600 apples a day

When we bought our new house, it came with the landscaping installed. Everything was shiny new, including all the plants, except for an apple tree on the west side of the house. As apple trees go, it is a pretty good sized one, maybe 15 feet high. However, it had obviously never been pruned.

Since we moved in and the tree was already beginning to bloom, I decided to wait until after this season to begin pruning the tree. This was a bad idea. When the tree went into bloom in late April, the bees kicked into high gear, pollinization-wise. I think every blossom on the tree turned into a mini-apple.

I read on the internet that in early June, the tree would thin itself. I decided I would let nature run its course and thin its own apples. This was another bad idea. Yes, nature did thin about 200 apples off the tree. I spent the better part of an hour picking them up one Saturday afternoon. However, it left many hundreds of apples clinging to branches that are not nearly ready to support the weight of one apple, much less 5.

Over the past few weeks, I've lost several small apple-laden limbs that snapped under the weight of the growing apples. The larger apples are about the size of a half-dollar. Tonight, I finally decided for the sake of my younger tree limbs, it was time to thin the apples. I did a little more internet research. The general consensus is that you should leave one apple about every 6 inches. However, there is no advice on what to do if the limb is 7 feet long and clearly bending from the weight, even after thinning. I decided to just let it be. The limb can take care of itself.

The picture you see above is a small section of the tree, pre-thinning. Imagine this multiplied by several hundred, and you can visualize my task. After 90 minutes tonight, I ran out of sunlight. I had gathered two buckets full of small apples. In the interest of science, I decided I needed to find out how many apples I had cut off. I counted the smaller of the buckets and came up with 288 apples. So between nature and myself, the tree is down about 800 apples. Unfortunately, there are still a gazillion (roughly) left on the tree. Anyone care to join us for apple pie in a couple months?

Wii Fit, Day 10.

(Not my actual Wii avatar...unfortunately, I'm somewhat higher than the BMI shown).

After fighting it for over a year, my lovely wife finally broke down and let me buy a Wii. A couple days later, we were fortunate enough to find a copy of Wii Fit at Circuit City. We snapped it up and promptly began trying to get our butts into shape. So far, I've managed to get up every morning before 6 so that I can play Wii Fit for at least 30 minutes of "Fit time" before work. Because you have the same introductions and closing remarks after every different exercise, this works out to at least 45 minutes of real time every morning.

One of the best features is the daily feedback when you check in for a Body Test. This weighs you, gives you your BMI, and then calculates your Wii Fit Age. The Wii Fit age is a measurement of how young your body is, and is calculated by taking your real age, the results of a balance test, the tidal force of the nearest ocean, and the closing stock price of Nintendo on the Nikkei stock exchange.

It's very cheesy, but I find myself getting excited and competitive about my daily results. I've lost over 5 pounds so far, and my Wii Fit Age has dropped from 46 to 34. Considering that I'm 32, I don't feel too horrible about the extra two years of age. So anyways, the goal is to keep up the Wii Fit regime along with any other exercise I might get and report the results every 10 days.

The other somewhat unexpected result is that as a result of all the balance games and feedback, I feel legitimately more balanced (literally) on a daily basis. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but somehow you feel like you are walking with better posture and distributing your weight more comfortably once you've done your time.

Note: Mrs. Floporama is also participating in Wii Fit. I'll leave it to her to detail her experiences.