Road Trip, Tuesday evening

Kaelin's was okay. The mini-cheeseburgers we had as an appetizer were in small, soft buns--fine enough, but not astounding. The hot brown I had was tasty, but didn't delight me the way I had been delighted by my first hot brown last year. Lori's roast pork loin with dressing had a good flavor, but was rather dry.

We took a nice walk through Joe Creason Park before heading over to get dessert. We saw lots and lots of fireflies.

The Homemade Ice Cream and Pie Kitchen offered a bewildering variety of choices. I was tempted by the pecan pie, the banana meringue pie, and the lemon chess pie, but finally settled on the butterscotch meringue pie. It had a sumptuous taste, though it had an occasional flavor of burnt sugar. Lori enjoyed her Georgia cake (yellow cake with mandarin oranges, with a whipped cream with pineapple). She also got a scoop of creme brulee ice cream--nice flavor, but a somewhat gritty texture.

Logged on to work email to discover that I had been assigned two bugs, even though I'm on vacation. Easy ones, fortunately--I managed to identify fixes while Lori was showering this morning, and I passed the get-reviews-and-check-in buck to coworkers.

Today: Lynn's Paradise Cafe for breakfast, and barbecued mutton in Owensboro.

Exercise

In late April, I instituted a new rule for myself: no WoW until I'd gotten 20 minutes of some sort of exercise each day.

Since then, I have gotten some exercise every day for over six weeks. I think I can call this a habit now. Given my historical lack of enthusiasm for exercise and difficulty with keeping resolutions, I regard this as nigh-miraculous. Go me!

Sometimes I work on our Gazelle exerciser for the duration of a half-hour TV episode (without commercials, because I'm watching on DVD); more often, I get my twenty minutes walking. (Light exercise was fairly explicitly part of my contract with myself; I didn't feel I had the oomph for heavy exercise every day, but I'd have much more luck sticking to a routine that involved 'every day' than one that was three times a week.)

There have certainly been a few cases where I skirted the edges of my rule, but I've kept it up pretty faithfully. I once gave myself credit for the twenty minutes after discovering that I'd walked only fifteen minutes each way to a restaurant for lunch, and once gave credit for a fifteen-minute walk uphill followed by ten minutes each way from my car to the store in a parking lot.

I was worried about how this habit would hold up for our road trip. I knew that I could stick to the original rule by not playing WoW on days when I got no exercise--but I've felt a certain pride in the "exercise every day" pattern, and I'd feel sad if that daily winning streak got broken.

On Monday, I took a walk late while Lori was packing; on Tuesday, we went for a walk in the park. So I've maintained my winning streak with exercise, even though I haven't been playing Warcraft.