to it a couple of times over the decades), and was then shocked to find out how nonsensical the lyrics are. (You don't get to see all of the lyrics at one time - you pretty much just sing whatever comes up on the screen - so it can be a bit of a surprise. Snakes? What?)

So, the singing part is like karaoke, I guess, which I've never tried. I also played guitar a couple of times, and bass (same plastic instrument) a whole bunch of times. Once I got decent at handling the necessary keys for the medium level of difficulty, I started to get into the rhythms and really understand what I was playing on a broader level. (I guess I mean I was playing phrases and not just individual notes.)

One nice thing you might not expect is that the music for the songs is the real music from the real recordings, so it's not like a cheesy elevator-music version or anything. And, while you can hear yourself play well or make mistakes, you can still hear the whole song even if all of your bandmates suck. I'm not sure how they integrate that, but mostly it does just work.

Anyway, I thought it was just about the funnest thing ever, and I may have to buy it. Fortunately I already own a PS2, and there is a PS2 version, so I would not have to buy an entire game console in order to play this one game. Buying the game, guitars, microphone, drums, etc., is bad enough.

Katamari Damacy

I currently own exactly one functioning console game: Katamari Damacy.

In this game, you are the alien pilot of a small round thing (katamari), and you roll it all around a cartoon landscape (inside a house or around a town or whatever). If you roll it over something roughly smaller than itself, it will pick that thing up and grow. The point of various levels is either to grow the katamari to a certain size, or to pick up a number of objects that follow some theme.

The music is great.

I find this game really relaxing and just lovely to play. The controls are easy and there's nothing complicated.

If you'd like to know what it looks and sounds like, here is a rather poor-resolution video of the first level.

The Boyfriend

Ed and I started dating in late May. It's been about five months now, and we are still together, with no signs of that changing any time soon.

He makes me really happy. He's in love with me (which is mutual, as should be obvious), and he's wonderfully emotionally supportive, a drama whore like me, and just great. I can't believe how great he is in these emotional ways. Also, the sex is the best I've had.

He's still working on his master's thesis. It's hard for him to stay productive with hardly any external constraints, but that's sort of the nature of theses. I have no doubt he'll get it done.

Lately, we spend about two evenings and one weekend day together each week. We also play an online game together (EVE Online), which gives us a light way to spend time together (online, of course, not in person) without it being too intense. (We have a habit of getting intense over IMs, and it doesn't always turn out well.)

His birthday is Monday, but we're celebrating it Friday. He'll be 24.

Go!

Ed has been trying to get me to play Go with him for a while now, and I've been kind of resistant. It seems to just come up out of the blue at odd times, to the point that it's become sort of a looming topic somehow. Last night he brought it up again and I responded by imitating a meditative posture and pretending to begin to breathe calmly to deal with his desire to play.

This didn't go over so well. Apparently Ed has burned out some other girlfriends on Go, and so he has a bit of a sensitive spot about it. Well, shucks.

I think Mosch was the first person I played Go with. We got really into it, briefly, but had to abandon it because we just had too many other things we wanted to do. Since then, I'd basically completely forgotten how to play.

Go is a strategy game like checkers, othello, or hexes (whatever that game is called). You play stones at the intersection points of a board. You capture the opponent's stones when you cut off all of their escape routes (essentially), but you win by controlling territory with as few stones as possible. It's not hard to learn how to play Go, but it's one of those things where there is perhaps no limit as to how good you could become.

I agreed to play with Ed under the condition that he would not give me advice about what moves he would have made in my place. During the game we played (on 1/4 of the standard board, and with me having a 3-stone advantage to start), I did ask him for his thoughts on a few things as we went on. I lost pretty badly (as expected), but had some good moments. I'm definitely willing to do it some more.