Light Standard Heavy Oni
2nd Mix – Smoke – Standard Mode – C
2nd Mix – Butterfly – Light Mode – B
6th Mix – Candy Light Mode – A
6th Mix – Cowgirl – Heavy Mode – FAIL
6th Mix – Look to the Sky – Standard Mode – B
6th Mix – Healing Vision Angelic Mix – Light Mode – D
8th Mix – A – Standard Mode – A
8th Mix – Jana Jana – Heavy Mode – FAIL
8th Mix – R3 – Heavy Mode – FAIL

Some Notes…

I remember once time in college, a bunch of us go together to play at someone’s house as opposed to the arcade. Myself, my roommate, his girlfriend, and 3 Japanese exchange students we hung around with. We got tot he point where one of the Japanese girls was absolutely determined to beat Candy on light and played it like 30 times in a row.

On Cowgirl… It took me FOREVER to learn how to properly “Gallop*” in DDR. I can still move and twist properly, I can still to turns around the board, I can still hop and do a 180 spin, I can still do a lot these useful DDR skills. I cannot Gallop anymore… at all…

A on standard is one that I used to ALMOST be able to stealth** because I played it a lot and it has some easy to remember turns in it.

R3 was a long shot last song. At the arcade in Springfield, for reasons unknown, it was one day suddenly the top ong on the board. And people continued to play it constantly. It is alsoone that I was getting close to having memorized.

* – Gallops in DDR are a useful move to be able to do though they only show up in maybe half a dozen songs. Cowgirl is a good Gallop practice song because it’s not super difficult other than it has a ton fo gallups and it’s “Gallup themed” being about a Cowgirl. These steps are something like the following.

An example of Cowgirl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jDsv08Rjd0 for the DDR uninformed (This is not me). The Gallops appear at the begening, though it’s not toally obvious becuase he’s very smooth at it. It comes off as a “BadumP Badump Badump” sound. This is DIFFERENT than the steps he does a few minutes later where you see him deliberately “Bum bum” the same arrow twice in a row. I see a lot fo people try to do Gallops with the straight deliberate “bum bum” method when they first see them. The problem is it’s a lot fo work and very difficult to do this way. Galloping makes these steps a breeze.

** – Stealth Mode = Arrows turned off ie from memory

So, like many people, I am slightly worried about “becoming fat”. Not really because I think being fat would make me ugly or anything, mostly I just find that the higher my weight, the more sluggish in general I become. The reality is I weight the same and look the same as I have for more or less the last 5 years+.

I also must be doing something right overall because I weight (slightly less) than I did in High School but look generally “less fat”. If that makes sense.

What I’d like to do is get more close to my college weight and size. Back in college I weighed 25-40 lbs less than I do now. I’d be happy with 25-30, I’m shooting more for like 10-15.

There’s two key factors in the shape I was in during college and one odd stand out “anomaly”. Firstly, the anomaly. When I was in college, I ate like crap. The cafeteria was basically all you can eat so I’d regularly consume 6-10 pieces of bacon for breakfast and 2-3 heaping plate fulls of buttery egg noodles. I ate quite a bit of ice cream as well. Who needs vegetables when there’s a Belgium Waffle maker?

On the flip side, I also had a LOT of exercise, both necessary and recreational. The Necessary was the fact that I walked literally everywhere. I never measured it but I imagine I walked 5+ miles each day, probably more. Going to class, going to the comic shop, going to the student center to wander around. I was on my feet a lot.

On top of this, my roommate got me addicted to Dance Dance Revolution. You know,t hat dorky arcade game where you get to look stupid while moving to the beat of goofy foreign music and smelling like old gym socks.

The reality is, I never got REALLY good at DDR until after I left college and played locally, that is, before they went and closed the arcade. Still, I played it a lot. It’s actually an excellent work out and I find it fun.

Fun enough that many years ago I spend a good chunk of change to buy the parts to construct my own personal “Hard Pad”. You see a Hard Pad is different from what you get when you buy a DDR game at Wal-Mart (IE a Soft Pad). With a Hard Pad, you don’t have to worry about the map sliding across the floor. More importantly, you can also play it while wearing your shoes, which is a necessity to get good grip and speed on more difficult songs.

I made some steps to overcome the shoes and sliding issues of my softpad from college by duct taping the thing to a piece of carpet then duct taping the grid of arrows on the surface. You still don’t get quit the same satisfying tactile feedback with the carpet method however.

Anyway, the point is, I build this thing, then real life caught up with me and I havn’t use it much. Now, tghe plan is, to use it again, int he mornings before work. The nice thing is, morning excersize really does help boost your energy level during the day. It helps get the blood flowing so to speak. Two slight issues, one, I tend to be very hungry when I wake up, but I like to do any sort of work out before food. It’s something I can get over. Last summer I was walking/jogging in the mornings so it’s something I can get used to.

Also, something Ic an get used to, it means waking up roughly a half hour earlier. However, as I mentioned, the work out aspect helps to wake you up. Secondly, I’m generally up at 5:30 ANYWAY because my wife gets up to go to work at that time and she is generally completely unable to “not wake me up also” despite many protests. So i can be productive this way instead of a crabby bed blob. This does lead to another slightly minor issue int hat, when I’m up early like this with my wife, befoe she leaves, she always asks me to take care of things like amking her breakfast or starting her car when it’s cold. This eats somewhat into the excersize time.

So anyway, I may post some here about some progress and thoughts on the whole fitness and wellness issue. Also I plan to go back to jogging some in the future, whent he weather isn’t freezing. We own a treadmill but it’s in storage since we don’t really have room for it. Also the treadmill at home isn’t all that nice. Not liek th eones at the fitness center I used to go to anyway.