Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

Thanks to my Dad, I now own a Nintendo Wii!

Dad got one a month or so ago and he loves it. The background story is that my Dad had surgery two years ago for spinal stenosis, which means that his spine grew bone spurs inside the spinal cord channel and they were putting pressure on his spinal cord, causing weakness and partial paralysis in his legs. He had surgery that fused and replaced two or three vertebrae, and it left his left arm extremely weak and numb and took away a lot of his range of motion. A year later, after therapy and exercise, he only had about 50% of his strength back.

Since he's gotten the Wii, he's been playing games using the motion-sensing controller, and he's made some incredible gains in range of motion and strength. I've been over to play a few times and it's quite a workout playing tennis and boxing and such. You actually sweat and breathe hard and are sore the next day.

Dad's made no secret that he thinks I should get one to encourage me to exercise more. The problem is that stores simply don't have them. When they get a shipment, it consists of 3 or 4 systems, and they are bought up within minutes of the store opening.

Well, I figured something was up this weekend. Bernie has the details of our Saturday on her blog. I had to work on Sunday (10 hours!!), and Bernie told me that my Dad had been calling the house looking for me several times on Sunday. He wanted us to come over. Since I didn't get home until after 8pm, we couldn't go over there. I called and talked to both Mom and Dad, and they did a good job of keeping a secret on the phone.

Today, Bernie called me at work and said that my Mom had told her that Dad had called and told her that we were coming over for dinner. I didn't remember actually making plans to do that, but we are always glad to eat my Mom's cooking, so I went straight over from work and Bernie drove over from the house.

Surprise! Dad had gotten his hands on a Wii! And furthermore, he got me Madden Football '07 to go with it. The great thing about Madden on the Wii, is that it takes advantage of the motion-sensing controller. You actually throw the ball, make juke moves on defenders, throw stiff-arms, break tackles, high-step (by drumming the controller), pump-fake, etc, by moving the remote. I tried it out at Dad's place, and it's freaking awesome!

I've gotten it hooked up over at our house, now, and I can't wait to start playing this thing. By the way, here's an article about a guy in Australia that lost 10 lbs and 10cm in six weeks playing games on his Wii.

Do I have great parents, or what?