Ow.

Yesterday I started the P90X fitness program. You may have seen the infomercials -- it's a many-DVD training program that is designed to lean me down and muscle me up (some, nothing grotesque).

Well, ow.

The first DVD was an hour of pushups and pullups, followed by 330+ reps of various ab exercises. No, I did not finish. I sucked floor mat for a good portion of the workout period, and spent the rest of the time staring up at my disobedient noodly appendages draped helplessly over the pull-up bar.

Mister Cheery Pants on the video kept telling me it was all right to be a weak-ass jello-bellied drag-ass, and that soon -- soon! -- I would be as mighty as he and his fat-free iron-slinging dance troupe.

Mmmyeah.

Ow.

Last minute Halloween!

What with being sick last weekend, there wasn't much time to throw together a costume. (We were planning to attend a friend's costume-required party on Halloween night.) I briely fantasized about making a Lt. Uhura (original Star Trek) dress, but since I didn't leave the house all weekend, no luck there. Instead, my colleagues at work decided to get dressed up as witches, went to the Halloween superstore for some strategic accessories, and much fun was had by all.

M helped me style my hair in a gravity-defying pseudo-mohawk, spray it orange, and bought me some enormous orange eyelashes that convinced me I need to wear fake eyelashes more often. And I find the black nail polish to be appealing somehow. Perhaps it's time for a brief goth period for me? Ha ha, okay just kidding.

(click on the images for larger versions)

Mom's response: "It's not as cute as the one we took of you when you were a toddler."

Well, duh! ;) I have the same dopey grin at least. Thanks Mom.

When life gives you lemons, play Halo

Or, no trip to Pt. Reyes in October.

We were supposed to go to Point Reyes again last weekend with our friends E&S, but instead both of us got very sick. My version included an inability to eat anything fatty, a generally nauseated feeling, and exhaustion. K's version was mostly about feeling like crud. Since I wanted to be distracted from feeling hungry and K wanted to be distracted from feeling like crud, we played Halo. We finished Halo 3 on Heroic, and started again with Halo (original flavor) and eventually got to Halo 2. Along the way we compared rendering complexity, interface design, and game design. it's very cool to see what has changed (quality of graphics, complexity/diversity of user interface) and what hasn't (basic weapons design and usage, HUD, cooperative play mechanics). NB: the fall-off-the-platform sequences at the end of 2 still suck.

Machinima enthusiasts are great Halo users as well, and apparently certain game elements were included in Halo 3 to facilite video creation - like providing an "at ease" stance when the Master Chief is carrying a weapon (he's not aiming his gun so you can see his face, making it better for dialog scenes). The guys from Red vs. Blue appear to have contributed some humorous moments during actual gameplay as well.

E & S did manage to get to Pt. Reyes on Saturday, whereupon their double-bagged trail mix was eating by an enterprising mouse. (Apparently the rangers knew about this and warned them, but no one quite counted on just how enterprising the mouse was.) They had a really good time, as expected. While we didn't exactly have a really good time, we were at least distracted for a time from feeling like crud. I was still tired into this last week, and kept resting.