I had to get up really early this morning so that I could take the Acadia in to the shop because of the power steering issues. I dropped it off before seven thirty and came home to work from there.
I worked from home all day as I had to deal with the car. It was a slow day at work so a good day to be home.
Originally we had had reservations for La Cima tonight but we had to switch them to tomorrow night because tonight I had to attend a live class session for my class at RIT.
This evening, after the girls had gone to bed – even Dominica, I decided to go out for a walk in the nice, evening air and get some much needed exercise. I have been needing badly to start getting into the habit of exercising regularly and walking is about the only thing that I can bring myself to do on a really regular basis and mostly because it gives me an opportunity to both explore the area in which I live and because it gives me a chance to listen to my audio books which, otherwise, I never get a chance to hear.
So the weather being really nice this evening I set out for a serious walk. I started going south when I discovered that there was no sidewalk heading off in the direction that I wanted to go but I then decided to venture eastward out into some residential neighbourhoods and found my way, eventually, back up to the road that I had originally wanted to take. While walking I finished listening to Janet Evanovich’s “Seven Up” and started listening to the eighth book in the series “Hard Eight.”
By book seven the Stephanie Plum series is already starting to get pretty boring and eight makes it even worse. The story is the same in every book and the lead character is mechanical and predictable. It takes a bit to stick with the books but I am a bit invested in the series at this point. It’s like a bad sitcom, though, where everyone can see that Lucy is about to do something foolish and clearly time after time Lucy knows that she is doing something foolish but does it anyway, and Ricky comes to save her. The books are no different. Over the top formulaic. The formula is simple. Vacuous Jersey Girl gets job, gets in over her head, acts macho, gets man to save her. Ho hum. In every book Stephanie leaves her gun in her cookie jar, is surprised when gun is needed, refuses to put bullets in gun when someone forces her to take it and, the moment no one is looking, puts it back into the cookie jar and needs saving again. Also, you can bet that she will come home and someone will have broken into her apartment and she will be surprised… again.
The weather was perfect for a walk and I had a really nice time. I walked down the main drag near our home which works out great for late night walking because there are loads of businesses nearby including a few twenty-four hours places where I can stop for food, drink or restroom breaks. Having access to those things on a long, late night walk can be pretty important.
I walked due east, taking no side streets. Living in a city like Carrollton actually gives me a ton of stuff to explore on foot. It has been a long time since I lived someplace so conducive to long walks. The area is very safe, pretty flat and you actually can get to a lot of different things pretty quickly.
What is interesting is that there is a sort of natural barrier between our local neighbourhood and the main road off of which we live quite closely. For the first several months in our new home we really didn’t know what lay in that direction at all. We are heavily “associated” with the businesses located to our southwest, not to the east or north nearly as much. So walking to the east reveals a lot of businesses that I see only infrequently when driving.
I walked several miles tonight, nearly eight miles in total by the time that I returned to the house. It was a good walk. I covered all of the reasonable ground that I could along my one path and have a much better understanding of the route now. I am looking forward to doing it again but branching out along different side streets, there is a lot of area to explore out there.
One thing that really caught me off guard was the large number of bars that were open and quite active late on a Wednesday evening. There were a lot of people sitting outside on patios as I walked. I had no idea that there were so many, or really any, bars so close to my home. And bars that I can easily walk to. Many of these were only a little over halfway into my walk.
I found several restaurants that I did not really know were there before as well. Walking is really the best way to discover this stuff. There are so many little, local businesses around that you would never know are there. I wonder how half of them make any money. It is so hard to know when or why you would use many of them.
Overall it was a very good night and I felt good when I got back home. My trainer will be happy with me if I can keep this up. I need to get in shape, not just lose weight, quickly as well because when we go to Europe (which is only about six weeks away) we are going to be taking the train and walking everywhere. So being ready for some serious walking without stressing my knees is very important.
It was about two when I got home. I was pretty tired. Right off to sleep for me. I calculated that I burned nearly nine hundred calories tonight and walked about seven and a half miles.