Tag Archives: Health

How many calories can you burn playing Angry Birds?

weights

weights (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In addition to tweaking my diet, I have to start a more intensive exercise program.  To this end, I’ve been looking at guides of promising-sounding activities and how many calories they burn, and I’ve noticed some serious omissions, really a complete lack of any activity I’m at all likely to perform.  To rectify this alarming deficiency, I would like to contribute my own list of everyday exercises that you (and, more importantly, I) can do at home or in the office, with a loose estimate of how many calories they’re likely to burn:

Little Blind Girl’s List of Everyday Exercises

  1. Banging your head against the desk/table/wall for five minutes:  15 calories
  2. Walking down to supply closet, forgetting what you went there for, walking back to office, then remembering and walking back to supply closet:  25 calories
  3. Doodling on legal pad while not really listening to tedious phone conversation:  20 calories/half hour
  4. Losing important file and cursing profusely while stomping around looking for it:  15 calories
  5. Losing important file and trying not to curse profusely because boss is around:  40 calories (note:  not recommended for extended durations)
  6. Searching for keys in the morning:  20 calories
  7. Transferring items from one purse to another (may qualify as weight training):  10 calories
  8. Throwing pen across room because it refuses to write smoothly:  5 calories, if you include walking over to where it fell and cleaning the mark off the wall
  9. Panicking over missed deadline:  15 calories
  10. Reading blogs when you should be doing work:  60 calories/hour

I am shocked that these have not yet shown up in the lists of common activities on the exercise sites.  Next you’ll be telling me that caffeine isn’t a vital nutrient!  We can’t all be professional athletes; get your exercise where you can, that’s what I say.  This list would make for an interesting exercise log, don’t you think?

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Satan butter

As a result of my eye problems, I have to be very careful to get certain things in my diet, and it’s pretty closely monitored.  The latest admonition is that I’m not getting enough fat in my diet.  I have to include more sources of fat, but I should stay away from saturated fats, watch my cholesterol, and on no account touch transfats….also I have to maintain a certain caloric intake and not mess with any of the rest of my diet….I’ve been doing hours of research and calculations.  I got my taxes prepped in less than an hour, but I’ve been at this task all evening (fun Saturday night activity, huh?  That’s how I roll) and I still don’t have an answer.  I think it may boil down to this:

Don’t you wish it could be that easy?  Satan butter:  if you touch it, you’ll go blind!

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Me vs. the office cold

I've been sick for a couple of weeks now. I we...

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Office cold/flu:  You know, Little Blind Girl, I’m really liking it here in your respiratory system.  I was thinking of setting up shop for a while, maybe get a little sinus infection going… something for the little viruses, you know?

Little Blind Girl:  I hate you.

Office cold/flu:  Oh, you don’t mean that.  I can tell!  You’ve made it so cushy in here, with your malnourishment and your lowered immune system from eating all that junk.  Clearly, your subconscious longed for this.

Little Blind Girl:  I hate you more every hour.

Office cold/flu:  Now, now, if that were true, you would have gone to the doctor by now.  I know you like to blame it on work and say you don’t have time, but I think we both know what’s really going on here, don’t we?

Little Blind Girl:  I hope you die.

Office cold/flu:  Is that a nice thing to say to your new life partner?

Little Blind Girl:  Oh, God, why?  What did I do that was so bad that I deserve this?

Office cold/flu:  I was thinking of setting up my office in your left sinus cavity.  The right cavity is bigger, but the left cavity has such a lovely view of your optic nerve.

Little Blind Girl:  Leave my optic nerve alone!  Sweet Jesus, am I talking to a virus?  I’ve gone round the twist at last.

Office cold/flu:  I’m so glad I’ve finally found a place I can call home.

Little Blind Girl:  You.  Me.  Doctor’s office.  Tomorrow morning.  Antibiotics at twenty paces.  To the death!

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The creeping crud

"Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases - As ...

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You’re going about your normal day.  You get up, yawn, wash, brush your teeth, wonder what happened to your face overnight, get dressed, go into work…and all along, unbeknownst to you, it’s stalking you.  As you drive into work, hang up your coat, and turn on your lights, little by little it catches up.

As you go about your business at work, it’s slithering along behind you, sizing you up, waiting for the exact time to attack.  You’re copying a document and suddenly you hear your coworker start coughing.  But she doesn’t stop.  It just keeps getting louder and deeper and wetter, like that lung is finally on its way out.  Eventually she stops, sniffles, and gives a watery smile.  “I guess I’ve got what’s going around,” she says, as if it’s an adorable quirk and not a contagious disease she just spewed into the air.

Suddenly you realize:  you’ve been seeing and hearing it for a week.  People all around you sneezing, hacking, sweating, pale and tired.  You look around to see half the office grabbing for tissues.  You pour a cup of coffee and hear one person detailing to another the completely work-inappropriate disease-induced excretions she suffered a few days ago.  She smiles at you and says, “I hope you like the coffee.  I brewed it myself.”

At home that evening, you check your reflection closely.  Are you looking a little pale?  Is that a sheen of sweat?  You take your temperature:  it’s a little elevated.  ‘No,’ you think.  ‘This is not happening to me.’  But you wake up the next morning aching from your crown to your feet, temperature 101, wondering if last night’s dinner is about to make a repeat appearance:  beef stew, the sequel.  It’s only too true.  It’s caught up with you at last.

English: Public health poster from Spanish flu...

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In my family, we call it the creeping crud.  You can see the people around you getting sick, and no matter how many precautions you take, no matter how many times you use the Purell, no matter how much Vitamin C you take, it will catch you.  It takes its time, makes sure you can see it coming (hence the creeping), and it makes you feel like complete crap in ways that are extremely embarrassing to talk about (hence the crud).

Beware, my friends, for the crud may be creeping up on you even as we speak.  Was that a person sneezing you saw out of the corner of your eye?  Was that faint noise a hacking cough from down the hall?  There’s no use fighting it.  The creeping crud always wins.  Just do me a favor:  if you get it, stay home.  Spare the people around you.  Especially if you’re a waiter or handle food or drink in any capacity.  There’s nothing quite like getting halfway through a meal in a restaurant and then seeing your waiter blowing his nose as he goes through the kitchen doors.

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Doctor’s note

English: Caricature of Dr. House MD famous tv ...

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So it turns out I get cluster headaches.  For those of you in blissful ignorance, cluster headaches are sort of like migraines that want to kill you.  They’ve been likened to amputation without anesthetic, or childbirth without an epidural.  On the downside, I ended up in the ER.  On the upside, I scored some pretty sweet painkillers, and all I had to do was endure what has been described as the most intense pain a human can experience!  And I thought I’d put that behind me with my last Statistics class.

The doctors and nurses at the ER kept asking me to rate my pain on a scale of 1 to 10.  I was there a while, and I had very little to do, so before the painkillers kick in, I will share with you the scale I came up with to give myself something to go by:

Little Blind Girl’s Scale of Relative Pain

Pick the level your pain most resembles:

1:  Listening to elevator music

2:  Getting ready to pay the cashier after waiting in a long line, only to remember that you left your card at home

3:  Extended exposure to talk radio

4:  Computer crashing just after you’ve finished a complex project and before you get a chance to save it

5:  Dry cleaner ruining your favorite outfit

6:  Realizing late on Christmas Eve that there’s one present you forgot to get

7:  Calling that hot guy/girl whose number you scored and finding out he/she gave you a fake number

8:  Your divorced parents each get remarried on the same day in different time zones and they both expect you to be at the wedding (has actually happened)

9:  IRS audit

10:  You can’t access the internet to be able to read the little blind girl’s blog!

All right, now that we’ve all acknowledged what’s really important in life, I’m off to have another bizarre prescription-influenced dream.  Last night I dreamed that I was in a meeting and one of my colleagues got up in the middle of the meeting and started doing a stand-up routine.  It was pretty good, too!  I think I’m most disturbed by the fact that I was dreaming about meetings.

Say good night, Gracie!  Good night, Gracie.

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