"Exercise" -- The Laurel Way
In what might not have been one of the wisest decisions, I went in search of fitness programs to go with the Wii on Monday. The SO loves his Mario brothers, but since I prefer games where you don’t die (because what’s the fun in that – especially when you lack good hand-eye coordination), our Wii games are an odd mix of action-packed games that require You Tube video walk-throughs for secret level access and those designed for five-year-olds.
It’s pretty easy to figure out my games – Family Feud, Haunted House, Mickey Paints, and my favorite, Guilty Party. I had “The Malgrave Incident,” which is a puzzle and hidden objects game, but after solving it twice, I decided to trade it in.
In case you’re wondering, Guilty Party allows me to solve mysteries about a missing walrus by questioning witnesses, gathering cards and completing tasks like following the suspect’s eyes with a flashlight. I can play for hours. (Plus, until L.A. Noir comes out for Wii, this is the closest I can get to cracking cases from my sofa.)
We also have the Wii fit game, but due to an unfortunate reading of the E-bay listing, we don’t have the board to go with it.
After eating half a sackful of Krystals on Monday and watching three episodes of Supernatural in a row, I thought that it might not be the worst idea to add some kind of fitness element to the Wii.
I started at Walmart, where I learned that balance boards are $100. That’s a big investment for something that I might only use once, so I moved on to Game Stop in the hopes of finding a pre-owned one.
As an aside, my favorite part of going to Game Stop is that the staff there never knows what to do with me. I’m usually in my yoga clothes that I don’t practice yoga in, and they always ask if I’m looking for my kid first. When they learn that I’m shopping for myself, they tend to get really confused and leave me alone. After the “I want to solve crimes with my Wii” conversation from a few months ago, there’s one guy who avoids me like the plague.
There were no pre-owned balance boards, so I started digging through the used products bin and discovered Personal Trainer 2. At $40, it seemed reasonable, and I went to check out.
While I was at the register, I asked about whether or not pre-owned balance boards ever came in. That’s when the Game Stop employee pointed out, “You know this game is for Playstation, right?”
I did not. (This might be another reason the Game stop staff hates me.)
He and I went back to the bin, but all I could find was a used copy of Personal Trainer Version One for Wii. It was really beat up, and now that I knew Personal Trainer 2 was $40, why would I pay $40 for Version 1?
All of this is to explain how I ended up bringing home the UFC Trainer game. Do I know anything about the UFC? No. However, the game was brand new, promised a work out and cost $30. I figured, “What they hey?”
The SO was confused, to say the least.
So far, in my two attempts to play the game, I barely made it through the four-minute fitness test, and I’ve been yelled at by some guy named Chase or Tito for not getting my jabs in fast enough.
It’s not looking good.
In a few months, I could be able to take you in any fight. More likely, I will be trying to pawn off my “awesome” game at a “great price.”
The lesson: This is why I only spend $30 on my impulse purchases – especially when there’s a Zaxby’s on the way home from Game Stop.
Thank you!
I'd like to thank everyone who has voted, RT-ed my tweets, commented on my blog, put up with my blog and liked posts on Facebook to help me in my quest to be Volvo's Biggest Fan of the Big East. I appreciate your support and patience, and I never could have made it through to the final four without you ... [Read more]
D.C. Trip Part One: In Which We Barely Make It Out Of The Airport
This past weekend, Volvo graciously sponsored a trip for me to return to my Alma mater, Georgetown, and watch one of the biggest games of the season, Georgetown v. Syracuse.
Our trip began with a two-hour delay due to winds in Baltimore ... [Read more]
My Trinity And Good Intentions (With Video)
I fully believe the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Of course, I’ve also always hoped the adage wasn’t referring to a literal hell. I just figured it was pretty obvious that we all get more than we bargain for when we try a little too hard ... [Read more]
My Top 5 Car Care Pointers
I don’t think this will come as a surprise to most people, but I am a very neat person. I love storage bins – easily identified thanks to my handy label maker. I enjoy doing laundry, and I might consider my steam mop more than just a cleaning apparatus – it’s kind of like an anti-bacterial friend ... [Read more]
Staying Up Past My Bedtime, The Economy And Crepes
It turns out that a lot can change between a decade and a systemic economic collapse. Last week, Volvo challenged me to write about my top picks for late night eating near my Alma mater. While this would seem like a really easy topic for someone who likes both food and late nights as much as I do, let’s just say time and geography have not been on my side in this one ... [Read more]
Save The Skeet
When I was younger, we took a lot of family vacations that were combined with various lawyers’ conferences. At nine, I took my first trip on a plane, and we went to Disney World. It was awesome (and that’s only talking about the plane trip), and since my dad took me with him to pick up some papers in the hospitality area, I had some unexpected and treasured one-on-one time with Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
For fourth grade Spring Break, we went skiing. I liked skiing, but what I remember most from that trip is boarding the chartered bus that would take us from the airport to our condos and being surrounded by attorneys demanding a stop to buy booze on the way. (I kid you not when I say there was an actual chant at one point along the lines of “li-quor store, li-quor store.”)
However, it was our trip to the Greenbrier in West Virginia when I was 11 that was my favorite vacation by far. It was July, and I loved everything about the place. There were huge indoor and outdoor pools as well as a bowling alley and movie theater in the hotel. (How is that even possible?) The Greenbrier is also one of the few places I know of where you can practice falconry even though my dad wasn’t handing over the money for that one.
Also, being 11, I was right at the cut-off age for the kids’ activity groups. (At lawyer conferences, it’s very important to separate the children from the adults as soon as possible so that networking and happy hour can commence immediately.) While at first I resented not being able to go with the 12 and older set, once I made a friend, we, armed with our respective sisters, ran the under 11 group. The popularity and power were intoxicating. People fought for the right to sit at our dinner table – where we enjoyed three-course meals and used all of the correct silverware so as not to shame our professional parents.
This was also around the time that the news was beginning to break that there might be bunkers for government officials built in various strategic locations throughout the country in the event of nuclear war. The Greenbrier was a prime candidate, and my sisters and I liked exploring the resort hoping to break the story wide open.
“I think I see a tear in the wall paper over there.”
“Does the wall sound hollow to you?”
Superb detectives we were not. Good shuffleboard players? Yes.
At 16, we went back to the Greenbrier, but it wasn’t quite the same experience. By then, the Greenbrier had admitted to its underground bunker, so it was very cool to actually tour it. On the other hand, trying to reconnect with my lawyers’ conference friends from five years earlier didn’t exactly go as I had hoped, and I was full of the expected teen angst.
I spent most of the week lounging by the pool and reading The Virgin Suicides.
My father did want us to participate in one day outing as a family, and it happened to be skeet shooting. He figured it was one of the safest ways for us to learn to use a gun. (Even though we’re not gun owners, as anxiety-driven people, we do feel compelled to know how to do all things in case an emergency should ever arise. The killer drops his weapon? Be prepared to take charge of the situation. Not that a shotgun is often used in burglary and/or stalker-confrontation moments.)
Anyways, being as I was, full of teen angst and toying with vegetarianism, I was fairly dead set against not going. I looked my father straight in the eye and said, “Doesn’t anybody think about the poor skeet? Why should they be sacrificed for sport? The poor things.”
“Laurel,” my father said, “skeet are clay pigeons. Clay.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So I guess you’re coming with us?”
“I guess so.”
I’m sure my father has never been more proud that he paid for all of that private education.
My Top 5 Road Trip Play List
Being tone deaf and a huge nerd, my iPod is an embarrassment or riches – if you really love show tunes, Shakira and soulful girl ballads about break-ups. (When I was going through some old CDs from the mid-90s, a friend commented, “I didn’t realize you were a lesbian in high school.”) I have been making mixes titled “Mellow Music” since I was about 14 ... [Read more]
One Resolution I Won't Be Making
As we all know, I tend to think that we all have limited supplies of certain virtues or abilities, like patience, and every so often, we need a refill.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been feeling that way about my creativity. No new ideas. No outside-the-box thinking. Not even adjectives with more than two syllables. I kind of figured I’d run out of this year’s supply and would probably need to wait for 2011 for some good stuff – knock on wood. (Or mediocre stuff. I’d take either at this point.) So far, I haven’t had much luck.
Fortunately, the SO, in a lovely show of support for my writing, gave me a box full of journals, pens and other fun stuff for Christmas. (He also included The Art of War for Writers, which would only be his fifth attempt to get me to read anything related to Sun Tzu, earlier versions including the plain old Art of War, Art of War flash cards, a mini-book/abbreviated version of The Art of War and The Art of War for Women at Work. Do you think he might be trying to tell me something?)
Moving on, one of those gifts is a small book shaped like a block called, wait for it, The Writer’s Block. (How I love those clever marketing gurus.) It comes complete with 786 ideas to jump-start your imagination – and a hilarious attack on The Bridges of Madison County, which I might have appreciated more than the ideas.
The first prompt I turned to was a jump-start word. So, with that in mind, here we go with “diet.”
I have never been good at dieting. Of course, until I was 19, I didn’t need to. I could eat whatever I wanted. I was that person with a naturally high metabolism that I now despise. I’ve covered this before, but since I lost 15 pounds my freshman year and ended up with a sunken in face, I actually needed to gain weight in the summer of ’99. Luckily, I took a job at a Mexican restaurant, so between that and my boyfriend’s all carb/athlete diet, I gained back those 15 pounds and about 15 more. For the first time in my life, I was overweight, so I turned to Slim Fast.
I gave myself two weeks to get rid of the weight, so I was on a bit of Slim Fast extreme. I remember sitting at Chili’s (a family favorite back in the day; the Mills love an awesome blossom) with my head on the table. “I’m just so hungry,” I said. “So, so hungry.”
But, I wouldn’t give up, and by the time I got to Georgetown to start my sophomore year, I was back to my self-imposed ideal weight of 118 pounds. (Just writing that number is hard for me right now.)
I was fine again (mainly because I spent too much of my budget on clothes rather than food) until I took my first office job. That’s when I learned the hard way that if you sit all day and make regular trips to the vending machine, you will not exactly stay thin.
When I literally split a pair of rather expensive capris ($105 is a lot to pay for pants that are going to take both your money and your dignity), I looked myself in the mirror and decided it was time to take action.
Unable to afford a gym, I went back to Slim Fast for breakfast, Lean Cuisine for lunch, a piece of toast as a mid-afternoon snack, some kind of dinner and hour-long walks around my neighborhood. Most of my waking moments were devoted to the thought, “I’m so hungry,” but after a few weeks, I got the affirmation every woman wants:
“Have you lost weight?”
(One thing I don’t allow in my house is a scale. I go by the way my clothes fit. Scales just depress me, and I make the nurse hide my weight at the doctor’s office, too. I have only seen my weight twice in the last seven years, and both times were by accident.)
I was content again, and sure that I would remain my lovely size four self forever. A few years later, when I gained some depression weight, my father got me a personal trainer. (Yes, I used to work out six days a week. Strange, but true.) It seemed that there was always a simple solution.
Then, I turned 25, and my metabolism died. I also realized that I was faced with a choice. Having an addictive personality is not always the most fun. I can speed through jigsaw puzzles, but when it comes to food and exercise, addictions can be ugly.
During the days when I worked out six days a week – hours of cardio alternated with weight training – all I could see when I looked at food was a number. A bowl of soup wasn’t a tomato bisque, it was x calories and required x number of minutes on the elliptical to take it off. Gatorade was 120 calories. Worth it or not? And don’t even get me started on desserts. I started to realize that I could either enjoy food or actually remain a size four for the rest of my life. I admire people who can stick to regimens. (Really, it's more awe than simple admiration.) I had to make a different choice.
These days, I’m a pretty content size eight, and I like it that way. Plus, a nice mini quiche on a holiday party platter looks like a delectable snack without the number 220 (or worse) floating above it.
Eating and living healthier? Always a worthwhile goal. Personally, I just prefer to stay away from the "d" word -- I don't need another avenue to show my OCD tendencies.
Volvo Off The Court Excellence Award*
*For those of you who don’t just come to my blog for Georgetown/Volvo stuff, I offer you the alternate title “In Which Laurel Attempts To Write About Sports.” I feel like that should provide some potential amusement ... [Read more]
Stamped On The Forehead
The Top 5 Things I'm Excited To Do On My Alma Mater Weekend, #1: Have a Pitcher of Miller High Life at The Tombs ... [Read more]
The Laurel Tour Of Homes
The Top 5 Things I'm Excited To Do On My Alma Mater Weekend, #2: Revisit my old residences.
I am one of those people who really likes to visit places she used to live. And, yes, I also stand there and say, “Everything seems so small now!” [Read more]
Mateo And Betsey Johnson
The Top 5 Things I'm Excited To Do On My Alma Mater Weekend, #3: Shop on M Street and Wisconsin.
My mother took me on my first trip to visit colleges during the winter of my junior year of high school. I was 17 at the time. Before then, I'd only ever set foot on the campuses of Samford (Vacation Bible School) and Auburn (football games) ... [Read more]
The Capitals And My Need For Capital
The Top 5 Things I'm Excited To Do On My Alma Mater Weekend,#4: Return to the Verizon Center.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that I am old enough for the Verizon Center to have been named the MCI Center when I went to Georgetown ... [Read more]
Queen Of The Road
As a part of the Volvo/Big East program, I'll be going back to Washington, D.C. for a weekend to visit Georgetown and and attend a Big East basketball game. Over the course of the week, I'll be sharing what I look forward to most about my return trip.
The Top 5 Things I'm Excited To Do On My Alma Mater Weekend, #5: Drive ... [Read more]
It's Serious Now Folks
Yesterday, I received a little update from the good people at Cake Group New York. It turns out that there's no longer just a trip to the Big East championship game at stake in this competition for the Biggest Fan of the Big East ... [Read more]
In Which a Young Laurel Attempts to Fish
Last Friday night, I attended an evening of storytelling devoted to food courtesy of DISCO and Birmingham’s Food Summit. While I declined to tell a story (I wanted to give everyone else a chance, you see, it has nothing at all to do with my fear of public speaking, really), it did get me thinking about food and the sources of food. Plus, with it being Thanksgiving and all, it seemed like a fine time for a food-related tale. So, here we go.
Since my father has no boys, he was intent on teaching his daughters many of the skills most dads imparted to their sons. When he (quite admirably) decided to help my Brownie troop earn its sports badge, I remember two primary lessons:
1. Centers need to be tall. (I found this out when I, at fewer than five feet, volunteered to be the center, and my father suggested that Callie, at over five feet, would probably make a better choice.)
2. For “real” players, “no blood, no foul.”
While the latter was not enforced, it was still a little on the intense side for a gaggle of nine-year-olds.
My sisters and I were subject to many an action film, the library of all things James Bond and some very “involved” softball coaching. But, what stood out as the food stories were going around was the many times my father tried to get us interested in fishing.
Since we have a lake house, this makes perfect sense. Lake = water = fish. However, when you’re trying to teach three girls to fish, there are a few problems, and while you might think worms would be the worst of it, I think patience was the much bigger problem.
Fishing adventures tended to end shortly after the first or fifteenth, “I’m bored.”
Plus, whenever we did catch a fish, it was always a throw-away on the dumb side of fish life. (I can remember more than a couple holes or hooks already in its mouth.)
One day though, my father came in with some news.
“We’re going fishing!” he said.
Three collective sighs went around the table – especially since we were in Birmingham and nowhere near our lake house.
“This time is going to be different,” my dad said. “We’re going to a special pond. Guaranteed good fishing.”
Reluctantly, we got in the car, drove for about half an hour and came to a stop at the smallest “lake” I had ever seen. But sure enough, nearly a minute after I put my line in the water, I pulled out one of the biggest catfish I had ever seen.
Soon, I caught two more fish, and my sisters were just as lucky. “This is a special pond,” I thought.
“I think we should only keep three a piece,” my dad said later. “We’ve got to leave some for everybody else.”
I wanted to keep every fish I caught. (Boy, were they biting that day!) But my dad’s logic made sense, in addition to the fact that he was my dad and he made the rules, so we quickly agreed.
It wasn’t until we were leaving, and a man pulled my father aside to weigh and pay for our fish that I realized we weren’t quite at a “special pond.” We were at a stocked pond, and this little adventure was costing my father quite a bit of money.
It was an especially expensive outing when you consider that later that night, after my father had prepared and cooked a full fish meal (with a freezer full of catfish to spare), we each responded with, “I don’t like catfish,” and opted for other dinner options instead.
That’s just my dad though – always going out of his way and doing his best to make sure that his girls were never disappointed. Whether it was making his daughters think of themselves as star fishermen, attending every softball, soccer and volleyball game or enduring hours at the mall, he always made us feel like he wanted to and enjoyed just being there. (I can imagine that it wasn’t always the dream of a “no blood, no foul” kind of guy to spend hours watching a fashion show after shopping.)
So, this Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for my dad, and all of the ways he made us feel special and cared for. I’m also thankful for my mom, who is equally awesome and attentive, two great sisters, a new brother-in-law, a kid my sister dates who feels like a member of the family, my own SO and the rest of the crazy bunch I’ll get to spend tomorrow with.
I’m also incredibly thankful we’ll be enjoying a meal full of glorious carbs and sugar – catfish not included.
Update: Because You Love America
*So, I decided to update this post with various photos of me from my years at Georgetown, and do you know what I learned? I spent all of college leaning into or hugging someone else. The cropping alone could lead to some severe carpal tunnel, but it's all worth it for the Big East ... [Read more]