It's Friday again, and I'm just checking in.

I lost my keys today. But only temporarily. The problem with always having your keys is that you start to lose the ability to be conscious about them. My keys are just always there - I don't need to think about it. So when I was walking to my car this afternoon and stuck my hand in my coat pocket, I was a little surprised that they weren't there. Then I remembered that I had put my keys in my pants pocket that morning because the keys were cold, and my hands were trying to stay warm in the coat pockets. So I checked my pants pockets. No keys. But no worries. This happened last week too, and my keys turned up mysteriously in my backpack. I didn't remember putting them there, but that sometimes happen when you lose the ability to be conscious about your keys. Except this time my failure to remember putting them in my backpack turned out to be because I didn't put them in my backpack.

That's when I started to worry a little bit. I don't really lose my keys very often, mostly because there is a finite number of places that my keys ever end up:

• my pockets
• my purse
• my backpack
• the kitchen counter
• the dining room table
• the hook just inside my bedroom door
• my bed
• my desk
• the surface directly in front of me when I am working

And because I could eliminate all places in my house (after all, it required keys to drive to school), and all places on my own person, I was left with the last option - some surface that had at one point during the day been directly in front of me while I was working. And it had to be between the time I entered the grad lab at about ten (because I needed a key to get in) and the time I left the School of Education for the Institute building because there was no opportunity for me to use my keys while I was at the Institute building. That left the grad lab or my advisor's office, and my hunch was that the keys were in the grad lab.

And it's funny, because as I'm writing this I'm realizing that there's pretty much no point to this story. My keys were not in the grad lab, but (luckily) I paid a visit to our operations manager and someone had turned them in, and I got back to my car and home just fine without having to call my roommate for help or stay on campus longer than I wanted to on a Friday afternoon.

That's about as exciting as my week got, actually. I did nothing particularly social, other than chat with my roommate before bedtime and talk to a couple friends on the phone. I did get to go to the temple as a worker for the first time in nearly three months, which was wonderful and I'm excited to be back, even if I'll only be doing it once a month now. I ran on the treadmill a few times (and wish the weather would warm up because all my runs have been treadmill runs since that one short-sleeve weather day). I finished reading a book that I've been working on for a month (review soon to come). And beyond that I was super, super productive. I attribute this to three things.

1. Not doing anything social (not that I would have shunned social activities had they popped up).
   
   
2. Having lots of work to do, that was all either well-defined or interesting (this is kind of out of the norm, and it was a nice change of pace).
   
   
3. Working mostly in the Institute building, where I have a quiet room all to myself upstairs, and where there is no internet access. This means no distractions. Just me and the table and whatever I brought with me in my backpack. I think I might make a habit of it.

That's why I can write a fairly meaningless blog today without feeling guilty. I'll go back to grading papers in a few minutes when I'm through, and then go do something probably pretty low-key later this evening with other people who want to try to be productive on a Friday but only up to a point. And I think that will be a pretty nice end to a pretty nice week.