My New Toy and a Six Mile Run

There are three key facts about my life that have caused me consternation:

1. I travel a lot for work.  This means a lot of time on planes, in airports, and in hotel rooms all by my lonesome.
2. You would think that gives me a TON of idle time to write, blog, watch movies, etc.  It would.  Except for Fact #3:
3. My work-issued laptop is on total lockdown – security is so tight with my company that you cannot play ANY media (videos, DVDs, music) on our office computers and you cannot download or install ANY software.  When I say “cannot”, I mean “can” not … not “may” not.  The ability to do so is disabled. 

This means that I often can’t use airport Wi-Fi as well, even to work.  Because you have to download the driver for the common airport Wi-Fi providers like Boingo and T-Mobile, I’m left unplugged from the interwebs a lot.  And the kicker is that you are not allowed to buy your own wireless USB thingy to use with your work computer.  Urgh.  I despise being unplugged.

But I recognize that even if I could get wired in, I am uncomfortable using my work laptop for personal use – especially my writing and my blogging.  The obvious solution was to lug another, smaller laptop.  But since the work laptop is a 7.5-pound beast, my laptop bag is already a backbreaker with that thing in it.  My little HP notebook from home is over 5 pounds – it’s smaller, but still heavy.  I tried it once.  Evidently, lugging that much poundage around on my right shoulder resulted in my becoming a kinked-up Quasimodo – even my massage therapist noticed.  So much for that idea.

So I’ve been making do with my iPhone and good old-fashioned pen and paper.  But I had a dilemma coming up:  I've known for some time that September was going to be a busy travel month. I will be on the road for the last 2 weeks of the month with only a few days at home.  This includes an overseas trip with 15 hours of flight time each way (Yes.  FIFTEEN hours.  That doesn’t count airport or transfer time.  That’s just the flight time.) 

If I wanted to stay partially sane, I decided it was time to get creative.  I first started looking at the iPad, but quickly realized that if I wanted to type anything more than a few lines that I’d need a portable keyboard.  And some of the software that I like can’t be installed on an iPad.  Humph.  Then I looked for “ultra-lightweight” PCs.  I hunted.  And hunted.  And simply could not find a model that met my needs – lightweight, speedy, long battery life, decent-sized screen and full-sized backlit keyboard. 

Major shopping FAIL.  What to do, what to do?

Well, after all those weeks of researching, enter this beauty:  My new toy.

May I introduce you to my new MacBook Air.  A full thirteen-inch screen, a lovely back-lit keyboard (for those overnight flights), and weighing in at a feather-weight 2.9 pounds.

They had an even smaller and lighter 11-inch model that I ALMOST bought, but in the end the SD-card slot on the 13 (that is not on the 11) won me over.  Bloggin’ from the road with pics!  ‘Bout damn time.

It’s my first Mac ever, and I will say that getting used to a non-Windows operating system has burned more of my brain cells than I thought it would (it took me for-freaking-ever to figure out “right click” – and once I did it was so simple that I acknowledged that I may very well be a moron.)  But I’ve been a PC gal all my life, so I’ve spent a lot of time asking my aluminum-skinned new friend to please forgive the Windows operating system filter that seems to be permanently applied to my brain.

Good news is that the MAC’s OS is very intuitive, and in not much time at all, I found that I could navigate almost as well as the hipsters at Starbucks who would rather drink Folgers (egads!) than use anything but a Mac.

This little beauty is so streamlined that it’s thinner than the spiral notebook that I keep in my laptop bag.  It’s lighter than the “mobile office” folder that I keep in there as well – the one that is filled with things like paperwork or presentations that I’ll need when I get to where I’m going, projects that I’m going to work on while on the road, etc. 

I love her already.  Now I have to figure out a name for her.  Yes, I name my electronic toys. Any ideas?

I bought MS Office for Mac already so my documents easily transfer, but I still need to figure out how to use Windows Live Writer on it (I’ve been hunting tech forums and there are ways!)  Just give me time. I LOVE that software for blogging, so I’m on a mission.

And in other news, I was supposed to do my six-mile long run today and planned to do it outside on the same hilly route that I did for last week’s long run.  However, I awoke this morning with … digestive issues.  I’ll be a lady and just leave it at that. 

Anyway, since I the idea of having a digestive issue miles from home did not sound all that appealing, I decided it was time to call an audible and take my run indoors.  Only problem is, I’m such a slow runner that it would be well over an hour on that darned treadmill.  I needed entertainment.  Stat.

OK, now here’s where you have my full permission to laugh at me.

Cue my as-yet-unnamed-aluminum-thing-of-beauty and throw in a little MacGyver ingenuity:

Yes, that is my new MacBook Air, wedged into the magazine holder of my treadmill.

What?

I wrapped her lovingly in a towel to keep her sexy aluminum skin all pristine-like, and to ensure extra safety and stability, I strapped her down with this:

Yeppers.  That would be my yoga strap.  The one that I use after every run to stretch the bejeebies out of my tight hamstrings.

Voila!  Perfect solution.  I got to watch several episodes of “Whale Wars” that I haven’t had time to watch plus the first few episodes of last year’s “Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders:  Making the Team."

What?  I’m a rabid tree-hugger (whale-hugger?) and an even more rabid Dallas Cowboys and DCC fan. I have eclectic tastes in entertainment.  What can I say.

All of this did lead up to Today’s Key Lesson for ‘Dee:  Having to undo a yoga strap from a pricey piece of electronic love while sweaty and overexerted from a run that I am woefully undertrained for is not a good idea.  I ran for 1 hour, 38 minutes and wobbled my weary Penguin butt off that treadmill when it was done.  With shaking fingers and sweaty grip, I tried to unfasten that damned yoga strap without dumping Miss Sexy Beast on the floor.  It was a success not to be had.

I couldn’t get her unfastened in my post-run state to save my life and there was no way I was sacrificing her beauty by trying any more.  My hamstrings had to go ghetto and stretch the old-fashioned way – with my bare hands pulling like hell on my sweat-slippery calves.  Oh well. 

Must think of alternate mode of securing my electronic love.

Hmmm. I think I have some bungee cords in the Jeep…wrapped in velvet, they might just do the job.