Week 8 Fitness Wrap-Up

So, I didn't really diet this week. I mean, I tried to focus on eating the kinds of foods I'm supposed to eat, but I didn't do a particularly good job. I managed to dodge excessive amounts of alcohol on the weekend, which when you spend two nights hanging out at Eddie P.'s house is not an insubstantial feat. But it's time for me to get back on the horse, start eating right again, and start walking/lifting/Rock Band drumming again, basement situation be damned.

Please note that there will not be a weigh-in for this wrap-up. It's not that I didn't weigh in; it's that I'm utterly embarrassed at the resulting weight, and I'm giving myself a week to clean up my act before we go public with the story.

Plants vs. Zombies

You may recall that I talked about playing the demo for this PC game in my last fitness post. Well, since that time, I did in fact purchase the full game, as did my brother and my cousin Mike. I'd venture to say that we are each happy with our purchase. I've played the game for no less than twenty hours, which puts it in favorable company when compared to several games I've bought recently, such as Crackdown and NFL Head Coach '09 (neither of which I've played at all yet).

The game isn't ground-breaking by any stretch, but it's fun and clean. Everything is pretty intuitive, and it mixes in humor very well. I think I'm almost done with the game, as far as defeating every challenge it offers, but I can definitely see playing around with it for a while longer, just for kicks. There are several defensive plants I have yet to employ, and I'm interested to see what the "Cob Cannon" does.

Illness Strikes

Yes, unfortunately, I've gotten sick. It feels pretty much like a cold, so I've been treating it like a cold: a DayQuil/NyQuil two-pronged attack, with cough drops mixed in. I've missed two days of work so far, and I'm really hoping not to add in a third. It's not that I find my job particularly rewarding or interesting. I just generally like to be in the black with regards to leave hours, and these are two days I hadn't planned on using up.

It's interesting how when people find out that I'm sick, their automatic (joke?) response is, "Is it swine flu?" If you're among the people who said so, don't worry, you're one of many. It's just weird that this illness that's struck 5,500 Americans (roughly .002% of the United States population) has received enough media coverage that many persons' first response, joke or otherwise, is to make some reference to the swine flu.

Anyways, from my understanding, no, it's not swine flu. It's a cold, most likely brought along by lack of sufficient sleep and not eating enough fruits and vegetables. I think I've caught up on sleep (but I need to get into the habit of regularly getting enough sleep), and I'm working on the fruits and vegetables thing. That shit is expensive, though. Grapes are like $3/pound. So I'll be talking to my mom about buying fruits and such when she goes out. I think we've got some bananas and some oranges right now, so that'll do.

And congratulations to Joe Mandi on fixing the Hubble space telescope! (I will congratulate no one else at NASA; my assumption is that they're all worthless...except for Monkey Dude).

Super Monitor (TV?) Deal

Hey folks, here's a big time deal on a monitor that looks like it can be used as a television as long as you're not using coaxial cable as its input. It's a 42" screen for $580, and it's made by Westinghouse, not some joke brand. If I had any kind of job, I'd buy this thing. I recommend those of you with jobs check it out.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4633249&Sku=W330-4210

Week 6.5 Fitness Wrap-Up (and other stuff)

Alright, truth time. I haven't posted a blog in a while because I've been a little scared to step on the scale. I've been a lot more lax with the diet, and with the basement getting worked on, I haven't had the easy access to lift weights or do any Rock Band drumming. For the most part, I've been completely inactive recently, and I was terrified to see how unforgiving the scale was going to be. You'll catch the exact numerical results at the end of this blog post, but I was completely floored by how much that wasn't the case.

Plants vs. Zombies

My cousin Mike posted this link in his AIM profile, and made the extra effort to tell me to check it out. It's a music video for a video game that came out a few days ago called (as you might have guessed) Plants vs. Zombies. If you've ever played any of the "maul" games online on Warcraft III, it's the same concept. You have an area that you're trying to defend from waves of enemies; in this case, your defenders are plants, and zombies are the attackers. You start out with simple plants, and get more sophisticated and powerful plants as time goes on. Of course, the zombies also get more powerful.

I fully expected the game to be a nice little game that I wasn't going to be willing to pay for, but the demo has got me very seriously considering shelling out the $20 to get the full game. Partly because I'd like to play the rest, but also partly just because I'd like to reward the programmers for creating a fun (and funny) game. I'm trying to figure out if I'd actually play it more than once, and that's really the question that's tempering my action. I've played Warcraft III mauls hundreds of times, but there are several dozen different versions of those. I'll let you know if I do end up buying it, and whether or not I'm happy about the purchase.

The Price of a Gamerscore Bump

I've been playing NBA Street Homecourt and Grand Theft Auto IV (the 360 version is only $36 right now, pretty good price) with the specific intention of acquiring some gamerscore points. I bought Homecourt recently, and found that I was probably going to be able to get at least 800 of the points without having to be particularly skillful (which is good, because I'm finding out that I'm not all that good at video games). I've already beaten GTA IV, but there are a few decisions you have throughout the game that you can do differently to see different consequences, and there's an achievement you receive for completing the story in 30 hours, so I figured it was worth another go-through.

I've completed the "campaign" on Homecourt, and have 800+ points from that game. I also beat GTA IV last night, getting the "Liberty City Minute" achievement for beating it quickly. However, towards the end of the evening, I started to notice my left hand was getting very sore (I know what you're thinking, but I said left hand...so it's not from writing). I realized it was actually from playing so much 360 over the past few days, which is shocking and a little embarrassing. So, going to take a break from the gaming for a little bit, give my hand a chance to recover. Movies, I guess? Speaking of...

Netflix

Netflix has a free two-week trial that I'm in the midst of, and so far, I'm liking it. The service offers movies both via mail on DVD and instant viewing online and (more importantly) the Xbox 360. The subscription plan I have gives unlimited access to the instant viewing movies/TV series, as well as one DVD at a time for $8.99. It's like $5 more a month to bump it up to two DVDs at a time, and there looks to be more than enough content on the instant access list to keep me occupied without running out of movies to watch while I'm in between DVDs. For now, my intent is to keep the service for a few months and see how much I use it.

PS: It would get used a lot more if I had a girlfriend who came over to watch movies all the time. So, heads up ladies, I've got a ton of movies we can watch. Does that make me a little more appealing? I bet it does.

I've heard Chip's opinion on this, but I figure I'll toss it out there to the masses. Do you prefer one big blog post like this, or several split up blog posts over the course of a day or two? I'm probably going to only be writing up posts once or twice a week regardless, but do you prefer that it be collected like this, sort of in a newsletter form, or would you prefer a variety of posts, each about a specific topic? Let me know.

Week 6.5 weight: 311.8