As far as receiving presents went things again seemed to go pretty well. Probably the centerpiece of it would be a WiiFit which we got from my sister and her husband: the couple of trips my father and I had made to their apartment convinced us that this might be a useful way to get us actually exercising regularly even when it's February and going outside to walk is full of dark and slush. Also my sister took great delight in explaining this game where you rock back and forth to catch fish for penguins, even though you're not a penguin but are only dressed as one, while the actual penguins look at you with delight.
To add to the general Wii-ness of the event they also got me a pair of Wii games, one of them a Roller Coaster Tycoon-type ride that I don't quite understand yet but seems to be quite promising, even if I can't figure how you would design a roller coaster using a Wii paddle. They also got me a Pinball game, containing electronic table simulations of about a dozen of Bally's pinball games, some of them such as Funhouse not just all-time classics but ones I've played in the real world. I can't wait to actually give this a try, if we ever find a way to arrange the living room so there's room for it. As it is the sofa and dining room table are irrevocably in the way.
Also one more little problem is that we don't have a Wii. We'd been figuring on getting one as a family present for Christmas, but you know how it is with marketing department-inspired shortages and with my parents on holiday for two important weeks of the buying season and my father off driving cross-country for another one and we just never saw a Wii for anything like an acceptable price. There's no telling when we'll find one, but when we do, boy are we ready for it.
Trivia: In 1888 Harry Wright took the Chicago White Sox to Cape May, New Jersey, rather than Savannah, Georgia, for spring training. The regimen included waking at 6 am, dousing players with buckets of seawater, and beach hiking for an hour before breakfast. Source: The Jersey Game: The History of Modern Baseball From Its Birth To The Big Leagues In The Garden State, James M DiClerico, Barry J Pavelec.
Currently Reading: The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved: How Mathematical Genius Discovered The Language Of Symmetry, Mario Livio.