Yesterday I purchased a pedometer. As its name suggests (if you are a classics geek), a pedometer measures your steps. It's recommended that to stay healthy, one should walk 10,000 steps a day.

This thing is addictive.

First of all, I love the idea. I hate hard exercise, mostly because it's extremely boring, but, like most people with two working legs, I don't mind walking. And I don't mind walking a little bit more every day if it'll help me stay vaguely healthy, especially with the working-at-home-recluse aspect of my life. So it's cool to have something that will actually show me how much walking I'm really doing. There are days when I have so much work that I pretty much have to stay in all day, only taking a quick break to walk around the block to get some fresh air, so I hope this will encourage me to do that a bit more. Or even just, you know, walk around the house a bit more. Because once you know you want to get up to 10,000 steps, you'll do anything to bring up that number. And I mean ANYTHING. I spent a good twenty minutes last night parading around the kitchen to the beats of Nellie McKay album. And when I say parading, I really mean that I was sort of strutting around doing some classy musical-theatre moves, up to and including jazz hands. It was quite a performance, if I say so myself. And it brought me up to my 10,000 steps a day!

Doubtless in about a week I will have become a frenzied addict, unable to move without clipping on the pedometer and weeping when I only reach 9,999 steps. But for the moment, I'm stepping out....