Not a bad little Monday, all things considered

My weekend, sadly, was not as productive as I had hoped. I got stuck slogging through the rank molasses of writer's block, and instead of getting up and taking a walk or something, I sat there trying to force blood to come out of my eyeballs or something. How annoying.

But I did do one thing that was productive: I discovered part of why the trailer was getting so hot. I've got a tarp over the roof, because it leaks and has needed fixing for at least three years. The tarp does the job just fine, although traveling with it like that is out of the question, unless I go to the desert or someplace equally rain-proof.

So, anyway, I've had the skylights open, thinking that would help to cool down the trailer, but on Sunday, I put my hand up by the open skylight, and felt the air coming in, which was like an oven. I realized, this had to be because the open skylights were creating an airspace under the tarp, which was being heated by the sun. This really hot air was then leaking down into the trailer, and contributing to the outrageous heat problem.

I know this because even the roof didn't feel as hot as that air (and it was barely 80 degrees outside) when I put my hand up to feel it.

I don't think this has solved the problem, but I do hope it's helped. The next step is to get an evaporation cooler that I can run inside the trailer. If I close the windows, and run the fans, that should make the trailer proof against the worst heat (and Morgan Hill has some astoundingly hot days) without costing a million bucks for the cooler, or a million bucks to run the cooler. I'll have to see.

On to today. I took Elise to school this morning, and then went home to get ready for my Monday morning career development meeting. I dyed my roots, which had the happy secondary affect of dying my scalp. For those who don't know, I've been having a problem with my hair going into hibernation mode all over my head. Translation: my hair is falling out. I think a lot of that is about the stress I'd been under at my last job, and the fact that I'd had two surgeries in the last year. Okay, anyway, dyed my hair...

I got ready, climbed in the truck, and headed out to the meeting, but as I was on my way, I just completely lost heart in going.

I turned the truck around and went to the Starbuck's near our house. I got a mocha latte and a breakfast sandwich, and spent the next several hours belting out some good work on my "witch" story. Lesson to be learned here: I've always worked well in college student unions, where I could get something to eat or drink, use the restroom, and have a decent bit of background white noise. I studied well, was able to concentrate better, and was almost always productive.

In all fairness, Jeff has been telling me for months to check out Starbucks as a place to write, but I thought that it would be nearly impossible to get a seat there in the evenings (and I still think I'm right about that). Now that I have time in the day, however, I think it'll work well. Tomorrow, Tuesday, I'm teaching in Elise's classroom again, so I won't be able to go back until Wednesday, but I'm going to plan on spending all the time Elise is at school doing my writing at Starbucks.