November 2007 Archive

Office workers — and even bloggers — find it difficult to fit exercise into their day. Let’s face it, when you’ve got a hard 8 or 9 hour workday, putting in another hour sweating at the gym just doesn’t always sound like that much fun.

But what if you could combine the two, turning your work day into workout time?

Now you can, thanks to the PC-Sport from Gamercize, a nifty little gadget that fits under your desk. Use it as an independent step machine to burn calories while you work and speed up weight loss while getting paid. Need more motivation? Connect the PC-Sport to your USB hub and you’ll have to exercise to keep your keyboard and mouse working.

At roughly $290.00 USD with international shipping, the machine’s guaranteed to lighten your wallet, too.

Winter’s just around the corner, and here in Kansas that means we’ll be mostly house-bound for the next couple of months. I’m far too cold-sensitive to consider daily walks when the temps are below 50, so I’ve been thinking of ways to continue getting exercise even once the chill sets in.

I’d love a treadmill, but they cost so much money, and there’s just not space for one in our family room — the one place where I’d be most likely to use it since I could also watch TV.

So, I’ve been thinking of getting a mini-trampoline or a “rebounder” as some people call them. I know my son would love it. He’s a jumper — as in, from the top of the stairs or kitchen table — and is far too familiar with Mom telling him to knock it off. Being able to jump on a trampoline indoors, much less being actually encouraged to do so? He’d be ecstatic!

There’s only one problem as far as I’m concerned. OK, make that two: boobs. They bounce. This, my husband assures me, is a good thing. (Not surprisingly, he likes the idea of a mini-trampoline, too.) But the discomfort, if not downright pain, of jiggling all over the place — and particularly in the chest area — definitely makes the thought of such exercise a little less appealing.

Lots of people suggest wearing two sports bras at a time to minimize the bounce. Since struggling into one sports bra is almost an aerobic exercise itself, I’ve yet to actually try shrugging into two.

What are your suggestions for minimizing the bounce? Does it bother you at all when you exercise?

UPDATE: The comments themselves weren’t enough to assure me that other women suffer the same problem, regardless of cup-size. Apparently, the NY Times thinks it’s a problem, too: their article about the very same topic says that breasts move in — get this — a figure 8 while we exercise. No wonder they hurt so much!

I was crazy about roller skating when I was a kid. My mother? Not so much. Her ankles were weak, or so she said whenever I begged her to take me to the roller rink. I half-suspect now that she just couldn’t stand the music, or perhaps it was the monotony of going around and around in circles.

Me? I loved it. Even as an adult, I find rollerskating to be one of the more fun ways to get exercise.

Unfortunately, the local roller rink is as bad as the one my mother took me to. It’s crowded with pimple-faced teenagers trying to strike a pose that makes them look cool enough to hang out wearing skates they’re too cool to use. The music is mostly unintelligible lyrics set to a heavy base hip hop beat that seems less conducive to skating than to the group head-bobbing thing that goes on throughout each song.

Which is why I don’t take my son there, even though I’ve been dying to teach him how to roller skate.

This past weekend, I lucked out at a garage sale and found two pairs of roller skates: one for each of us. The price was too good to resist, so I bought them with the plan of teaching him how to skate in our cul de sac.

Big mistake.

At seven years old, he’s just enough socially aware to recognize how silly he looked after I’d duct-taped a pillow onto his rear end and refused to be seen outside suffering such an indignity.

So I did what my own mother did before me: I backed the cars out of the garage, set up a radio in there and told him we’d made our own roller rink. I even offered to serve snacks once he’d made it around the garage a dozen times without falling.

One thing I didn’t consider: how hard it can be to learn to skate on old garage floors. Ours is mostly smooth cement, but with two rather large, prominent cracks running smack down the center. Each time he was halfway through a circuit he’d encounter one of the cracks and, sure enough, wound up needing that pillow to cushion his fall.

After a while I did manage to teach him to hop a little when he came to the cracks. By the end of the day he’d actually made it around a dozen times, but it proved to be a far more frustrating experience for him than I remembered enduring when I was a kid. Of course, my husband has since said we ought to just tile the floor, but I don’t think I’d ever be willing to fork that kind of money over for a garage when my kitchen’s been in need of new tile for years.

Which is not to say that he’s given up roller skating altogether. In fact, we just came back inside from another 30 minute session doing circles in our garage while listening to one of his favorite Disney CDs. I’m sure my neighbors — who were outside raking leaves in their yard — wondered what on earth was making all of the thumps and giggles in my garage.

I’m not going to tell them about our private roller rink. Unless they’re willing to pay $1 admission, that is.

For many years, of my favorite outdoor activities has involved camping. This never ceases to surprise my friends who tend to think of me as a high-maintenance, electronic-dependent, pampered diva. Last year, as a matter of fact, I threw quite a few of my readers on Electric Venom for a loop when I announced my family was going on a three week camping trip. I do believe they began placing bets on just how long before I raced back home to my creature comforts.

Truth is, some of my fondest childhood memories involve camping and hiking trips, although my parents were the type who believed “roughing it” meant sleeping 6 in a 4-person RV. Now that I’m the parent, I’m made of much sterner stuff… much to my family’s annoyance.

Until I became a parent I considered a tent to be purely optional camping equipment. I was the kind who believed that camping did not involve pulling up to a nice, paved parking space in the midst of a national park and unloading the trunk. The way parks are so crowded these days, you might as well sleep in your front yard and call that camping. Bathrooms? Why, they were behind every tree… just be careful which leaves you used, if you know what I mean.

Ironically, my husband and son (who seem to prefer living in squalor indoors) consider my notion of camping to be a bit too primitive. They expect a tent, and preferably an expansive one. They don’t want to schlep supplies more than a couple of yards from the car, and bathrooms? Well, my husband makes sure our site is just a hop down a paved road from one.

Wimp.

I’ve finally convinced my husband that we need to take a real camping trip. One that involves hiking and an actual experience of nature beyond the great gray expanse of asphalt that most National Park camping sites have become.

I, personally, would love to do a Rocky Mountain backpacking trip, perhaps near Colorado’s majestic Fourteener’s. I waited a bit too long to suggest it for this year, but we’re giving serious thought to a trip next Spring, right as the temperatures start warming up again. Talk about a perfect way to spend a Spring Break: not only would we get away from it all, but I’d get plenty of exercise, too!