Who is Maya, you ask?

My is my new personal trainer.

My new virtual personal trainer, that is.

So there's this "game" for X-Box, Playstation 2, or PC called Yourself!Fitness. Yourself!Fitness is a virtual personal trainer. I have it for the X-Box. If a virtual personal trainer seems silly to you, think about all the workout videos that have been made over the years. Maybe you've even owned one or two. Now think about this virtual personal trainer. Enter your vital statistics into the program, decide what area of fitness you want your long term goal to be, and the program will customize your workouts to help you reach your long term goal. At regular intervals through your workout, friendly (demonic) personal trainer Maya will ask how the last segment felt. Tell her "No sweat!", "I was working hard," or "I couldn't keep up" and the program will adjust the difficulty of that segment accordingly for your next workout. Every day is something different - while working towards your long term goal the program will focus on different areas of your body. Upper body strength, core body strength, lower body strength, cardio, etc. Tell the program what kind of workout equipment you own (hand weights, stair stepper, etc) and Maya will incorporate those into your workout. Add to all that a meal planner and a yoga section, and you have a pretty slick program.

It's the workout video of the new generation.

However.

I hate Maya. Maya is cheerful 100% of the time. Maya says annoying things like "I want to see a lot of energy in this move! Keep it up!" Yeah right, Maya. YOU CAN'T REALLY SEE ME! Maya has a perky butt. Since Maya is not a real person, Maya will never get tired, no matter how exhausted you get. Maya never sweats. Maya is obviously perfect, probably has a gorgeous virtual mansion with an expensive virtual car, and a perfect virtual boyfriend.

But I work really hard with Maya. And I'm sore. All over. Which is definitely a good thing. So I'm not going to go homicidal on Maya.

Yet. ^_^