Kris is sad.

Our Nintendo Wii died recently, so we’ve had to ship it back for repair ($82.50). She’d become addicted to Wii Fit, particularly the yoga, but for the past week or so, she’s had to improvise.

Meanwhile, my doctor pronounced me “as flexible as a two-by-four”. “You might want to try some yoga,” he told me. Yes, I might. But not on the Wii.

Wii Fit is okay, but its yoga isn’t really yoga. I took a yoga class in college and loved it. Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, I spread out my brightly colored beach towel to salute the sun and lie like a corpse. You can’t really do that with the Wii.

I considered taking a class at a local gym, but they’re all rather expensive. Instead, I looked online and discovered the perfect DVD: Yoga for Inflexible People ($7.99). For Kris, I ordered Yoga for Beginners ($9.99). Since our DVD player is connected to the television upstairs and not to the Wii TV in the den, I ordered a cheap-ass DVD player ($34.99).

My hope is that Kris and I can each benefit from these yoga videos, continuing to improve our fitness. $52 seems like an acceptable price to pay for this.

But all of the above is just set-up. What this post is really about is how much fun I’m having while tracking the packages. I shipped the Wii back last Wednesday. It’s now in Vernon, California, on its way to who-knows-where? (I didn’t keep the shipping info — only the tracking number.) Once it reaches Nintendo, I’ll apparently be able to track it through the repair process.

Meanwhile, I’m also tracking the shipments from Amazon. The DVDs will arrive on Wednesday, but the DVD player itself is being shipped by a third party in Tempe, Arizona. It’s not scheduled to arrive until Thursday.

Now it’s like yoga contest. Which will reach our doorstep first: the Nintendo Wii or the DVD player? Once or twice a day, I reload the shipping pages just to see if there’s progress.

My money’s on the DVD player. The Wii isn’t even to the repair center yet! Then it’s got to be fixed and re-shipped. The DVD player just has to make its way safely up I-5.

If everything goes as planned, Kris will be able to follow a yoga program on Friday.