Roomba Robot Sucks Up Your Dirt: Should We Dance Around Behind the Clever Contraption to Get Exercise?

Whoever thought that a blog entry about a snazzy, high-tech, vacuuming robot with an eagerness and voracious hunger to suck up your dirt could be such a hoot?

Gotta hand it to Farhad Manjoo of the Machinist, a technology writer at Salon.com, for making me crack up and even laugh out loud because of his Roomba writings?

Darn, Farhad's informative, entertaining item is making me greatly tempted to buy this glorious, dirt-digging Roomba from iRobot. Sure sounds like the new incarnation of this revolutionary household gadget could help me out, especially because it pays attention to the clock and clearly won't keep me waiting for hours like my annoying, perpetually late cleaning lady, who I no longer use.

But I have a couple of dilemmas that I need to resolve before I fork over my $350 for a Roomba 560.

First off, I'm now resolved and determined to get much more fit because these days (1) Yeah, I'm not sitting on my butt so much anymore working on my book SUGAR SHOCK! and (2) I got greatly inspired Tuesday night by "Celebrity Fit Club's" Harvey Walden, IV to not make any excuses for why I can't work out. (Mark your calendars, because I'm interviewing Harvey on my Stop SUGAR SHOCK! Radio Show on October 16.)

Well, Harvey advised those of us attending his Learning Annex talk -- given on the pub date for his new book No Excuses! Fitness Workout -- that one clever, viable way to make sure you get ample exercise is to carefully clean your house.

Harvey told us to even get on our hands and knees, scrub and vacuum with voraciousness. (He even regaled us with a story about how he gleefully "tricked" his grandmother into exercising by luring her into moving furniture around!)

Anyhow, here's the catch: If my dutiful Roomba is happily roaming about my two-bedroom apartment ferreting out grime while I'm getting a bigger butt just sitting in front of my computer (working as usual), then how am I to get more lean, mean and trim while Roomba gets the exercise that I should be getting myself?

On the other hand, wouldn't it be a hoot and more svelte-creating for my much-in-need-of-exercise body if I just took a study break, put on some music, cranked up the volume, boogied a bit and ran around my place following Roomba?

Hey, Roomba and I could even do a dirt-sucking dance together. (Honest, I'm being very decent and clean here!) Ah, working alone at home does make one resort to desperate measures to amuse oneself. LOL!

My other obstacle to immediately buying iRobot's clever robotic contraption is this: Roomba would get very perplexed and frazzled while doing its thing in my office.

That's because, although I moved into a new apartment over two months ago, a number of boxes-- I will not reveal my dirty little secret as to exactly how many of them -- are still hanging out at my Manhattan pad. (The boxes, I will admit, are mostly filled with research from my book SUGAR SHOCK!, and I'm still trying to decide what to do with them. Do I put it them in storage somewhere or what?)

But my point is this: Before I can even contemplate buying a Roomba, I still need to clean up my place some more and get rid of more boxes. (Mind you, I cleaned out and tossed out some 75 boxes already!)

OK, that's my new year's resolution. (Jewish New Year, that is. Yom Kippur happens tomorrow so I'll atone first for not finishing my box-ditching project and then I'll get back to apartment-cleaning on Sunday. By the way, don't expect a blog item from me tomorrow because it's the most holy day of the year, but Jennifer or Karen will oblige instead.)

Make sure to read Farhad Manjoo's oh-so-clever, informative Roomba blog post now.

OK, enough talking about exercise! It's time to go to the gym.