I made a cover of Still Alive about a year ago and put it on YouTube. It’s gotten over 150,000 views, which isn’t too shabby, I think. Here’s the original description:

So, here’s a little cover arrangement I made of “Still Alive”, the ending credits song from the excellent video game Portal.

The song was written by my personal hero, Jonathan Coulton. Explore his music. It’s wonderful.

I performed all nine tracks (on the keyboard), and I kept pretty close to the original arrangement.

The encoding on this movie is a much, much higher quality than the YouTube version.

Help yourself to the piano sheet music (PDF), or the mp3, or the MIDI file of this performance.

I genuinely look forward to doing my exercise each morning. I didn’t expect that to happen so soon. Yourself!Fitness deserves real credit. Maya recognized my state of complete physical neglect and started me out with just the right kind of exercises to begin conditioning my body.  I can already see some results.  On day one, I was about five minutes into the warm-up before I felt so winded that I had to pause to take a few breaths.  Today, I got through the entire warm-up section without losing momentum, even though the software has already bumped me up to slightly more difficult exercises.

My workouts this week have cycled through cardiovascular, upper-body strength, lower-body strength, core strength and flexibility.  Today’s workout had some very challenging moves.  I failed to perform a proper V-up.  My core just isn’t strong enough yet.  I also couldn’t hold a boat pose for the full duration, but I tried my best to keep up.  Doing the yoga poses with correct form and balance is extremely difficult, but I can feel myself growing stronger and more controlled with each session.

I very proud of what I’ve done this week, and more importantly, I feel great.

I’ve been pretty off-balance lately. My old routine went out the window when Ethan was born, and I’ve never gotten back onto a firm footing. My sleeping and eating habits have been very erratic, and I’ve gradually become less and less physically active. This lifestyle has impacted my overall health and mental well-being.

I haven’t gained much weight, as it turns out. For the past few years I’ve been between 185 and 190 pounds. This morning I weighed 191.5. But my shape has changed. I’ve gotten softer and rounder in the middle, and I look like I’ve gained 30 or 40 pounds. I’ve been drinking too much soda and eating too much junk food. I’ve never really over-eaten, but I haven’t been getting proper, balanced nutrition. And generally speaking, I pretty much feel like crap…

So, as the first prong of my three-pronged approach to healthier living, I’m completely changing my eating habits. I’ve been on WeightWatchers before. I’ve done the points. It worked okay, but I was never able to stay on the system in a strict way. The points program is a little too loosey-goosey, with the floating points and the eating whatever you want. Right now, I need more structure.

Shut up and eat your gruel.

My brother and dad have both been doing Nutrisystem for some time, and with great success.  Dad has already lost more than fifty pounds*, and Tom’s lost about 45*.  I signed up last week, and my first batch of food arrived this weekend.  I spent the last two days splurging on whatever junk food inventory was left in the house (Pop Tarts, soda, cheese and crackers) but today I began the program in earnest. I’m one meal and one snack into it so far, and I haven’t died. I don’t usually eat breakfast at all, so I actually feel more full than normal at this point. With Nutrisystem® Advanced™ I get OmegaSol™ and NutriSol™ and the Glycemic Advantage™, so how can I go wrong?

The second prong in my three-pronged lifestyle makeover is increased physical activity. My doctor recommended taking brisk walks around the park during my lunch break every day. I’ve decided I need a little more than a daily stroll to get myself into shape. I need to really get fit, and I need a structured daily routine.

Three years ago I bought an “exergame” for the old Xbox called Yourself!Fitness. It’s an interactive exercise program. The software collects data about your state of fitness and crafts a custom routine according to your current level and goals. You’re guided by your virtual personal trainer, Maya.

My new best friend, Maya.

Maya is talkative, energetic and seems completely non-judgmental about doughy men flailing about in their living rooms. The game’s box says that Maya can guide you through more than 500 individual exercises. According to fitness/video game experts, this software will to do a lot more good for you than Wii Fit if you’re able to stick with it. Needless to say, it started collecting dust immediately after I purchased it. (Wii Fit did better. It was enjoyed for several days before it began collecting dust.)

So, I had to hook up the old Xbox to finally start using Yourself!Fitness. Wielding the giant black controller, I went through the initial (exhausting) assessment exam and set up my goals. The game says I’m overweight, and it suggested I focus on weight loss. I started my new regimen with a light cardiovascular workout. It was challenging, but I made it through the first session. And without puking or passing out.

So I feel like I’ve made a really good start so far. Last night I took some measurements and obligatory “before” photos. These aren’t images I want floating around the internet, though. Maybe after I’ve had some success I’ll show you just how far I’ve come. For now, though, I’ll share the vitals:

• Height: 5 feet, 7.5 inches
• Weight: 191.5 pounds
• Waist: 40 inches
• Gut: 44 inches
• Physique: Pillsbury Doughboy
• Nutrisystem meals eaten: 1
• Nutrisystem snacks eaten: 1
• Yourself!Fitness workouts completed: 1
• Calories burned: 76
• Number of times the phrase “Results not typical” appears in Nutrisystem start-up literature: 13

Prong three, of course, is a crystal meth habit, which many consider Hollywood’s best kept secret for rapid weight loss. Sure, it’s a risky move, but the results aren’t always bad. Unfortunately, I don’t have a dealer, so I’ll stick with prongs one and two and see how it goes. For now.

*Results not typical.

So, this guy is playing the guitar part with a custom drum controller. I am awestruck by the ingenuity, skill and endurance.

Stay tuned for “Hamster Piano”.

The old people got the worst of the impact, but thankfully everyone recovered fully. I got scraped up and bruised, but I wasn’t injured. The ER doctor made me get a tetanus shot, which ultimately caused me more pain and discomfort than being in the wreck.

We had been on our way to morning church services in Cheswold, and we often joked that this was God’s way of telling us, “don’t bother.” And I haven’t.

Despite being 21 months old, Ethan already has his first story about going to the emergency room on a major holiday. On Thanksgiving morning I was trying to keep Ethan busy while Danielle frantically prepared for the trip to her mother’s in the Bay Area…

“Fraw. Fraw. Fraw. Fraw. Fraw. Fraw. Fraw.”

It’s funny how Ethan has a secret language that only his mother and I can comprehend (when we’re lucky). This familiar refrain translates to “Father, I would like to play Frogger on the arcade machine now.” Frogger is his most recent obsession. Being far too short to reach the controls on the machine, he just sits right on middle of the control panel. He understands how to add credits and initiate a game. After that, his style of play is somewhat non-conformist. He has little interest in controlling the frog with the joystick. But he is endlessly fascinated by the pause button. From his perspective, having the power to move a little frog is insignificant next to the power to stop a raging torrent and a busy freeway with a single button push. So he’ll stop traffic and exclaim, “Oh no!” before un-pausing the machine a moment later and watching the cars zip by and the turtles and logs float about. This appears to give the boy great satisfaction.

Aside: When I was a wee boy we had Frogger for the Atari 2600. Even then, the game puzzled me deeply. The car part makes sense. But the top half of the game is bizarre. You’re a frog, yet water is a hazard. Growing up knowing many a frog, I can tell you that they would much rather land in the water than on a turtle. But I digress…

Dreams of a modeling career: Shattered

Normally my office is off limits to toddlers. It’s a hazardous room. There’s often equipment strewn across the floor in different stages of being built or rebuilt, and the tiny screws and parts can easily find their way into tiny mouths. But the arcade machine lives there, and Ethan demands access to it. I have no problem with this. I want Ethan to understand and appreciate the roots of video game culture. Introducing him to the classics emulated perfectly on a replica cabinet is a joy for both of us. But indulging our mutual obsession is risky. Not two seconds before he was off the arcade machine did he trip over his own feet and plant his forehead into the threaded side of a bolt protruding from my piano bench.

He was left with a bleeding, semi-circular gash just above his left eye. I would have been happy just slapping a band-aid on it and continuing with my day, but Danielle was rightly more cautious. We trotted him into town and got opinions from a gaggle of caring physicians. They agreed that gluing the wound shut may minimize the scarring, but doing so would increase the risk for infection. So, after hours of waiting and filling out forms and prodding and fussing, they slapped a band-aid on it and we continued with our day.

A fifty-dollar bandage, but at least it’s got Snoopy.

We joke that Ethan’s modeling career will be curtailed before it’s even begun. Truthfully, we’ve had more than a few folks tell us we should exploit his good looks for financial gain, and as a proud parent it’s all too easy to believe that he’s handsome enough to earn untold riches for his homely parents. But we never seriously considered doing that.

In the end, I doubt the scar will be noticeable or ugly, but we’ll have to wait and see how it heals. And if it is, I just hope it makes him look dangerous when he’s a teen. Girls like that sort of thing, right? At least I assume they do, because when I was a teen, there wasn’t anything remotely dangerous about my look and most girls I knew were quite disinterested indeed.