March Madness

Madness? Here? Not quite. Things have been pretty quiet in Brooklyn. Other than that freak bit of snow on the first day of spring, March has been relatively weather-free. Most days have been below average temp for this time of year, but little precip. Some days have been downright gorgeous.

So what's new you ask? Well, not much. Every week is pretty much the same:

Monday-Friday: Steve goes to work and I stay at home and work a little bit every day.
I also take care of things like the laundry and grocery shopping. I also do most of the cleaning. Hmm, Steve's getting off easy isn't he?

Saturday-Sunday: Take care of things in the house, which usually means some light cleaning. For the last three weeks it has also meant getting our curtains installed. We had a little issue with the extend-a-rod and needed more parts in order to span our 138" front window. Everything finally got finished yesterday. On the weekends, we also get Steve's lunch items for the week and have at least one meal out.

We haven't been to a movie in ages. And we haven't done any of the cultural stuff NYC offers. I'm dying to do some of it - take in a play, go to a museum - but it never quite works out.

I've also been hanging out with friends at least once a week, and Steve has been hanging out with his friends online. Yup, they talk to each other through headsets and fancy microphones and play games or chat.

Yup, life is pretty ordinary here in the big city. Oh! But I did have two celebrity sightings last week - Alice Waters at the Harvard Club and Ralph Fiennes in the West Village eating at a sidewalk cafe. Alice was the tiny little thing she is and I thought Ralph looks better in person than he does on film.

I also visited the Penguin Putnam offices last week. I was meeting an ex-Harcourt colleague & friend for lunch. The PP offices are huge. Only the children's divisions were in the office I visited and it was a warren of cubicles, hallways, and gray unmarked closed doors that led to unknown worlds, I'm sure. Even my friend got lost showing me around the floor where the marketing department is. To her credit, my friend works on the floor below the marketing floor and doesn't have reason to go upstairs much. But one side of the building does have nice views of the Hudson River, and my friend Susan K. has an office on that side. She had a great view of the US Airways plane's river landing.

I know this was boring. I can't make this stuff up, you know.

Tech savvy at this house

What did my wondering eyes see this weekend? Two good gadgets - an Amazon Kindle and a Wii Fit. Steve is borrowing the Kindle from work. It's the first generation edition. Since his department got a second generation Kindle, which just came out last week, the first generation Kindle can be borrowed more freely now. Yay! I played with it a bit and I had a little bit of a problem figuring out how to click, find things, etc., but quickly got over it. I don't think the searchability is very good, and I'm not sure why it isn't exactly the same sort of searchability as on the Amazon website. I would love to be able to keep this Kindle and use it for lugging books around rather than actually having to lug books around. The font is adjustable so no problem with eye strain. The page turns are slow, though, which would take some getting used to. Steve said all the readers on the market right now have slow page turn.

The Wii Fit arrived via Steve's parents. We were in Maine last month, and looked for a Wii. They are too hard to find here in the city, so we thought we could certainly get one up in Maine. Our Wii also came from Maine. Apparently, we were in Maine the wrong week. The very next week, Steve's dad was able to get the Fit from one of the stores we had visited looking for it. The Fit arrived Saturday and we hooked it up that afternoon.

Seeing your BMI flashed across the screen isn't too gentle, but I really like the exercises. The exercises are divided into categories - yoga, strength training, aerobic, and balance. There is a virtual trainer - your can choose the male or female trainer - to guide you through the strength training and yoga activities. For the other two groups, you are on your own to follow instructions.

The Wii does not offer you a personalized recommended exercise schedule or routine. You have to figure that out on your own. It does keep track of how much you use it each day, what your BMI/weight flux is, your Wii Fit "age" (mine was only 34, which isn't too bad, but Steve's was 43! hahahaha), and you can take the body test as much as you'd like to see how you are improving. I don't really know yet if it will actually measure how you are improving fitness-wise or how you are improving how to move on the balance board. My guess is that it measures a little bit of both.

So far, my favorite activities are the ski jumping, step class, and hula-hoop. The more I use the Fit, the more activities I unlock, so I'll have to see what else comes up as I go.

Even if the Fit boils down to being just a video game and not a valid exercise tool, that will be okay. It is anything but a passive game, so there must be some kind of benefit.