I recently rejoined the gym. I've mentioned that in passing here, and once on Facebook, but I haven't really talked about it.
I dropped our membership when we weren't really using it, but rather mostly using the treadmill at home. Terry later decided to rejoin herself, while I stuck with the treadmill. But Terry is training for the Susan G. Komen 3-day walk (contributions accepted!) and weather doesn't always permit her (or me) to walk outside. That means she's on the treadmill. The gym is kind of cranky about too much time spent on a single machine, so it made sense for me to be at the gym and Terry use the treadmill here. We added me to her membership.
That's good. It means that I can use the elliptical as well, which is a different kind of exercise. And maybe even get some instruction in weight training, which my doctor keeps telling me I need to add to my routine.
So, really, it's a good thing all around.
So what am I doing to keep my middle-aged brain active?
A few things.
When I do my walking I listen to lectures from The Great Courses. Now it's easy to slip into something comfortable in the area of history or religion, but right now I'm stretching my mind by listening to a history of science in the twentieth century. And it does stretch my mind because the first part, at least, focuses heavily on physics.
Then I've started doing crosswords again. HP recently lowered the price of its TouchPad, and for those of us early adopters who paid full price, they gave us a $50 app credit. Happy to take that! Normally I wouldn't spend $9.99 for an app, but under the circumstances I downloaded a crossword app which provides new crosswords from various sources every day. Cool! One wouldn't think there's be such a variation in difficulty from one author to another, but that is definitely the case.
And I've gone pack to Pogo and revisited Word Whomp, where you whack gophers holding different letters in order to spell words. I've added a bookmark to the Web Browser on my TouchPad.
All little things to keep those synapses firing.
My new job is stressful. Within my organization I have multiple constituencies which have differing agendas and want different and often conflicting things. I must also deal cross-organizationally with a another group of people who have a different agenda and wants. I co-own the strategy and roadmap with a woman in the other organization who bites the heads off of nails for breakfast. It is, as my predecessor in the position told me, a crucible.
Which means I need to keep up with my exercise to deal with the stress. I love it when the weather is temperate enough for me to walk outside, rather than do the treadmill inside. I have found a cool tool to help 
motivate me. It's the CardioTrainer for my Android phone.
The CardioTrainer maps my walk using GPS, records my distance, minimum speed, maximum speed, elevation change and a few other things too. A man with a very pleasant British accent gives me updates every three minutes. I love it. At the end of the work day, I put on my iPod, start my workout, and get out there.
Really helps me deal with the crucible.
I enjoy my Android apps, and I've got a bunch of them. I came across one recently that is both practical and fun. It's called CardioTrainer. It tracks several different types of exercise, but the one I've used is walking. It tracks your route and records your distance and average speed along with some other statistics as well. A male voice with a British accent tells you your time and distance at intervals that you can configure. And then you can upload your walk data so you can access it from the Web browser on your PC. Very cool!
It's been great for me, because I've been getting bored with the treadmill. It has reinvigorated my motivation to keep up with my exercise.
That's a good thing.
