Just a dash

You Are a Dash

Your life is fast paced and varied. You are realistic, down to earth, and very honest. You're often busy doing something interesting, and what you do changes quickly. You have many facets to your personality, and you connect them together well. You have a ton of interests. While some of them are a bit offbeat, they all tie together well. You friends rely on you to bring novelty and excitement to their lives. (And while you're the most interesting person they know, they can't help feeling like they don't know you well.) You excel in: Anything to do with money You get along best with: the Exclamation Point

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

(as seen at Seeking Solace)

caffeination station

I guess I do work better at coffee shops, even when there is a lot going on around. Maybe I won't get a carrel in the library for the fall, this is much better than my office or the library, because I can eat, drink coffee, write and listen to music all at the same time. Also, having a study buddy does help, even though A. didn't show until about an hour before I left. Still, I got a good chunk of research done on the T1 paper, and a good bit of writing done on the coauthor paper today. I need to make this kind of progress for the rest of this week in order to make my September 1 deadline.

let's try that again

I got up and got ready to go work with A at the coffeeshop today, but when I looked outside it was pouring. It was raining so hard that the street outside my place looked like a river. Granted, I didn't have my glasses on, so blurriness could have been a factor, but I haven't seen this kind of rain in a while.

Anyway, just as I was rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, she called to tell me that she was going to hold off until the rain let up. Now, its all sunny and innocent outside. Let's try that again. Wish me luck on my writing today. I need it. I'm SO behind on all my work that it is sad.

visual feedback

I'm taking music lessons this summer, re-learning how to play an instrument that I used to play, albeit briefly, as a child, and it is expanding my brain in all sorts of ways. Learning how to read music again after a couple of decades is quite a challenge! But I'm feeling the growth that is happening and noticing the little improvements bit by bit in this area. It also feels good to have a task which has instant feedback. If I do poorly, I can hear it and try to fix it, if I do well, I can beam with pride and keep my fingers moving. (It helps also that my music teacher uses lots of post-its and tape flags in different colors and that just makes me happy for reasons that I can't really explain). I wish that writing these two papers gave me more instant feedback like that.

Instead, I'm writing little bits of things that are okay but uninspired, don't flow and gel and everything is coming out at a glacial pace. To top it off, I'm not really sure exactly where I'm going with either paper. Co-author seems to have dropped off the face of the earth, and I've not tried to contact her either. She must not have written her piece, which means that I've got a few more parts of this paper to work on than I thought I did.

There's been a lot of reading I've had to do to get anything written because these are just far enough outside my area that I've had to catch up. Now that I'm caught up on the reading, I feel behind on the writing and I thrive on seeing my own progress. I just can't see what I've done with this summer besides loads of unnecessary travel to see family. I wish that would motivate me to work, but it makes me want to procrastinate even more. Sigh.

Lost!

I am loving the new Coldplay CD, Viva La Vida. There is a sense of determination and purpose in these tunes, an upbeat crescendo to many of the tunes that make them seem to be going somewhere -- even though it isn't always clear where! The lyrics aren't necessarily helpful in this area either. Far from detracting from the music, though, it is just that ambiguity that affords it the flexibility to make these tunes the anthem songs for the purpose of the moment. I was listening to these on my long bike-ride to accomplish some mundane errands this afternoon, and it pumped me up for getting through the tasks at hand, and left me feeling inspired to keep checking things off my to-do list on a Monday, no less.

I like all of these songs right now and don't have a favorite right now, but today the song Lost struck me. I love the lines:

Just because I'm losing,
Doesn't mean I'm lost....

And, later...

I just got lost,
Every river that I tried to cross
Every door I ever tried was locked
Oh and I'm just waiting 'til the shine wears off

Free Lunches

Since I've been out west, I've almost gotten two free lunches. On what turned out to be a very productive Tuesday at the coffee shop, where they serve soup and sandwiches for lunch, I went up to the counter to get something to eat. The cashier took my order and then gave me the gazpacho soup, and wrote down my sandwich order, saying they would bring it out to my table, and then turned around and started doing something else. She forgot to take my payment. When she finally came back to the counter, I reminded her. The next day, I bought a veggie wrap at the library, and the cashier charged me for the drink and the cookie I had gotten, but not the wrap. It wasn't until I was eating the lunch and noticed that the price of the wrap was more than the whole total that I paid did I realize that she forgot to charge me for the wrap. I went back and tried to explain to her, but she barely spoke English, and it was very challenging. Still, armed with the empty wrapper and the receipt in hand, I explained to the best of my ability. The lady behind me in the line, who was holding only one drink was starting to get upset. I would have hated for the poor cashier to close out the register at the end of the day and realize that she had to pull out her own money to make up the difference. But, I have to wonder, is this some kind of test of my honesty from the universe, with two days in a row of trying to give me free lunch at someone else's expense?

My office for the day

I'm visiting my sister on the West Coast, and I'm installed in my favorite coffee shop in sister's city, planning to spend the day writing. I should be taking an actual vacation soon, but I'm saving that up for the weekend trip we have planned because I've got too much work on my plate to enjoy a vacation right now. Yesterday morning, because she was off work that day, my sister talked me into going to the mall with her. Although I got to hang out with her, and bought three really nice t-shirts that I can wear this summer, at the end of the day, I was out $60 (This is MAJOR shopping for me) and I was grumpy about not getting any work done, so I couldn't fully enjoy it. Maybe getting some of these worky things out of the way will help me to relax and enjoy the vacation this weekend. I've got an administrative letter to finish up today, plus some more substantive writing on one of the two papers I'm working on today. Let's see how it goes. Unlike where I worked yesterday, today's spot has the added benefit of actual air conditioning, as well as damn good coffee. Let's hope that this combo makes for a productive day in an unfamiliar work environment.