2016 Fall December 11 Sunday

49 degrees this morning, walk 36:12 minutes.  

Thanks to the Apple Watch, I am able to record my “pace” each day, how many minutes it takes me to walk a mile (I think I said that right, it is not “miles per hour”!).

I am not a speedy exercise walker (although I normally walk fast when I am walking someplace), so I won’t share my “pace” here, but  I do keep track of it.

The wind was blowing this morning and I think the 49 degrees was worse with the wind than 20 was without any wind!  

For some reason my pace was the fastest pace I recall recording, so maybe the cold wind has something to do with that!

Aliene made Christmas fudge yesterday, which always presents that moment when I can “lick” (not literally) the bowl!  One of the enjoyable moments of life!   Of course she gives most of it away, but we keep some, and we eat a little bit at a time (with occasional binges) until it is gone for another year.  

I got the Nest on a schedule.  It is amazingly easy to program after my experience with other thermostats etc.  I also got Aliene’s phone hooked up to the thermostat so that it not only can “sense” when we are out of the house, it will also know how far away we are etc.  

I guess I had better set up a stronger password on the Nest! 

I decided that I would just go with my instinct on the matter of whether you save money and energy by cutting back the thermostat.  

I decided we do, so I set up the schedule, but also carefully set it so it will be warm (or cool in summer) at the times we are  up and in the house.    l                         

The Nest actually provides a time table and history of energy usage, so it will be interesting to see if we are actually saving any energy.  Of course that would have to be correlated with the temperature and weather etc.

Several things to learn about the Apple Watch yet, how to set up Apple Pay on the watch and how to set it up so I can listen to music and audio books with or without the iPhone.  It took me awhile to adjust to paying with the iPhone (actually, so far I just use it at Starbucks), but it is nice to be able to pay that way and it would even be more convenient on the Apple Watch.  

It is a very small “savings” of time and trouble , but I figure everything helps!

In the “Great American Literature” Lecture series, the leader just finished “The Grapes of Wrath”.  I was hoping he would discuss some of other John Steinbeck's works, but he didn’t.  

I am going to have to read “The Grapes of Wrath” again.  It has been a long time since I read it. 

He has just started on Ralph Ellison, “The Invisible Man”, which ought to be interesting  Strange how so many of the great books can apply to the current period.

More candy making today (maybe). 

That’s it for today, Sunday, December 11, 2016.