Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Training all day at Laurel Heights: Juggling Priorities and Projects by Linda Watkins. I didn't realize that I didn't need to take the class until 5 minutes in—the first page was a self-evaluation on which I scored very highly. However, I stuck it through, confirmed a lot of techniques that I'm already using, and still got some great ideas and tips to make me even more efficient and productive. I wrote Linda a long, rave review on the end-of-class evaluation, but I could have written even more. The class was well-designed, having different kinds of activities. Some were group and some were individual. Some required concentration and some were just fun. The multitude of different ways to engage the class material worked well for me—my worst way of learning is the lecture. (I've even fallen asleep in classes that go back and forth between lecture and hands-on.) She handled essentially every part of the teaching process—controlling side conversations gracefully, stopping for a quick stretch when the class is sleepy from lunch, asking everyone to synchronize watches with the clock on the wall so that the class starts from break on time, encouraging quiet people to talk more, gracefully asking frequent contributors to give others a chance to talk. On top of all this, her energy remained high throughout the entire day, and I kept thinking that if forced to I could do what she does but certainly not with as much energy. Lunch: takeout from Rigolo (415-876-7777, 3465 California Street) by myself: turkey sandwich, thin onion rings, Orangina: $11. The food here is a little on the pricey side, but it's worth it. I don't normally have mustard, but on a hunch I agreed to the default configuration and was pleasantly surprised to find gourmet mustard. The turkey meat was particularly juicy and delicious. The onion rings were sinfully tasty—I could not finish them all. This was my first time at Rigolo. If you order takeout, remember to grab your own fork and napkin—they didn't put these items in my bag and I didn't find out until too late. Back to Parnassus, did some catching up on e-mail. Muni going home was awful. I missed one bus by a minute, and it had left 3 minutes early. The next bus didn't come at all. It took me an hour to get home. Dinner at home with Patrick: roast cow, steamed asparagus, herb slab bread.