Nevermind on that writing thing

Let's just talk about what I bought, I guess

I’ve been writing a lot privately since my last post, and hoo boy I am rusty. I’m gradually improving, and enjoying myself immensely, but I don’t know whether any of it will become coherent enough to see the light of day.

But that’s okay, because I bought some great stuff!

Matador Flatpack Soap Case ($14)

For environmental reasons, I’ve been wanting to switch from body wash to bar soap. There was just one problem: any bar of soap I try to keep in the shower becomes slimy and gooey and disgusting.

This soap case, which I originally bought for travel but now leave in my shower full time, keeps the soap dry. It’s waterproof in a way that won’t let water in, but lets water out, so the soap will be dry next time even if it’s wet when you put it away.

The case lies flat and doubles as a soap dish when I’m taking a bath — I set the soap on it so it doesn’t slip off the edge of the tub and into the water.

Grout recoloring pens ($18 each)

My kitchen and one of my bathrooms are tiled in a large-format marble-look tile that is almost white, but isn’t — more of a very very light bluish gray. No grout matches this tile, as I’ve learned from experience.

The closest grout match, which we used for our kitchen backsplash, looks yellowed compared to the bluish white of the marble. The next closest matches are either light enough to make the tile look dingy, or dark enough to make the grout look dirty and weird. In the bathroom, in an attempt to redeem myself from my kitchen choices, I tried the lighter grout match. I’m proud to report that it looks exponentially worse than the kitchen. Oops.

But did you know that you can recolor grout with pens like these? The paint goes on shiny, but soaks into the grout and dries matte. I redid our bathroom grout in the Winter Grey color in a few hours. It now looks fantastic, and has completely validated my guilty yuppie fussiness over something as minor as grout color, because the details matter, people.

Anyway, if you too are trapped in some kind of grout struggle, give it a try. One pen doesn’t last that long (maybe one fully tiled wall of our little bathroom, if that?) because the tip wears out quickly against the rough texture of the grout. So once you know you’ve got the right color, you’ll probably need to order several.

Sanddune Stepper ($279)

I’ve worked remotely since 2020, and I expect to work remotely indefinitely. I love everything about it, except for being on camera (thankfully not a big part of my day), and the way working remotely gradually imbues you with the muscle tone of a newborn infant.

For notification reasons that are unrelated to fitness, I’ve needed to wear an Apple watch for most of my tech career. I unaffectionately referred to it as my Apple Shackle, because if I was awake, I was wearing it, whether I really wanted to or not. Because of this, I’ve collected years of my activity data, representing all kinds of working locations, schedules, and commutes.

Equipped with this data, I can confidently tell you that, as much as I prefer it, working from home is horrible for you. The daily physical deficit is staggering. Working from home without wearing a fitness tracker is like installing a fire pit inside your home, setting it alight, and taking the batteries out of your smoke detector. Hitting the gym 3x a week is not enough. Hiking every weekend is not enough. I’ve got the charts to prove it: I was better off working a big-city office job and while making no additional effort.

I’ve been trying to close the activity gap since 2020. I have tried so many different things: a standing desk, a Fluidstance balance board, a desk bike, a different desk bike (I was desperate and I get a very generous fitness stipend, okay). All of these products helped somewhat, but I didn’t really enjoy using any of them, so none of them became a big enough part of my routine to catch me up to the daily activity of an in-office job.

In February, I decided enough was enough, and hired a virtual trainer on the Future app. Her name is Meghan, and my Apple Watch sends her my activity data every night at midnight, and my codependent quest to earn Meghan’s praise has done more for my activity level than anything else in history. There is no such thing as a 1000-step day with Meghan around; my pride simply will not allow it.

Over time, it became clear that if I wanted to consistently reach Meghan’s expectations, I needed to find a way to exercise and work at the same time. Otherwise, there just wasn’t enough time in the day to get it done, even if I hit the gym and then did household chores until bedtime, an approach that fell short steps-wise while still managing to remove any remaining glimmers of joy from my life.

So I dug deeper than I ever have before, and I eventually found this weird $300 memory foam pillow called the Sanddune Stepper. You can march on it, jog on it, or even sprint on it. The name isn’t very accurate, since it doesn’t feel like sand at all — more like having a little trampoline under each foot.

The Sanddune Stepper has a small cult following, and after experiencing it personally, I can confirm that it deserves the hype. I love almost everything about it: the pleasantly bouncy feeling of bopping along on it (the two people who have tried mine so far each bought their own); the fact that it’s so quiet and won’t develop some maddening squeak after 3 weeks of use; how light it is, so I can plop it in front of the TV or even throw it in my car when I go to my office. It’s a lot like having a walking pad or an elliptical machine, except it’s not stupidly huge and you aren’t locked into a given pace. My favorite use of it is during large camera-off meetings, because I can get a couple thousand steps in while actually feeling more engaged with the presentation. When I really need to concentrate, I just stand on it (it’s so comfy!) and then jog when I’m waiting for something to load or for someone to answer me in a conversation.

The stepper forces you to keep your balance, which works a ton of muscles without you really noticing. The first time I used it, I “sprinted” on it for about 10 minutes, and woke up the next day feeling like I should probably go to the hospital. So don’t do that! With Meghan’s help, I’ve learned that the best way to use it is to put the “high” side in the back, under my heels, and then drop one heel down at a time without picking my feet up (much less stumbley and chaotic this way). The resulting vibe is “a casual jog on the moon,” and over the past month or two, I’ve worked my way up to jogging on it for 30 minutes at a time. You can use it barefoot, but I found that uncomfortable for my toes after a while (they get smushed upward a bit when your foot sinks down), so now I use a firm-ish minimal shoe, like my cross training shoes or Converse-style street shoes with a thin sole.

After you use it, make sure to stretch: calves, quads, forward fold, that sort of thing. Your lower back is probably going to feel it the most tomorrow.

For a truly excellent experience, combine the stepper with a blower fan to keep you cool, like this $50 one by Lasko. (I don’t use a Lasko, I use a Wahoo Headwind that I already used for indoor cycling on Zwift, but even the Zwift community’s top pick is the $99 Lasko blower fan.)

My one complaint is that the cover is black, and looks linty all the time no matter what I do. It also arrived with a hole in the corner of the cover, which seems to be common, but I was quickly sent a replacement cover, so I didn’t really mind.

Now my sister wants to try the stepper at my parents’ house tonight, so if you hear that I was seen wandering down the street with a giant black pillow-thing under my arm, now you know why.