GiST Day 80: Head Full of Sunshine

1. Today was another perfectly sunny day, with temperatures far warmer than my basement suite. I was trying so hard to be productive, but after I saw in the weather forecast that this was the warmest it would get all week, I couldn't take it anymore. I threw on my flip-flops, I grabbed my little wrist bag that holds my keys and my cell phone, and escaped my house. I was a block from my house before I actually decided where I'd go. (As if there was any other real choice on a sunny day like today.) I went to the beach. A gorgeous walk through flowering trees and quirky old houses, and then forty-five minutes watching the waves, sitting in the sand, and putting my toes in the water. It was the best thing I could have possibly done for my brain. I need to escape to the beach more often.

(This was taken with my cellphone.)

2. Not only did I get actual housework and schoolwork done, but I made my own chicken stock! I feel so capable right now.

3. I was tracking down and ordering different primary sources for my dissertation research and was starting to have difficulty figuring out how to order the movies I need to watch. If I could convince my university library to order them from another university (especially since no university library in the province had them), it was going to be really expensive. But then on a whim I tried Googling the movies, and it turned out that one of them was on Google Videos (with English subtitles), and was available for download, and I was able to buy the other one for cheap from a German video store in Indiana, which is clearing out its obscure VHS tapes right now. (And that movie has never been released on DVD, only on VHS.) So, now I don't have to deal with trying to order movies through the library at all. Whee!

4. Tomorrow I'm going to buy red shoes, using the money I earned by tutoring the kid upstairs.

5. Seriously: I got my best work done on the day when I escaped to the beach for an hour and a half?

Update 6. My friend Simon's wife Mikako just had a baby girl today! (Since they're in Japan, the baby was born on the 22nd, as in tomorrow.) Hooray!