The best meetings

I had two fantastic meetings today, very different, but both were great. In the first one, Joe and I met with P's husband S, ostensibly so Joe could learn more about Costa Rica, where P&S lived for a few years, but also because I've been hoping to connect S. with Joe ever since last fall, when I first heard about S. and was first getting to know Joe well. Joe's work on sustainability would very much resonate with S's own history (he created a sustainability minor at his university), and S. is retired now and has time and energy to spare. Well, so after they'd talked about Costa Rica for maybe half an hour, I raised the topic of the school that Joe wants to start. S. got more and more excited, and when Joe mentioned that he's doing a workshop in August to help people become community change agents with the coming collapse of Western civilization (not something I myself quite agree with, but all of Joe's ideas seem fine in a context of generally difficult times too), anyway, when Joe mentioned that, S's jaw dropped, and he announced, "I'm in!" Yeah!

An hour and a half later, I was at a downtown Italian restaurant with three other women on the board of the youth orchestras, eating salads. We heard great stories about each other's kids, along with other fun socializing, then we switched to business mode and set about planning a new committee, and we did that with great efficiency, and then we were done! Voila!

Now, I didn't get much of my actual work done today, but I did submit paper no.4, and that is a fine milestone.