A few months ago, I purchased an Xbox 360, based solely on my experience playing one game – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. And while I certainly enjoyed playing CoD:MW2, my gaming tastes have expanded and I’m currently making my way through the wonderful Borderlands. But with the Xbox still fresh on my shelf, games stacking up to play, I’m contemplating the purchase of a second modern gaming platform: Nintendo Wii

As I’ve mentioned, I’m not a big fan of the gym. And I’m attracted to the Wii Fit gaming bundle primarily because it will allow me to avoid the gym, yet continue to work out and lose weight and get myself in shape. And then I came across something that seemed to settle it in my mind as a certainty: yes, I will buy a Wii because I want to play SimCity on it.

SimCity’s an awesome game. I love it, although none ever seemed as amazing as SimCity 2000.

“But, dude, what the heck does this have to do with Big Blue? With IBM?”

This:

IBM said Monday that it plans to offer a SimCity-style online game that urban planners, students, academics, and others can use to learn more about urban sprawl and how to combat its negative effects on the environment.

IBM called its CityOne simulation a “serious game” that can help users “discover how to make their cities and their industries smarter by solving real-world business, environmental, and logistical problems.”

For now, the company is offering only a brief description. “CityOne will be a no charge, ‘sim-style’ game in which the player is tasked with guiding the city through a series of missions that include Energy, Water, Banking, and Retail industries,” IBM said.

It’s likely the game will include ways for players to apply simulated versions of IBM’s smart-grid technologies to optimize the performance of public infrastructure. IBM’s is pushing real-life versions of such tools through its Smarter Planet initiative, under which Big Blue is helping utilities and other organizations go green.

“Serious games allow professionals to inherently comprehend system interactions, and accurately model the potential business outcomes that can result, in a way that no other medium can do,” said Nancy Pearson, IBM’s VP for SOA, BPM, and WebSphere, in a statement.

Wow. It almost makes me want to be an urban planner!

This is my complete April reading list (although you will kindly recall that my first half of the month’s reviews were previously posted here):

The Once And Future King by T.H. White
Men Who Stare at Goatsby Jon Ronson
Knight Life by Peter David
Jackdaws by Ken Follett
Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
One Knight Only by Peter David
And Another Thing… by Eoin Colfer – DNF
Killer Vol 1 by Matz
Fall of Knight by Peter David
The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights by John Steinbeck

Picking up from the middle of April, I went with the second in Peter David’s modern Arthur story, One Knight Only. This time, Mayor Arthur Penn of New York City has been made President of the United States following his strong showing in the aftermath of a 9/11-inspired bombing in New York City orchestrated by a Middle Eastern villain. The chain of events set into motion include the attempted assassination of Guenevere, at which point Arthur must make a gamble to retrieve the Holy Grail: setting out with the immortal Percival to find the relic, Arthur finds himself battling Gilgamesh. Yeah, it was a fun read, but disappointing when judged against the first book in the series.

Since I guess I’m reading series books now, I went for Eoin Colfer’s authorized sequel to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: And Another Thing…, which bills itself as the sixth of three volumes. I didn’t finish the book. I’ve got nothing against Mr. Colfer’s writing skill, it’s just that Douglas Adams’ particular style of humor filled the original books to such a degree that I could never tell if Colfer actually got it, or if he was just imitating what had come before. Because I could never get over that, ultimately, I put this book down early.

For a graphic change of pace, Killer Vol 1, written by it’s the tale of a never named French hit man who might be losing his mind, just when he most needs to keep his wits collected. Beautiful illustrations, gripping story, awesome violence.

Returning for the final time to Peter David’s Arthur world for Fall of Knight, in which the Spear of Destiny (said to have been the weapon which pierced Christ’s side during the crucifixion) and the Holy Grail are to be united by an evil alchemist to destroy the world, and the only person who can stop this evil plan? Yeah, King Arthur and the might sword Excalibur. There are some really great individual moments here (mostly towards the end), ultimately, it’s the weakest of the trilogy.

And then! Without even a break! More King Arthur, this time to the tune of John Steinbeck, with his uncompleted The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights, a modern re-telling of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. What there is, however? Is absolutely wonderful.

If you’re interested in what other people have been reading, allow me to point you to The Lusty Reader (three guesses what genre she reads, and if you need more than one, I’mma smack you), and amperlee, who has a list of her 2010 52 books, 52 weeks reading challenge (number 19).

I am not in it to gym it.

I mean, that sounds snobbish and random. I am in it. For all the reasons listed in the about page, but plus so I can look pretty darn good at my sister’s wedding next month (or, at the least, look better than I did).

So, really, I’m in-it-to-do-absolutely-whatever-I-have-to-do-to-stay-the-fuck-out-of-the-gym.com.

Unless you count Washington, DC as my gym. Well, that’s a different perspective: especially those areas that link my part-time job from my residence: Connecticut Avenue; Massachusetts Ave and the neighborhoods east of the National Cathedral; Adams Morgan; 19th Street and the Kalorama neighborhood. For that matter, my part-time job as a bookseller should count as gym time: you go lift hundreds of copies of Kitty Kelley’s Oprah bio and tell me that ain’t a fucking workout.

In fact, if anything, I am absolutely determined not to gym it. At all. I hate gyms, for reasons that have nothing to do with the physical environment, and more with the paranoid ramblings of my insecure self: namely, that I cannot imagine being in a gym (even just to put money on my laundry smartcard) without imagining everyone in there judging me on my weight and appearance.

So instead of gyming it, I walk. I walk to Target in Columbia Heights. I walk to the grocery store. I walk home from my part-time job, and on weekends, I walk there, too. I contemplate buying a Wii for the fitness programs.*

But you know what?

It’s working. Not alone, obviously. I don’t always do a good job of watching what I eat, I exceed my calorie budget quite frequently, but I continue to lose weight.

Last week, if you’ll remember, I’d gained back two and a half pounds and reported in at 244.

Today I report in at 240.5: a loss of three and a half pounds since last week, and a net loss of one pound.

It’s looking very likely that I might even hit the magic goal of TWENTY POUNDS** this time next week.

That? That’s motivation.

*And for SimCity..

**HOLY SHIT! OMG! WTF! WOOHOO! CAN I EAT A WHOLE CARTON OF BRYER’S MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP ICE CREAM TO CELEBRATE?!?!?!?!?!

(No, seriously: can I?)