I'm sitting in Bookman's. A NEW Bookman's, with a much much smaller (but more manageable) kids section. I'm not actually here for the kids section, though. I'm here because I needed a place near campus to work where I wouldn't have to pay for the privilege. Mostly I've done coffee shops where I pay for coffee, which is usually much cheaper than paying for parking by the anthro building. But it's too tight for that these days, so I was planning to spend the day at the library. But it turns out that even the library downtown makes you pay for parking after an hour. Bookman's however, has Wi-fi and tables and chairs and outlets and is 100% free. I <3 Bookmans.

Today is a little scary. At 1:00 I am meeting with some top people at my site. I had an almost disastrous phone conversation with the executive director the other day where she asked me lots of detailed questions that I stumbled a lot trying to answer. I am determined to be more prepared today.

My We'Moon '09 Gaia Rhythms For Women Datebook is now full of meetings, and I'm beginning to really feel like I'm working on My Research. But I'm still moving too slow to be able to accomplish all the different goals I set for myself this summer. I'm not really sure what to do about it. I can't NOT do any of these things ...

One day at a time, I guess.

I had a massively unproductive day, intellectually speaking. I was supposed to be nailing down some general thoughts about my research, like, oh, why bother? But it wasn't happening. I was overwhelmed, and avoided thinking in lots of productive and unproductive ways.

Productive Ways:
+ folded eight loads of laundry
+ cooked lunch for myself
+ went for a morning run
+ showered and shaved my left leg (this is an incentive to shower again tomorrow and shave the right one)
+ wrote letters
+ continued Nikos' hoop-jumping training (okay, that's only minimally productive ...)

Unproductive Ways:
- read children's picture books! (OMG Shaun Tan is amazing. Like whoa.)
- watched three episodes of the Korean drama "My Girl" (and can I just ask: why do all drama heroines thoughtlessly step out into traffic requiring saving from hunky and disingenously disinterested heroes?)
- drank 3/4 of a bottle of wine

I avoided all day long, but the drinking began later. We don't normally have wine on hand, but I needed some for a recipe (BEHOLD: I AM COOKING!!!) and then, after Guille and I failed at the gym, we came home and hung out together in the kitchen. I don't normally talk about research at home, but I felt inspired. And, after a few glasses, I started talking about sexual citizenship and sensorial anthropology and thinking about "education" beyond cold cognition and BOOM! I was off to the races!

Don't get me wrong. I've got a long way to go (and the first round of the IRB is only a very early step), but this is still very exciting. Time to email some professors. Or maybe once the wine wears off a little more.