Have Laptop Will Travel

I took my laptop out on the road yesterday. The plan was to go to the library after yoga to write and wait out the time that the housekeeper was at the house. THWARTED! The library was closed for the day for some reason that was never quite clear to me because I didn't walk all the way up to the door to read the fine print. I could see the big CLOSED sign from the parking lot. I watched about 20 people walk up to the door and read the sign while I sat in my car munching an apple and trying to decide what to do. At first, I thought they might just be opening late, like on the half hour, but since no one sat down to wait, I finally realized that they were closed for the day. I didn't want to drive all the way out to college and walk half-way around the pond to go to that library though I will do that someday, so I knew I had to take the plunge:

I went to Starbucks! I bought a cup of coffee and set up my laptop. It wasn't too bad. I wrote almost uninterrupted for an hour and a half. One former student came over to say hi and I had a pee break. That was a bit of a dilemma. What do you do with your laptop and cell phone when you are working in Starbuks and need to go to the restroom? I waited until I was bursting before I decided to get up and go, leaving it all on the table. My rationale: No fool would steal a plugged in, up and running lap top in a busy coffee shop. So I clicked the SAVE button and went to pee.

When I got home, the housekeeper was still working, and she was cleaning my office, so I set up the lap top on the tiny table on the patio and plugged it into the power outlet for the fountain (which by the way is scummy from disuse and most likely breeding mosquitoes with West Nile virus—I need to do something about that). Writing outside was cool too. I turned on the drip system which in the back yard consists of a lot of those sprayers which made a lovely water sound and created a pleasant ambiance (this in lieu of dealing with the scummy fountain), and I typed away for about an hour.

I'm up to 5734 words which is well ahead of the daily quota. Good thing because I won't have much writing time the rest of this weekend. I'll be back on Monday with further WriMo news.

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