Getting Fit, Being Lazy

I have been wracking my brains (not really, of course... it being summer break) for something interesting to write about under the pressure of inevitably falling short of the fantastic adventures some of my friends are currently blogging about (see side bar). For now I will be frank with you--my summer is not in any way exciting, and you will have to put up (or not, actually) with my somewhat more tedious adventures and somewhat less tedious plans for more exciting times in the future.

I will try to continue my sporadic bursts of information on what I am currently up to in life and complement it with a new experiment. Before I tell you about it here are my "happenings."

I've decided it's finally time to stop feeling bad about myself and seriously lose the weight I need to to feel more healthy and/or attractive. At least for my clothes to fit again. As well as to give in to my husband's insistence that I have a long and healthy life here on Planet Earth. So, after being spurred on by a Hawaiian friend of ours who has a killer bod after losing weight, I signed up for 3 months of WeightWatchers. Yeah, *sigh* and all that. I caved in. But so far in two weeks I have lost about 3 pounds and have less desire to stuff my face all day, so so far so good. Counting points on an online tracking tool they have fulfills my endless desire for lists and technology, as well as micromanaging, so it's useful for staying on track and not giving up. More concrete, you know? My husband contributed two more important health-aids. The first is the Wii Fit, which has been sold out since it went on the market, but is now sitting primly in our living room. It's an awesome game that revolves around something kind of like those platforms they use in Step Aerobics. It's got sensors in it that measure your weight distribution, movements, etc. The program itself measures your BMI through several criteria, weighs you, and tests your balance and agility, then gives you a chart of your progress and adjusts your "Wii Age," reminiscent of Brain Age for the Nintendo DS. The workouts are divided into categories: Yoga, Strength, Aerobic and Balance. There are multiple exercises in each, and you unlock more exercises and intensities as you score higher and do them more frequently. The exercises are clever and incorporate some fun games. Again, so far so good. My favorite is the boxing game--done somewhat realistically with the nunchuk. He also bought himself a Garmin GPS runner training device, which tracks how far you run, your pace, etc, and keeps track of it on your computer. Our tentative goal is to train for a 10k in October (we'll see about that) and to be fit enough to climb Half Dome at Yosemite (which we just visited with my parents over 4th of July weekend) sometime in September. Finally, we started taking multivitamins.

Now for my experiment (bear with me, I know this is a long post--but I've been building up). Some of you may know that I once started up a book review column on WOAI.com. The great part of it was that since I started it, and had a kick-ass web director overseeing it as well (shout-out to CyberBob), I got to write about pretty much anything I wanted. Eventually I even got to interview people on camera. What I miss most, though, as I become increasingly immersed in the world of literary academics, is just sharing my actual non-premeditated, non-scholarly thoughts on books that aren't just something I "should" read or "must" read. When I started writing reviews I was inspired by one of my favorite contemporary writers, Nick Hornby. I LOVE the way he writes book reviews. Hornby writes a column for The Believer, a great mag put out by McSweeny's. Some of these have been collected in a little book called The Polysyllabic Spree.

This column I simultaneously drool over and revere is simply called, to my utter now-doctorally-oriented delight, "Stuff I've Been Reading." Basically what Hornby does is start with a list (YES!!): "Books Bought" followed by "Books Read." As an avid participant in a family of obsessive book buyers, it's not hard to see why I would find this comforting and cathartic. I buy used books like other people buy Starbucks coffee. Our house threatens to become flooded with books from floor to ceiling, piled up in every corner and surface, like in the house of the famous writer in this movie I saw recently called "Winter Passing." The scary thing is, nothing would please me more. Anyway, after the list Hornby writes his article about a couple of the books he's read. Frank, no-holds barred, blissfully straight-forward and unpretentious (for the most part--although I have no evidence to the contrary at the moment).

So, I have decided to shamelessly copy Nick Hornby's method as a source of inspiration for some blogging, with some adjustments. I will list books when I buy them, some information about the book itself (edition, interesting aspects of the cover, year, place acquired, intriguing dedication notes to other people, etc.), my hopes for it, and so forth. Then I will list books I have started reading (you might see the influence of goodreads here). Finally I will list books I have actually read to completion, with a short comment on what I really think about it. Believe it or not, I anticipate this will be challenging/frightening for me, like standing on a precipice and hoping the next step will be hang gliding exhilaration rather than sure and certain death on some depressing non-academic rocky beach below. Okay, now that I've panicked to the point of hyperbole I feel much better about this. Onward!

And now, the "Next on..." moment of delayed gratification. This post has gone on long enough (much too long, actually), so I will post separately with the first attempt at my book experiment. Until next time!