Coolest Card EVAR!

Check this out!  I got the coolest card in the mail today.

Does that not just rock?  I think this one is going to have to go on my permanent magnet board, once I get the damn thing hung again.

In other news, I don't have much news.  I'm reading A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant, which is pretty amazing so far.  There's been a lot of buzz about this one, and if the rest stays as good as what I've read so far, it will be totally deserving.  I'll let you know how it goes.

I saw on twitter that Candace Havens is getting ready to run another Fast Draft class, and I'm seriously considering signing up.  Has anyone taken it?  Any advice?  Apparently the idea of the class is that you're supposed to write 5,000 words a day, so at the end of the two weeks, you should have a 70,000 word first draft.  That's one unusually long m/m romance, or quite possibly two average-ish length ones.  I'm not sure if I'm up for that kind of pressure, but it sure would be a kick in the ass to get writing.  And the class is only $20, so it's not like it's a huge financial investment.  (Although a significant time investment if I'm really going to do it.)

As far as the rest of my resolutions go, the cleaning one isn't going exactly as I planned, but I am making progress.  Today was trash day, and I managed to ditch a whole trash bag full of crap.

I have the next knitting project for myself planned out, but I'm trying to wrap up a few ongoing projects before I start it.

The "read less" resolution is in the toilet.  I looked at my little red book, and as of the first of the year I only had 295 books to read to reach 1,000 since I started logging them.  I think I'd rather hit 1,000 this year, so 295 is my new goal.  I have, however, managed to not buy a book for 5 whole days.  That's pretty good for me lately.

Let's see.  What else?  I haven't done any exercise since that little bout on the Wii last week.  I haven't bothered with the picture a day thing, either, although I'm still enjoying taking pictures with my Samsung thingie.  Mostly of the cat.

I think that's everything new and interesting.  Or even not so interesting.  I'm not even wearing any lip balm today!

This is a Little Embarrassing

As I mentioned the other day, I'm getting started on my 2012 New Year's resolutions.  (Why wait to make positive changes in your life, right?)  So, I'm going to kill two birds with one stone here-- post some pictures and talk about the cleaning and organizing I need to do.

Here they come, the embarrassing pictures.

This is the giant pile of crap that completely blocks access to my closet.  There are a couple of tubs and boxes on the bottom, with clean clothes, yarn, shipping boxes, and God knows what else in the mix.  I haven't measured it or anything, but it's probably 5 feet long, 2 feet deep, and waist high at one end.  This is probably my most daunting challenge.  A lot of this stuff needs to go into the closet, somehow.  But I can't *get to* the closet with the pile in the way.  And I don't have the energy or the space to move the pile so I can get to the closet and put it all away.  It's a conundrum.  But I'll figure something out.

This is one end of the pile, and also the little table I use as my nightstand.

This is the other end of the pile, as well as my dresser, which is thoroughly cluttered and covered in about a quarter inch of dust.  On the positive side, you can see my Christmas cards hanging on the door!

This is the set of plastic drawers that I use as my other nightstand.  See the pink/white/black thing under the tissue box?  That's the sack sock I mentioned a couple posts ago.  It's coming along nicely!

As you can see, the whole room is piled, packed, choked with stuff.  Part of the problem is me.  I have a hard time letting go of stuff that I think I might need.  Or I set something aside, and then it disappears from my mind.  It just doesn't exist for me anymore.  It does, however, continue to collect dust for the next 6 months until I finally throw it away.

But a really big part of the problem is I have no organizational tools or system.  That blue tub at the bottom of the first picture is filled with CDs.  But I have no place to put them.  There are two or three boxes of books taking up space on the floor of my closet, but I have no shelves to put them on.  That big ol' dresser?  Holds a lot less stuff than you might think.  (But to be fair, I really need to go through some of it and either pack it up for winter or just let it go all together.)

I haven't started doing my one song of cleaning a day.  I was thinking about doing that today, but I did 11 minutes on the Wii instead (first time in *months*), and between that and MTX day, I am pretty well worn out.  But I have started thinking about how I want to arrange things as I get them put away.

Shelves and such are not an option right now.  The room desperately needs to be painted (the walls are scuffed up and full of nail holes, and one wall is painted a horrible gray-purple), and I don't want to put anything big and heavy in the room that will have to be moved to get to the walls.  And since it's January, it's going to be months before the weather is really appropriate for painting.  I'm looking at probably 6 months, minimum, before I can put in shelves.  (Also, I want to put in some sort of entertainment system to hold my TV and for storage.)

All this listing of what's wrong, and what I need and can't get right now is starting to feel like a novel.  A long, boring, Russian novel.  Something by Turgid.  (Points to anyone who gets the reference!)  I think I'm going to leave this here and come back tomorrow with what I see as my specific requirements for my room, and what I'm going to try to do to meet them in the short run, even if I can't have my dream room right now.

Lip balm of the day: Pick Me Up Peach!  (And boy did I need it.)

Wii, Wii, Wii All the Way Home

Karen asked what Wii games I play for exercise.  I have lots to say on this subject, so I'm going to go ahead and write a new post.  (Thanks for the topic, Karen!)  My comments and recommendations come from the perspective of someone who is significantly overweight (I was around 290 the last time I checked), very inactive, and has underlying health problems that cause pain and fatigue.  So gentle, low impact exercise is much more important to me than your standard exerciser.

My first exer-game, and the whole reason I bought the Wii in the first place, was the Wii Fit Plus.  You've got to have a Wii balance board to play this one.  It looks like a scale, but without the readout.  The best thing about the Wii Fit is that it's really just a bunch of fun mini games.  You can hula hoop.  You can box.  You can bike or ski or ride a Segway or navigate rapids.  Each little game only takes a minute or two to play.  So you do a little of this and a little of that until you've done as much as you want to do.  You can set a calories burned goal (this one is fun-- you pick a slice of cheese or a piece of cake or one of a half dozen other food items, and then it lets you know when your combined calories burned in your session has worked off that particular item).  Wii Fit also has yoga, strength, and balance activities, so you can work on all aspects of physical activity.  If you poke around in all the different areas you can get a nicely balanced workout at any level.

The second game that I have and love is Walk it Out.  WiO is (surprise!) a walking game.  The idea is to step to the beat of the music as you move around Rhythm Island.  The landscape starts out pretty blank, but you get a point for every step that you make on the beat, and then you can "zap" things as you go.  You can add everything from little stuff like benches and trees and lampposts to big stuff like shops and houses.  You can gather clock pieces, and then reset the time within the game to any time of day.  (The game has a 24 hour clock that generally lines up with the time in the real world.  So if you play at noon every day, you play in sunshine.  If you play at 9 o'clock at night, it will be dark out.)  You can gather CDs and earn new songs.  (You start out with a limited number of songs.  The variety of songs in the game is pretty impressive, many with original artists.)  You can also collect "rainbow spheres" (big colored balls), and once you've got all 7, a rainbow will appear over the island.  (This one resets every day, so you have to keep earning it.  Everything else, once you've earned it, it will be there the next time you play.)  This one is addictive!  There's always just one more thing you want to earn, so it's great for me to get a steady, low impact cardio workout.

I got Active Life Explorer for Christmas last year, and it's fun!  It was created as an active game for kids, but it's a fun way for adults to get some movement in, too.  Like Wii Fit Plus, it's made up of a lot of different mini games, with an Indiana Jonesy, adventure theme.  For me, at the time, it was a little too active.  Too much bending and jumping and such.  I really want to get into the swing again with Wii Fit and Walk it Out, and then slowly add Active Life Explorer into the rotation.  (The great thing about using a game console as exercise equipment is that fun is an important part of the process.  If you're not having a good time, why play the game?)

I also got one of the many versions of Dance Dance Revolution for Christmas last year.  This one is more energetic than Wii Fit or Walk it Out, but not as much as Active Life Explorer.  My problem is that A, I'm not very good at it, and B, I wear out pretty quickly.  This is one I'm going to have to work my way up to getting the most out of.  Getting better at figuring out how to respond to the directions and working with the controller mat would help, too.

Oh, and I almost forgot, I have one called We Cheer.  You're a cheerleader, and you have to learn to accurately do the moves of different dance routines.  You'd think this would be really demanding physically, but it depends on how you do it.  If you try to do the whole body moves like the cartoon cheerleaders on the screen, there's no way I could do it.  But if you just try to keep up with the arm movements (you hold a controller in one or both hands, and that's how the game is scored), it's not too bad.  And it's fun!  The music is a bit teeny bopperish, but that doesn't bother me.

There are other games I'd like to be able to play, like Just Dance or Zumba Fitness.  But I know that those are well beyond anything I could do right now, so I haven't bothered to buy them.  Even with regular exercise I'm not sure if my body will *ever* be willing to move the way it would need to to play those games.  I'll be happy just to get to the point where I can fully take advantage of the games I already have.

In the down time, when no one is exercising with it, we play Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, and one called Big Brain Academy to help with cognitive function and reaction time.  And when we're being really lazy, we use the Wii to watch streaming movies from Netflix!  So the Wii gets a workout, even if we don't.  :p