My Perfect Day

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I have just enjoyed a desperately-needed, utterly perfect day.

It was my first full day off in an entire month, and I am positively sick of working and of being stuck in my apartment…and I love my apartment.

So, last night, I turned off all my alarms and allowed myself to wake up naturally this morning

It was overcast and without the sun’s help, I slumbered until a little after 9 am. On a non-day off, I would have hated myself for such laziness (which would still not have stop me from lying in bed for another 30 minutes). But today, I languished in the impossibly soft warmth of my sheets, taking in the dim light from the bedroom window until I was good and ready to embark upon the day.

My mind full of all the beautiful, exciting things I was planning to do, I readied myself to join society with an energy I didn’t know I could summon anymore. My agenda was flexible to facilitate maximum leisure and enjoyment.

Here it is in no particular order:

• Listen to MuggleCast’s livestream
• Finish some Hogwarts homework
• Read
• Buy Cards Against Humanity
• Draw
• Visit the Cheesecake Factory
• Visit the Science Center of Iowa
• Sit in the coffee shop of some bookstore (yes, this was seriously an agenda item)
• Listen to music through headphones (again, seriously an agenda item)

Reading this list, you may think I’m pretty weird. And you would be right. As a rule, I never justify my actions to others (unless facing legal repercussions), but seeing as this is a blog – literal collection of the thoughts behind my actions – I will provide some explanations.

First, the easy ones:

Listen to MuggleCast’s livestream

MuggleCast is an exceptional Harry Potter podcast, full of quality analysis of and updates regarding the Potterverse, including the fandom. I recently became one of their fancy premium supporters on Patreon and now have access to livestreams of their recording sessions each week. I enjoy these streams even more than the finished podcasts because I can see the hosts and watch them in their natural habitat, mistakes and spontaneous responses included.

Joy upon joy, they were scheduled to record last evening!

Finish some Hogwarts homework

Being the obsessive Potter fan I am, I also have an account with Hogwarts Extreme (also known as HexRPG), which is a fantastic and extensive Potter fan site boasting contests, activities, discussion forums, fanfiction, and, most importantly, yearly Hogwarts classes covering all the subjects mentioned in the Potter books, as well as some you would swear were electives at Hogwarts that JKR just forgot to mention.

These classes include bi-weekly lessons written by other site members and very brief, very easy homework assignments which earn you house points instead of grades. Although the lessons can occasionally be hit or miss depending on the writing skills and creativity of the authors, I find them generally very fun and occasionally even enlightening (looking at you, Astronomy II). Plus, I adore it every time I think to myself, “I need to finish my Transfiguration homework…”

So, finishing Hogwarts homework joined the to-do list. Squee!

Okay, so now we reach the more eyebrow-raising pieces of today’s schedule:

Visit the Science Center of Iowa

Something about my essential character has shifted, and I blame the book I am attempting to write. One of my main characters – the beautiful, half-drawn woman mentioned previously – is a brilliant physicist.

The tricky part about that is, I am not a brilliant physicist.

I’m not even a physicist.

Or brilliant.

Or even just a scientist.

Hell, up until I became obsessed with writing this book, I didn’t even like science

I had absolutely no interest in it. In middle and high school, science was consistently my worst subject. It was my lowest score on my ACTs by far. The A- I received in Biology was the ONLY REASON I became Salutatorian instead of Valedictorian. And one more fun fact: physics remains the only class I have ever dropped out of.

However, once this story materialized in my mind, I was suddenly infatuated with science. My book has completely altered who I am and what I am interested in (is that normal?), pushing me toward every book about Physics, Chemistry, and Astrophysics I can get my hands on (or rather, afford).

It’s also the motivation behind my visit to the Science Center of Iowa.

Sit in the coffee shop of some bookstore

I’m sort of addicted to the cozy atmosphere of bookstore coffee shops. Now, if you happen to be a cretin with no knowledge of the difference between regular coffee shops and bookstore coffee shops, I pity you, and allow me to elaborate.

IMO, regular coffee shops are loud, overcrowded, non-intimate, stuffy, overheated, creaky places in which it is impossible to concentrate, have a conversation with someone, and generally enjoy one’s life. I always come away from a visit to a regular coffee shop hating humanity more than when I went in and craving a silent, forsaken corner in which to take some deep breaths and try to ground myself.

Bookstore coffee shops, on the other hand, are havens of quiet, calm, knowledge, thoughtfulness, spaciousness, and comfortable – dare I say tolerable – temperature. There are never many people in bookstore coffee shops (at least not in any I’ve visited) so you can always find some privacy and solitude, while still benefiting from the stimulating presence of those softly searching for books.

It’s also generally difficult to hear the infernal music the bookstores inevitably pipe throughout the building

(Why do they do that?!)

As someone who is incredibly attuned to sound and is therefore immensely distracted by music, I find it nearly impossible to read and concentrate while listening to familiar songs and those with English lyrics.

This proved quite detrimental to fifth-grade Mack as my teacher liked to play music with English lyrics during our class reading period. One day, I read the same page of Holes over and over for the whole period and still came away without understanding a word.

Yeah.

Now imagine the same scenario (minus the classroom), but with a book about quantum physics.

However, praise God, the fans or whatever in bookstore coffee shops shut out all that wretched music…

…and provide some lovely white noise just perfect for studying Hawking or Sagan. About every two weeks, I find myself craving this stimulating-yet-relaxing atmosphere and I make my way over to my local Books-a-Million or Barnes and Noble.

Today, I was a glutton and visited both.

It was glorious.

Listen to music through headphones

Last night, while working on endless book research, I dusted off my Bose noise-cancelling headphones (no, this isn’t a sponsored ad) and realized with amazement how awesome the music in my Spotify playlists is – particularly, the very playlist at the top of this post.

Now, I know these songs are fantastic; that’s why I saved them and added them to a playlist in the first place. I regularly listen to them in the car, and sometimes when I run or walk. However, during the latter activities, I listen through cheap, over-ear headphones that severely diminish the sound quality.

Finally listening through my noise-cancelling headphones was like entering a new world – one with bass that made my hands and feet move without conscious thought. That swirling, perfectly-balanced flood of sound took me to a place of such ecstasy and energy, I think I got a little drunk on it, and just had to repeat the experience again this evening.

So, that was the agenda for the day.

Did I complete it all?

Almost.

I did everything except draw (sorry, my love, you’ll have to wait another day for a jawline) and visit the Science Center (I languished too long in Barnes and Noble – perhaps next week…).

And, I only took a wrong turn/got lost twice.

What an exquisite day.

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