Summer classes wrapped up on Wednesday — I taught three sections, two face-to-face for six weeks, and one online all summer) — and I finished grading on Friday. With all the work the classes took over the last six weeks, I didn’t get as much time on my dissertation as I wanted (hardly any the last five weeks, really).
I’m headed to Toronto tomorrow for some research, so I decided that I’d spent Saturday preparing for the trip (organizing books, doing laundry, cleaning up, and so forth) and extend the drive to Toronto. I needed a change of scenery to get some writing done, so I decided to drive east, stopping periodically to write before packing up and continuing east and then north, and then west again.
Sunday morning I woke up, finished packing, and drove an hour to Williamsport, where I wrote for a few hours at Starbucks. It was quite productive. After lunch, I drove onto Bloomsburg, about an hour east of Williamsport, but their Starbucks was closed (it’s on the campus there), so I drove through the lovely hilly countryside to Reading, where I was able to get some work done. Reading felt less productive than Williamsport, but I got a little done yesterday evening, and stayed in a hotel.
Unfortunately, hotels still feel like they did when I was 16, so I wound up staying up really late watching television (hey! I don’t have it at home!). This morning I was groggy, and tired of Reading, and cranky. I got a little done this morning at a cute coffee shop in West Reading, before eating lunch with a friend in town, stopping at a small town to visit another friend, and then driving to Bethlehem.
I’ve had some good writing here at Wired Café, including tackling this one section of a chapter that’s been giving me problems (it still is), drafting the intro of another chapter a bit, and taking some notes on a book. I also had a lovely dinner and beer at Bethlehem Brew Works, suggested by a Twitter friend. I kind of like Bethlehem. It’s cute.
So tonight I guess I’m heading northwest toward Toronto, and I’ll stop somewhere before heading to Toronto tomorrow, probably with some stops for writing along the way. Overall, while Reading was a frustrating writing experience, the trip’s been productive. And I’ve seen parts of my beautiful state that I haven’t seen before. And I got to see two friends briefly who I hadn’t seen in a while.
I’ve been meaning to ask: what are you doing on your research trip in Toronto? Are there libraries that you mean to access, specific people that you want to interview? Also, Kivo is from Bethlehem. I really enjoy when we go back and visit his family–it really is a cute town. He hadn’t heard of Wired, though, so likely we’ll check it out the next time that we are there! Safe travels.
Yeah, I didn’t say a lot about the research I did, huh? I visited Snakes & Lattes cafe and interviewed the owner and a few customers about the space and their ideas about sociality and technology.
Wired was really cute — and they appear to have good food (I only had the coffee).