Just Dance.

I'll spare you the boring apologies for neglecting this blog again. I'm writing now. That's better than nothing, right?

Today a package arrived in the mail. A delightful package from Amazon filled with stuff I ordered. I got a gift card as a late birthday present from my dad, and I decided to wait until after Christmas to redeem it. I want to talk about two things that came in that package.

The first is a video game. Just Dance 2 for the Wii. I played the first Just Dance game at a friend's house a while back, and I really enjoyed it. I read the product description of the new game, and I thought it sounded like it would have some fun dances on it.

I decided to pop in the game after I got home from work today, and I was excited to see that it has a mode called "Just Sweat," which is really a workout/training system. It was actually really fun, and I did, indeed, sweat. Quite a lot. It's probably been my lack of exercise for the last couple months that really caused the sweat. I only worked out for 20 minutes total, but it was intense. I'm sure if anyone looked in my window and saw the way I was flailing around laughed pretty hard about it, too. But I had fun. And I might have even burned a few calories.

I just knew I had to quit when I flailed a bit too harshly and knocked my Nintendo DS off the coffee table, then on the next move flailed in another direction and flung my glasses to the floor. Now I get why they always remind you to wear the wrist strap on the controllers.

The other item that I want to talk about is a book. I'll give you the NERD ALERT now. It's a Wheel of Time book.

For you non-nerdy/geeky types, The Wheel of Time is an epic fantasy series by Robert Jordan. I've been reading it for about 8 years now, though the first book came out decades ago. I'm a little behind right now, and the book I got is book 12 in the series, which came out a year and a half ago. I waited until now because I wanted to get the paperback edition that matches all my other books in the series. I want the whole set to be the same.

This part of the story is sad. Robert Jordan, creator of a vast world filled with vivid characters, died before he was able to finish the series. Another fantasy author, Brandon Sanderson, was asked to complete the last book of Jordan's empire.

The first thing I did after dancing a while today was read the forward that Sanderson wrote for this book. I cried. And then I felt pathetic because I was crying over a person I never knew outside of his fiction. Someone who died years ago. And it turns out that this isn't even the last book of the series - it grew to large and Sanderson and the editors decided to break it into three books.

After that, I realized that I was crying over someone real, even though I had never met him, never knew him, and he died a few years ago. All the crying I typically do is because of writers, ultimately, but it's over fiction. Stories make me cry. Television and movies and books most of all. But this time, it was none of that. It wasn't fiction at all.

Now I'm getting sad again, and I don't even know what my point was in sharing this. I should just think about the dancing.

Remember, boys and girls, in less than a year I'm doing a half marathon. I've got to whip myself back into shape. This will be easier once the gym in my work building opens, which will supposedly happen soon, but for now I have the dance, and sweat. And maybe the stray tear or two.