Five Minute Daybook

It might have been nice to clean up this spot and hide the cord,

but, oh well. Who cares, right?!

Five minutes, because it's midterms week.

First question: What is my latest brilliant idea?

My new wastebasket (above). It’s a tin that belonged to my great-grandmother and then my grandmother and now me. I had been tossing crumpled pieces of paper on the floor in that spot (the printer is off to my right and produces a lot of paper, which computer use was supposed to save), and I thought it might be nicer to have something there to catch those papers. The tin wanted a more useful job to do than just sitting around in the kitchen, so, now it is my wastebasket.

Where am I?

Sitting at the computer in my apartment. My computer is in my second bedroom, just off the living room, and is actually used for everything I can’t do (or don’t want to) in the other rooms. In early morning, this is the cheeriest room in the house. The rising sun shines warmly in here.

What am I wearing?

Is this important? I am wearing blue jeans, a grey light-weight sweater with ¾ length sleeves, reading glasses and bare feet.

What am I thinking about?

Besides doing multivariate analysis, trying to remember the geologic time-table in relation to the events of the geologic history of the national parks of the Colorado Plateau, and reading about the environmental justice movement, I’m thinking about my family (miss them). I’m thinking about why I think hand-written letters are better than email but that email is useful in some cases. I’m thinking about why keeping a blog is positive for me in some ways and why I will probably try to keep doing it in whatever way works. It will be simple. I’m also thinking that I really want some dark chocolate and maybe another cup of coffee. Someone please bring me some chocolate! I’ll take care of the coffee.

In the kitchen?

On a good day? This week? Leftovers! I’m just cooking really simply off the top of my head. No recipes. Lots of vegetables—right now I’m featuring winter squash in my kitchen. I just roasted delicata squash halves last night with butter, maple, curry powder, and salt and pepper. Oh, yeah--and after it cooked, I smashed the maple butter into the squash, squeezed over some lime juice, and ate it; you can eat the skin of delicata squash. For lunch, I’m sitting here eating leftover dal and broccoli. When I am finished with lunch, I am also finished with this post.

What am I thankful for?

Truly, everything. God has been good to me.

What's this?

This is what I do for fun now. I go with my class to places like road cuts next to the interstate to hang out for an hour or two. And who would have guessed I would want to stay longer?! This stuff is fascinating. (Picture is of a dike, in case you didn't know. An unusual, bent and curvy one.)

What am I reading?

Well, books for my classes. It’s week five of the term, and in one class alone, we are on our fourth book. And besides that, just for me, I’m reading The Wild Muir: Twenty-two of John Muir’s Greatest Adventures (taken from his journals). This is a fun book to read, especially if you love the outdoors, which I do. I’m also reading through Elspeth’s Wonderful Weekend Book again. I look at her blog occasionally, too. . .

And that’s that. Lunch is over, and it’s time to get busy. I have a project to finish by tomorrow morning (which really means by bedtime tonight because I am way too old to pull all-nighters or even to stay up really late (though I did once this past week!).

(Okay, that took more than five minutes.)