Tracking this Trek, a Treadmill Desk Update

So, we're 2 months in on the treadmill desks.  And we're still walking.  And walking.  The weight loss has slowed down, mostly because we haven't really made huge changes in how we eat.  And the sore feet have slowed me down from my weeks where I'd have a few days with 40k steps.  But here are the stats for the last 2 months (well, 2 months and a week, technically).

Now, something has changed in the last couple of weeks, and it's that I'm now also walking with a FitBit One.  This is an activity tracker that I clip into my pocket or to my waistband if I don't have a pocket.  It tracks my activity, and can tell when I'm active.  I will admit, though, that we have arguments daily about what a "very active" minute feels like to it and to me.  There are several different activity trackers out there, and I was having a hard time deciding which I would like more.

The FitBit band or bracelet wasn't ideal for one simple reason: I'm walking on a treadmill at a desk.  That means that instead of swinging my arms when I'm walking, I'm usually typing or clicking or 'keyboard mashing' my way through a video game.  So it wouldn't be as ideal a way to measure my activity: I'm not going anywhere and my arms really aren't moving.  The FitBit zip was cheaper ($60, compared to the $95 I paid for the One at Target, taking advantage of my 5% off with the card and a handy sale on the day I went in there to browse), but it has a replaceable battery.  I've met me: once the battery died, if it's not AA or AAA, which it's not, then it's going to sit in a drawer until I remember to buy a watch type battery to replace it.  And that's useless to me.  Self-awareness is kind of important.

There were other trackers to look at: the Jawbone Up, the iFit, the Polar, Samsung, Garmin.  If you Google "activity tracker", the variety is a little daunting.  The problem with most of these activity trackers is that very few of them have an actual heart rate monitor, and, like the FitBit band, rely on you moving your arm to detect activity.  Again, not really helpful.  The One doesn't have a heart rate monitor, either, and that's not what I was looking for, but it is what Noah wants, and the main reason why he's not using a tracker at this point. There are some standalone heart rate monitors, and the Misfit Shine seems to be the best heart rate/fitness combo (it can even be used while swimming, which most of the others cannot).

The advantage of the tracker for me is that it can measure my activity outside of the home.  I walk a bit at work, and I was curious how many steps I wasn't measuring.  Turns out it's around 3000 per day.
The other advantage is that I can use this tracker (and a number of other ones) with the My Fitness Pal application.  This is great, because now I can set weight goals, friend up with people, keep a food journal, view calories in and out, etc.  It also has a pretty thriving community and many of my friends are there.  I also can invite patients to 'friend' me via MFP or FitBit's app, so that I can cheer them on as well.

I will say that I'm disappointed that MFP doesn't allow me to set the calorie or carb recommendations (they recommend a really high number of calories and carbs for me, based on old recommendations that 30% of daily calories come from grains, which is an outdated view).  However, I know that I should be closer to 150 grams of carbohydrate, so I ignore their 'gift' of 270.

According to the support person at Lifespan Fitness (the makers of my beloved treadmill desk), they are working on improving their app, which is blessed news at our house.  Their current set up only works with PC or iPad, and no android tablets or phones.  It also has a few glitches here and there, but all of them do.

It's been great for tracking my daily activity and my overall data (the stats above are from the Lifespan console).  They're also doing some other upgrades, which I hope includes integration with other fitness trackers (right now they're only compatible with the Garmin) like the FitBit and integration with other fitness apps like MFP.  There are certainly a million apps and it seems half as many trackers, so I understand if they don't get them all, but I really would love to see all of my data in one clean place.

For right now, I'm sticking with the Lifespan data for this blog, since that's what I started with.  I feel like it would be a bit disingenuous to start adding in all day information, when that's not what I was doing to start. However, the My Fitness Pal has really helped me to continue to monitor all of my fitness.  Maybe after the first year, I can switch over to the more comprehensive measures, and heck, maybe the Lifespan app will allow me to do that as well.

So far, however, tracking my activity and my food has been really rewarding and fun.  Seeing the little tracker tell me how many pounds I'm down and how many I have to go is a fun visual reminder that I'm doing great (although since I started in, the results are not quite as dramatic as they were initially).  Knowing that if I have a night where I'm tired and don't want to push for those 10k steps on the treadmill desk, I can check my FitBit and see that I've still gotten between 3 to 5k steps already and sleep a little better.

I know it says 0 lost but that's just since I started with My Fitness Pal

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

We often take breaks from WoW.  We stopped to play Champions Online when it released, we've stopped to play other games or just to stop for a while. The main reason we aren't still active in Champions isn't because the game isn't good, it's that we don't have a lot of other friends who play it.
I also tend usually quit around the end of the year when I'm madly trying to finish knitting all of the Christmas projects I should have started in August and not November.
This time around, we find ourselves drifting from WoW for a couple of reasons: the state of world PvP (our favorite thing) is dismal if you're not a raider (our least favorite thing), the response of the devs to such issues is flippant at best, and Wild Star.
Everyone claims that each new game release will be a WoW killer.  Wild Star isn't that.  And I don't think it needs to be.  But the game is gorgeous, the NPCs in the world are challenging, the professions trees are interesting, and the adventure of a new game has really sparked more fun in gaming for us.
The problem isn't that Wild Star is going to be a World of Warcraft killer, it's that WoW is slowly killing itself.  The new expansion isn't going to be out for at least 4 months and that is really optimistic at best.  The changes being made in the context of my favorite part of the game, PvP, all bring us back to the problems that were evident in vanilla WoW: casters have no mobility, crowd control is useless against players, etc.
Because there was so very much crowd control from a few classes, they've basically done everything that they can to hose cc.  Because a few healers were very mobile and some casters were constantly running and casting, they're turning all casters back into turrets.  PvP looks like it's going to be all about just standing and hoping to out gear your opponent again, which I find very discouraging.
After spending the last few months in my max level PvP gear earned through the conquest system being gunned down by raiders in a legendary cloak that was more or less handed to them the first week it was available, I'm not encouraged.  And I'd be okay with that, kind of, if I felt like it were going to get better.  But it just doesn't feel like that's going to be the case.
I get it, juggling PvE vs PvP is hard.  And end game PvE players want to, and should be, rewarded for their work.  But so should PvP players.  Also, there's the balance between the random/casual PvP player in battlegrounds for honor and rated battlegrounds or arenas for conquest.  Although even then, WoW forces a specific type of play onto PvP players that they do not for raiders: if I want to cap my conquest points for a week, I must play in a rated battle ground.  Forget that I don't enjoy them.  Forget that I'd prefer to play arenas with my 2 partners who are also my friends (one of them is my husband).  No, if I want to cap my conquest, I either need to play enough games (far more than just 10 wins if experience of other highly rated players is to be believed) to get my rating higher or I have to play in a rated BG.  There is no comparable experience for raiders: they can cap valor in raids every week.  No one forces them to do dailies, there's no requirement to do heroic dungeons or scenarios.
Again, I get it that PvP is complex: something that may balance a priest in 3s may make her overpowered in rated battle grounds.  Something that makes a paladin less brutal in RBGs may totally hose her in arenas.  Something that saves a monk in the world from being ganked may make her unkillable in a 2s match.  I do understand.  And I could be okay with the balance that is created by WoW's developers if they were more transparent about why they make certain changes.
Unfortunately what I'm seeing is more and more homogenization of the classes, particularly in the case of healers.  I really really adored the new playstyle of the mistweaver monk.  I LOVED fistweaving and learning to be able to hit and heal.  It certainly wasn't for everyone, but those people could play priests or pallies or shamans if they wanted more standing and healing, and that's okay.  That's the beauty of a game that offers 11 classes.  They should all feel and play differently.  But, particularly with healing, that concept is being lost.  Racials are being changed.  Profession bonuses are being removed (instead of just giving a similar buff for every profession to people).  I just feel that the more I see and read, more of the richness of the game is being removed.
So, I play Wild Star.  It's a game that is new enough and has enough depth out of the gate to feel like that richness has been returned to me.  Will I deactivate my wow account?  Probably not this week.  But if, come the expansion, Wild Star still has a grip on me like it does now, I suspect our three WoW account household will likely drop to 2 or fewer that are active.  And that makes me sad a bit for WoW and how much fun and joy it brought me for the last 7 years, but sometimes you just outgrow one another, I guess.

An Open Letter to Disney Channel and "Girl Meets World"

I have an 8 year old daughter.  And that means that she loves Disney.  We're not one of those No Television or Social Media <tm> families.  We watch TV.  We go to movies.  We end up consuming a lot of Disney: the princesses, the movies, the tv channel, the shows, the whole damn thing.
Most of Disney is pretty solid: we like seeing diverse families, we like the family friendly fun, we like that they're okay with LGBT folks.
But lately, watching the Disney channel, I've been increasingly disappointed.

It started with the show "Kicking It" about a guy who runs a karate dojo and the kids he teaches.  That's all well and good, other than the fact that there is a character, I'm not kidding, named Bobby Wasabi.  He's pictured to the right.  If you hadn't noticed or can't see the image or live in the 1950s you might not realize that he's a white guy who is doing what is commonly referred to as 'yellow face.'  Using Asian stereotypes in the form of his makeup, his stick on 'fu man chu' beard, his wig and his over the top Asian dress.  I was offended enough by this that I made the kid stop watching the show.  I'm not sure if they're making new episodes, but we still see the occasional ad for episodes, so possibly they are.  But we don't watch it.

Fast forward to this summer and the introduction of their new show, "Girl Meets World."  If you were or had a kid in the 90s, you might have seen this show's predecessor, "Boy Meets World."  I wasn't, so I didn't.  But it was a coming of age show that centered around the main character, Cory and his experience from elementary school through college and marriage.  It explores his relationships with his family, with his friends and his place in the world.  Well, at least that's what I understand of it from the few episodes we watched leading up to the "Girl Meets World" premiere this summer.  Cory dealt with his friends, a relationship with the girl who ultimately becomes his wife, his family, and so on. It focused on Cory but wrestled with a number of heavy issues, if the Wikipedia page is to be believed.

So now, 14 years after the original went off the air, we have Girl Meets World, where Cory and Topanga are now married and they have a pre-teen daughter, Riley.   Now, admittedly, BMW likely had a while to grow and improve, being a sitcom in the 90s during ABC's TGIF heyday.  This was back when shows were often given a few seasons to find their feet and figure out what they were and their message.  Also, in fairness, we're only 3 episodes into the new show.  I'd recap the plots for you for those 3 episodes, but there's Wikipedia, so why not let them do it?

I'll give you the recap from a mom watching this with her 8 year old daughter: Riley meets the new boy in school, he's cute, she's in love, she spends every episode obsessing over him.
It's weak.  It's beyond weak.  It's as offensive as Bobby Wasabi.  It's a parade of bad caricatures and stereotypes.

This show is supposed to be about a girl figuring out who she is in the context of her family, her friends and her new middle school.  It's supposed to be about the challenges of starting to recognize that she's growing up and needs to make the world her own.  Instead, she's a perfectly gorgeous girl who is quirky and adorable in her affects and dress.  She has her entirely too worldly aware friend, Maya (also perfect in appearance. We don't know much about Maya yet other than she's a 'bad influence' in that she doesn't like to do homework and she knows all about boys.   Then there's Farkle.  They had to call him that because "Ducky" and "Geek" were already taken.  You guessed it: he's the nerdy kid in love with the gorgeous girls who don't realize how gorgeous they are (they, of course, tolerate him and use him as a friend but don't love him back).  And of course, there's Lucas.  Lucas has no depth, other than being the new boy from Texas.  He's got an occasional country/southern accent and he serves no purpose other than to be obsessed and fawned over by Riley.

Not even a character who was developed over 7 years on television and widely lauded can survive the sexist stereotypes this show shovels out.  Cory is now reduced to a neurotic dad who doesn't want his kids to grow up and spends all of his time as Riley's teacher trying to keep her and Lucas apart, lest that boy corrupt his sweet, innocent girl.  (By the way, there's no chance of that happening yet, Riley can't get up the courage to speak out loud to him in 90% of the 3 episodes we've seen.)

Unless a meteor hits this school and Riley is suddenly charged with leading her friends to safety from the oncoming zombie hordes, or, I don't know, she takes a class other than history or expresses an interest in something other than Lucas, this show is going nowhere.
More importantly, my daughter won't be allowed to watch it.  Which sucks for me, since she seems to like it, but I can't stand the idea of showing her yet another show that tells her she is only an interesting character in relation to the boys in her life.  Riley could be a strong young character with all of her requisite 7th grade fears and problems, but the only one this show and its writers have chosen is that related to boys: the nerdy one who loves her but whom she doesn't want and the gorgeous one for whom her heart is all a flutter.  They haven't shown her worry about her grades, her classes, family conflicts, or even just fitting in with other kids (well, other than that one episode where she was insanely jealous when another girl in school shows interest in Lucas).

All I can say here is this, shame on you, Disney.  Shame on you for bringing us heroines like Merida whose main conflict and resolution have to do with her family for the right to choose her own husband, should she choose to marry.  Shame on you for showing us that an act of true love doesn't have to be romantic love, like the one Ana showed Elsa*.  And then on the heels of those strong messages, you bring a whole generation of little girls (and boys) this sexist drivel on a weekly basis. I guess you were afraid girls would learn to define themselves outside of their relationship to boys, so you had to shut that self empowerment down.
Unless this show turns around right quick, it's going to find itself in a place of honor at our house: on the "blocked" list.


*FYI, Disney, as an aside, you only get partial points for Frozen, since when Elsa decided to "be herself" she got completely tarted up in her low cut dress with the slit up the side to her hips.  She couldn't be herself in something less completely and obviously meant to be sexy?

Service. All of it.

It's the 5th of July.  The day after Independence Day.  We celebrated, talked about the importance of freedom with our kid, watched the Schoolhouse Rock videos with our kid on youtube.
You know the drill.
Tonight we made the fairly short trek to the home of my sister in law and her family and we celebrated being a family in a free nation.  Okay, long on the family and short on the free nation bit.
But we celebrated.
And then, we came home and I caught up on my social media, like you do. 

This one post on the Book of Faces, as I like to call it, caught my eye and my heart: 
"First if all, Senator, I'd like to thank you for accepting my friend request. Secondly, I want to thank you for what you did for me. In 2000 I was in the MTARNG as a medic. I decided to go back to Active duty an was denied a hearing waiver. I took all my paperwork to your office. In December it was overturned. And reported to Fort Campbell after t h e birth of my son, in January. I'm now a Disabled Vet from my tour in Iraq. Which is fine. Because of you I was able to live my dream of serving my country as a Soldier. Thank you again, so very much. I'm am deeply in your debt."

It was posted on my father's FB page from a  high school friend.  In this very moment my worlds all collided: social media, high school, family, world.
This grateful friend was delighted at the opportunity to serve.  To serve. In a time of war.  A war that was based on lies for some and freedom for others.  A war we didn't ask for but we received.  And this friend, and I do call him a friend, answered the call, and asked (nay, pleaded) to be part of the ugliest, scariest, most dangerous part of it all.  And my dad, having been a servant of his country and his state, obliged him with his service.

My dad's service to his country started in the US Marine Corps and has never ended.  Despite his honorable discharge after a few short years of service, he never forgot what it mean to be a Marine.  And he is still that corporal at heart today. And in his years in the US Senate, he was dedicated to every plea for help from any  serviceman, whether it was to help a soldier home to give half of his liver to his mother or to help my friend return to active duty during wartime.

And that just makes me think how proud I am of this nation and her people.  While we are far from a perfect society, we are striving to be better.  We are striving to accept our fellow men and women more completely for who we are.  In the same week that SCOTUS made what was seen by many as a disappointing ruling that gave corporations the same rights of religious freedom as individuals, anti-gay and LGBT legislation was struck down by courts in individual states.  We seem to take one step forward and one step back.

BUT WE ARE TAKING STEPS.  The fight is being fought.  The conversations are being had.  And that, as much as anything in this time of turmoil and unrest and religious fanaticism around the world gives me heart.  We are having the conversation. The response is not a foregone conclusion.  We are becoming a nation who no longer is content to sweep injustice under the rug.  We may not be, and we are far from, perfect.  But we have not given up on the idea of freedom.  We simply haven't.

As disappointed as we may be with this issue or that, steps are being taken that can't be taken back.  My daughter will grow up in a world where it's okay for her to stand up and say "I fight like a girl" and maybe it won't be an insult anymore.  It'll be okay for her to love whomever she chooses.  And it'll be okay for her to speak her mind, to be a 'fangirl', to be smarter than the boys in the room, and to be "girly"-- whatever that will mean when she's a young woman.

On this day when I have celebrated family and joy and freedom.  I thought it would be disappointing if all of these things went with out saying.

Thank you, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, to those who have served in the war zones abroad.  Thank you to those who have questioned the loss of life and treasure for a trumped up reason. Thank you to those who protect me and my family from fire, from danger, from loss.  Thank you to those who serve to make this nation the example of true democracy our founding fathers hoped for, but could not create.  To the the outsider, the disenfranchised, the hopeless, I say to you today: there are people who see you, who hope for you, who work for you and who love you, as our Creator loved you.

Happy Independence Day, America.  This feels like our cantankerous teens, and we have a long way to go. But we've grown so much, and we have much to celebrate, and we should not neglect to do so.