Saturday morning constitutional

I forced myself to get out and walk this morning. For some reason, it is easier to make myself do it on the weekends. I even remembered to put on my heart monitor--there is a belt that goes around your upper abdomen (you hardly notice it's there, really) and a watch that tells you your heart rate and how long you walked. I purposely bought the cheapest, most idiot-proof one they had--I believe it cost $80.

It is a beautiful, sunny, but briskly cold morning; frost was on the cars and mailboxes. I walked a new way and liked it better than my usual way, as it is an almost completely level street. I live in a rural enough neighborhood that we are only three miles from a Costco, but there are horses and cows around and woodlands nearby. (One morning I even saw an adolescent deer with My Favorite Martian antlers bounding across the street and through someone's yard into the great unknown swamplands.) They are beginning to zone the area as light industrial, but taking their time about it, so you still hear coyotes and crickets at night sometimes.

Because it was only about 7:30, and on a Saturday, not many people were out yet. (Which is good, I want to be left the hell alone when I exercise--I come armed with an Ipod and shades.) I think I saw three cars. Only one dog barked at me, a big old yellow Lab mix, from the looks of him; he barked at me four times on the first way past and didn't bother on my way back. I have a soft spot for big yellow dogs, especially if they have brown noses.

I saw a lot of things I would like to take pictures of sometime, particularly a rusted-out classic car, which looked cool with dew on it and parked in a clearing. (It's one of those neighborhoods with run-down single-wide mobiles nestled against custom-built pseudomansions. Very schizophrenic, but so are many of America's older neighborhoods, in my experience.) Now that cameras are digital and I'm not burning expensive film, I take pictures of everything all the time, no matter how inconsequential they seem. (For instance, the other day I took a picture of the pear I was about to eat on the counter before I cut it up. The picture actually came out cool. It's on my Flickr site.)

I have two workout playlists on my Ipod; one I call "dancy poo" and one I call "classic rock". (Trying to keep it simple.) Today, I used the "classic rock" one, and these are the songs I walked to:

AC/DC--You Shook Me All Night Long
Aerosmith--Eat the Rich
Cars--Candy-O
Clash--Train in Vain (Stand By Me)
Climax Blues Band--Couldn't Get it Right
Def Leppard--Animal
Doors--Love Her Madly
Gary Wright--Love is Alive (a better cool-down song, but I love it anyway and I'm no speed demon; good karaoke song, too, and Joan Osborne does a version I like also)
George Thoroughgood--Move It On Over