Jumbling thoughts

Much on my mind tonight, and no way do I have the mental stamina to make proper sense of it all to make me sound even semi-coherent. So just a few random, disjointed thoughts:

- Even I'm impressed with my preparedness for tomorrow. I'm determined to get into a weekday routine that involves a morning run on the track, so that involves some strategic planning. Namely, ensuring my lunch is packed and ready to go, but tomorrow it means bringing provisions for the week: seven-grain bread and almond butter to make myself a quickie breakfast at work in the kitchen (I found out today the toaster is broken, sadly), orange juice (in a water bottle), and some toothpaste and a toothbrush (which I can leave at the gym as I rented a locker for the four-month duration of my membership; I'm also bringing some shirts and shorts to store in my locker). If all goes well, I should be out the door by 7:00 a.m. and on the track by around 7:20.

- Though no longer much of a hockey fan, I have the World Junior Hockey Championship on the tube, but really only keeping one eye on it. I'm mostly catching up on some magazine and Sunday NYTimes reading, including this interesting piece on sex and major male American authors. I'm going to write more on this topic at a future date, particularly since Philip Roth, one of the main "protagonists" of this piece, has been much on my mind of late - including his sex scenes. (Hockey update: it's in sudden-death overtime. Fun game. Ah, game over: the Americans have beaten the mighty Canadians. So on goes the music - Schubert, I think, on this cold winter night.)

- While reading the obituaries in today's Globe and Mail, I came up with the germ of an idea for a narrative that has me excited. Stay tuned! I need to remind myself: 300 to 400 words a day...

- Microsoft strikes again! I was quite excited to give the Toronto Public Library's Online Downloads a try. After all, if I'm going to be keeping to a strict running schedule, I'll need plenty to listen to on my iPod Nano. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about listening to a book online, but I figure it's worth a shot. Unfortunately, after downloading the necessary software and "borrowing" a couple of books (Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the Shore and Richard Russo's A Bridge of Sighs) and getting frustrated about why it wasn't working, I discovered that the format (WMA) is not Mac compatible. So now I'm in search of audiobooks in mp3 format that I can actually listen to on my ipod. Very frustrating. (There's certainly a lot of Arthur Conan Doyle available. Can anybody offer up a recommendation? I've never read any Sherlock Holmes, yet it sounds like it could be ideal running accompaniment.)