true multitasking.

When I go for a run, I usually listen to whatever is randomly populated in my ipod shuffle by itunes. I never skip any songs because I have something like 400 GB of music and have probably only listened to half of them, and I am trying to listen to more of it.

Quite accidentally, yesterday as I ran, a track came up that began: "Chapter 9: The Arrow of Time." I thought this was some sci-fi nerdy hiphop track intro, and as the monotone voice spoke, I kept expecting some bass and beats to kick in. In fact, I thought it was the Deltron 3030 album, which by the way is great, and has just such intros and lyrics, including lines like: "Perusing my 21st century classic comics, the fun is astronomic / I figured since I'm here I'll renew my galactic passport / So I'm not persecuted by no galactic assholes." Honestly, the album is really good.

But anyway, the voice kept going and 30 minutes later, I realized it was an electronic book and when I got home, I plugged my ipod in to see that it was Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. (Sadly, it is not read by Dr. Hawking himself.)

And it occurred to me that audio books are the perfect running material, theoretical physics or not. I really felt like I was multitasking. Now I have eliminated the whole, "I have too much to do, no time to run" excuse for not running. Also, in my recent attempt to rein in my myriad of projects, of which there were too many, I crossed off "reading" as something I had time to do. But now I get to put it back, and I should be able to finish A Brief History of Time in no time at all.