Readin'

I'm excited! I feel like I've had a breakthrough moment of brilliance, although I'm clearly not the first person to think to do this... it's just the first time that I actually tested out the idea and it seems to be falling into place so far.

Before I tell you what the idea is, it has a backstory.

I feel like I've been driving a TON lately - pretty much since leaving Nashville. My Quicken Money register shows that I spent almost $225 on gas in July (I'm estimating that this is about 7 tanks), and that doesn't include the gas for the driving that work paid for. To put this into perspective... I live 1.3 miles from work. So this clearly is not day-to-day wear and tear. Poor Pedro the Escort is feelin' it, too - his electrical workings shorted out on one long trip and it cost me $350 to fix! It was an expensive month for Pedro and me (yes, that's grammatically correct).

Worse: this isn't going to end. I'll be heading back to Central PA for two (super exciting!) weddings soon, on different weekends, and then I will hit the road for 4-5ish weeks of work travel. The end points are worth the driving, but the driving time just feels wasteful.

I've never minded driving, in fact I mostly enjoy it (although I really hate I-81 for the trip down to Nashville). The problem is that I can't get anything else done. Every trip to York, for example, is 5 hours spent not doing something else constructive, like working out or reading.

Reading's the real kicker. I've read one full book since moving to M-ville, and that's a shame. I've just been busy. But I want to read more! And I have a nice long list of books to read.

So... the backstory is ending and we're getting to the, er, frontstory... I decided that for my long drives, instead of hitting the scan button to try to find strong radio signals, I will listen to audiobooks. Do you know how expensive audiobooks are? It's not even funny. But the downtown library has an o.k. collection, so I took a gamble and checked one out today ("The Book of Air and Shadows," recommended to me by one Etown English major named Sarah). And I say gamble because I don't have a CD player in my car... so I have to burn everything onto my computer and then load it into my iPod. Chances seemed good that at a $55 price tag, these 15 CDs that make up the book (seeeeeeriously) would have copyright protection on them that wouldn't let me burn them onto my computer.

I was wrong! They're loading right up. I am soooo pumped. I will get to "read" some books while I'm on the road, thus making the drive time not totally wasted. Wooooooo!

The backstory was too long, wasn't it?