Day Thirty-one

Daniel, Abe, and Treadmill Propping

Even though I really wanted to walk outdoors today, when my handy dandy Acuweather® app gave a Real Feel® temperature of -4, I decided the treadmill at the health club was a better option.

I took my Kindle with me and propped it up on the treadmill.  Yet another reason to love my e-reader–for treadmill propping.  A print book would have never stayed on the treadmill, much less stayed open by itself.

Although I’ve been listening to The Worst Hard Time on audio book, I’ve also been reading Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin.  The movie, Lincoln, is partially based on this book.  I really enjoyed the movie and wondered how the book tied in with the movie, so I put it on my wish list.  I received the movie tie-in edition for Christmas.

I rather felt like Daniel Day Lewis and Abraham Lincoln were along for the day:

Good day, good walk.

P.S.  I’ve made it a month on this New Year’s Resolution!  Yay!

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Day Thirty-two

Sampling While Walking

I really did not feel like walking today.  Wait, let me rephrase that.  I really didn’t feel like walking on a treadmill again today.  Although today would only be the fourth day this year that I’ve resorted to walking on a treadmill, it would be the first time that I did it two days in a row.

Despite the clear blue skies and bright sun, the AccuWeather Real Feel® temperature of -5° F only gave me two options.  Either I head out on a very, very short walk in my neighborhood, or I go to our park district health club and get my butt on a treadmill.  Since I had the time and could really use the exercise, I decided the treadmill was really the only option.  Like yesterday, I took my Kindle.

I’d like to take a moment here to share my personal list of e-reader virtues:

• A library in my hand.  All of the books that I’ve purchased or received as gifts in the past two years are on hand, and I can easily take them with me.  If I’m on the road and finish a book, I have easy access to another.
• Ease of propping up on a treadmill.  No books falling over, no closing pages, it just stays put on the correct page until I tell it to turn to the next one.  (I actually just added this virtue after yesterday’s walk.)
• Free book samples.  This is the first virtue I discovered when I got my Kindle two years ago.  I love sending free samples to my Kindle.  Although I’ve stood and paged through books in a bookstore, I’ve never read the entire first chapter or two.  (I always felt like some sales associate would tell me to buy it or yell at me for bending the paperback cover.)

I could easily waste a lot of time looking at books on Amazon, so I try to limit how often I do it.  Today, I talked myself into going to the health club by making it a Kindle sample day and allowed myself to peruse Amazon for new book releases and send some samples to my Kindle.

One of the samples that I added was On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz.  The book description states that it’s about observing and perceiving the world around us.  Since it also seems to be about walking, I thought it sounded perfect for today.

It was.  After I took the picture above, I started reading the lengthy sample and only looked at the timer on the treadmill twice (once was after my time was up).  I will be adding On Looking to my reading list.  Oh, I’d also like to add the following to my list of e-reader virtues:

• It covers the timer on the treadmill, so I don’t check the timer constantly.

Good day, good  walk.