Bigfoot, Elephants or All of the Above?

Some of you might remember a little, shall we say, incident involving my downstairs neighbor a few weeks ago. After overcoming the shame of having a stranger basically compare me to a herd of elephants, laughing at myself for being incredibly uncoordinated, and then texting/tweeting/blogging about what a ridiculous fat ass I am, I promptly forgot about the entire thing.

Until Wednesday night.

You see, Andrew and I got the Wii Active 2 for Christmas from my dad and stepmother. Even after reading several Amazon reviews stating that it really is an ass-kicker, I began my training on Monday afternoon expecting it to be another entertaining, but by no means challenging, way to kill time and burn off beers as I drink them (wait, what?). I set up my profile, turned myself into a tiny-in-the-waist-junk-in-the-trunk avatar clad in neon pink and black spandex, picked my personal trainer and got ready to get my heart rate up to walking speed.

Thirty sweat-soaked minutes later, the game was telling me that I'd burned 100 calories, while my very fancy, very expensive Polar HRM was informing me that, after subtracting out the BMR cals for the time I'd put in, a whopping 230 calories had been torched. Given that the Wii hrm is on the forearm (no chest strap) and only tracks burn during the actual moves you are doing, coupled with my own awareness of exertion, I'm inclined to believe the Polar.

That's approaching Jillian territory, people. With a video game.

Ok, maybe it's not that awesome (*this was during a long run during half training; I don't burn 1k cals on the regular)

The Active 2 has its flaws; the most annoying of these is that the remote and/or balance board shut off if you don't use them for a few minutes, thus interrupting the game. And while I personally don't mind any reason to drop my weights during my 30th tricep kickback, I can see how it would be annoying to someone with a little more, should I say, badassery than me. Overall though, I felt that for the 20 minutes of actual working out I did, I got a decent bang for my buck... and by that I mean that I was definitely suffering the DOMS after doing it.

In that same vein, Mr. "Herd of Elephants" Downstairs had apparently fallen victim to a severe case of the DODS -- Delayed Onset DB Syndrome. How do I know this, you ask? Because after completing our second workouts right after work on Tuesday evening, our Super scared the bejeezus out of us by banging on the door at 9 pm to let us know that he had gotten a complaint about our "noise level", which was apparently, "repeated and disrupting Mr. Downstairs' sleep."

Look, I understand the importance of courtesy in apartment living. I really do. There have been many a night where I am awakened at 1am by the sound of what must be bowling balls rolling around the ceiling above my bed. I'm considering learning Italian so that I can pop some popcorn and really appreciate the Roman soap opera that is acted out nightly next door, usually around 11pm (local time). I've even refrained from prank calling the harlot who left her number on top of the dryer with a note for Andrew to "call her sometime" as my sports bras went through the spin cycle. I mean, maybe I saved the note in anticipation of a wine-fueled girly sleepover with my besties, but it's not as if I don't understand the social constructs of living in close quarters with 70 other people. I get it. I really do.

I lived with 40 other women. I can coexist!

What I don't get, though, is why Mr. Downstairs had to resort to passive aggressively alerting us to the situation regarding his sleep disruption. On one hand, I understand that he had come up once before, but on the other, he never mentioned anything about sleeping and I promptly stopped when I realized that my little kick line was making his ceiling quake. I'm a little bit perturbed that I have done far more rambunctious activities than 30 second intervals of jogging (lightly!) in place, and never once had the previous tenant down there complain. I mean, I was Shredding pretty hardcore WITHOUT the carpet in place just a year ago. I also don't think that 3 (or 6, if we workout back-to-back) minutes of thumping in the 6pm hour is particularly outrageous. And if there were really an issue of sleep deprivation, why couldn't he have just been an adult, come up and let us know that he works the graveyard shift or whatever, and to please keep it down while he's sleeping?

I fully realize that there are two sides to this story, and as such, we are hoping to try to work WITH Mr. Downstairs to get to the source of the problem and try to find a mutually agreeable resolution. Andrew is going to pay him a visit this afternoon to ask what his sleeping pattern is, and to let him know that we are perfectly willing to accommodate his needs -- by working out when he is either not home or at a time when he is not generally asleep. I would go, too, but after probably seeming totally rude during our last encounter by refusing to open the door and just yelling to him through it (if you recall, Andrew was out of town and I was home alone, which I wasn't about to broadcast to the very large stranger standing outside my door), I figured it would be best to approach him 1:1 first.

Of course, this is all speculation on our part, and the success of our plan is contingent upon the idea that our exercise is causing the problem. I don't really see what else could be, as we don't keep the tv particularly loud, rarely watch the one in our bedroom (which I presume is directly above his) and only listen to music via Pandora on our cell phones -- but if he has other issues, we are happy to try to work with him on that, too. I just don't like feeling as though I have to tiptoe around now for fear of our poor little Super will come knocking again, rolling his eyes at the absurdity of it all.

And I only burned 150 calories yesterday since I skipped my three minutes of cardio.

Rats.