My workouts at the gym each morning are going quite well. I arrive at 5:00 a.m, settle onto my favorite bike, adjust my iPod to some favorite songs or readings, and pump for about 25 minutes. I gradually raise the resistance until, by the end of the workout, sweat is pouring off my face. As I walk out to my car, I feel good, like my whole body (and mind) is now alive and alert and standing by for the adventures of the day ahead.

I’ve been enjoying reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch on my computer, from a favorite site called questia.com. What’s nice about the website is that I can hi-light passages in color, and also take notes on pages as I read. For instance, here are some wonderful sentences that I hi-lighted yesterday. The narrator is speaking of Dorothea Brooke’s generous and compassionate attitude toward her fiancée:
“All appeals to her taste she met gratefully, but saw nothing to alter. His efforts at exact courtesy and formal tenderness had no defect for her. She filled up all blanks with unmanifested perfections, interpreting him as she interpreted the works of Providence, and accounting for seeming discords by her own deafness to the higher harmonies.”