This What I Did All Day series is turning out to be a great exercise in noticing the details of everyday life. And it’s catching on! My friends Suzanne and Emily are also giving it a whirl over at their blogs floribunda.org and Travel With Emily. Feel free to join with us if you’re feeling inspired!

7:00am Alarm goes off. Hit snooze.

7:07am Alarm goes off again and I roll out of bed. Start the coffee maker, wash up, eat breakfast, and get dressed. All of this seems to be a very quick a painless process this morning. Nice.

8:07am Leave for work. There’s a 9am meeting that I’m chairing and I want to prep a little for it. I score a standing spot by the doors (the side that doesn’t open) for the train ride in, which is second best to actually having a seat, because it means I can park myself in one spot and lean against the door.

8:40am Arrive at the office. Quickly check my e-mail and print out a document that I’ll need for my 11am meeting. Gather my things and head down to the 3rd floor.

8:55am I’m a little early and people straggle into the meeting. I use the time to review that 11am report.

9:10am Let’s get this meeting started! We’re talking with directors of our programs in the criminal courts about the specifics of how their programs work and what outcomes they think these activities lead to for the clients. I am eventually (meaning tomorrow or Monday) going to translate all of this information into a program logic model, which is more or less a blue print of how a program operates.

10:55am It’s been a really interesting discussion and we could easily keep going, but I’ve already scheduled a different meeting to take place right after this one, so we bring it to a close.

11:00am I go out to the reception area and bring the folks for my next meeting in. This meeting is with our program that works with street-involved youth, which uses a harm reduction model in getting these kids into more stable living situations and working with them on strategies towards safer drug use and safer sex. The meeting is to go over the results from the analysis of their evaluation outcome data. I analyzed the data back in 2005, but this time around, a program person took on the analysis with a bit of input from me now and then. A very positive discussion, as were the outcome results. A lot of my time right now is devoted towards our domestic violence programs, but I started at this organization working mostly with this homeless youth program. I still really enjoy working with them when I can, especially since this is closer to the issues that got me involved in this field in the first place.

11:50am Meeting is over and I head upstairs. I am ravenous, so I scarf down my sandwich, pretzels and clementines.

12:15pm I talk with my research assistant about a data analysis project with surveys from our program that provides domestic violence services within the public housing system. I explain to her the deadlines and what I think would be the best way of setting the analysis up.

1:00pm One of my coworkers, who was at the 9am meeting, arrives back in the office. We talk about our reactions and what we learned and whether our methodology is working well.

2:00pm This coworker and I start preparing for our 4pm meeting with our supervisor, reviewing the timeline of a major organizational initiative we’re involved in.

2:20pm The UPS guy delivers not one, but two packages for me! One is the carry-on suitcase that I just bought. You all might remember me waxing poetic about a lovely red suitcase that I bought this time last year, and now I have the carry-on version. Just in time for my Christmas trip home next week. The other package is the Christmas gift from mein Schatz (which I got permission to open early) — the most beautiful boots I’ve ever seen. Olive green, with rounded flat soles, slouching around the calves and with a cute little buckle across the top. How exciting!

2:30pm In my giddiness, I have abandoned my coworker.  After I recover, I turn back to him and try to focus and am a little happier for all the excitement.

3:00pm We finish prepping, and I give mein Schatz a call to say thank you for the gift.

3:30pm Work work work.

4:00pm Meeting with our supervisor takes twice as long as what we allotted it for, as usual.

5:50pm Go back upstairs to the office. Work work work.

6:45pm Pack my new boots into my carry-on suitcase and head for the train.

7:15pm Arrive home and smell something funny in the apartment. Sniff around for awhile and determine that it is a kerosene-like smell coming from our gas oven. Call Suzanne and make sure I’m not freaking out. Call and leave message for my landlords.

7:30pm Receive a number of phone calls from our two landlords, who own the pizza place next door, and who embody just about every Italian American in Brooklyn stereotype possible. They send over one of the pizza guys to check out the apartment. He sniffs around and confirms that it’s not gas. Goes downstairs and sees that the people that live downstairs are painting the stairwell with heavy oil-based paints. A couple of phone calls and consultations later, it’s determined that the kerosene smell is coming from the fumes below rising and being burned off my our gas oven. Disturbing, but a totally plausible explanation. All windows in apartment are opened, even though its 32 degrees outside.

8:40pm Fumes are fading (or maybe I’m just getting used to them). Suzanne calls on her way to her coop shift to make sure that I’m okay and that nothing has exploded. I try on my new boots and they fit like a dream!

9:19pm I eat some microwave popcorn, and read through the transcript a fourth time. Still wearing the boots.

9:40pm My roommate arrives home and I make her sniff around, but she doesn’t smell anything (other than my burnt popcorn). I show off my newly acquired items.

10:00pm I download music for Saturday’s Unsilent Night, wash up, take off the boots, and curl up in bed.  I am rereading “A People’s History of the United States” for a book club. It’s a dense book reframing American history from the perspective of the “the people” instead of the elite. I loved it the first time I read through it a couple of years ago, and I’m enjoying it this go ’round too.

10:45pm Time for bed. See you tomorrow!