Not yet at 100%.

I feel like I really really really need to go to bed. It's 10:30. I don't even know what to say, except that it's only been five days since we touched down in the homeland, and it feels like everything in the world points toward the moment when we can finally, finally go to bed.

I did, however:

• roll content into its Canvas shell (sounds like delicious M&Ms, but it's not, not at all.)
• go to an exploratory meeting all the way across town at the university about strengthening the book culture of Salt Lake City. 
• work out for the first time since coming back to America.
• upon leaving the gym, feel the sun beat down on my head like a hardcore curse word.
• make a truly exemplary salad.*
• exchange about a hundred emails in which we took the temperature of our instructional team** at regular intervals and also nagged our poor Canvas administrator nigh unto death.***
• re-narrate a screencast, and curse the name of YouTube when it turned up its nose at the upload.
• flounce in to the bedroom to finish my trashy novel and
• read a trashy magazine.
• consider my outfit for tomorrow.
• entertain low-level mental chatter about how impossible it's going to be to do what I need to do this semester.
• think about getting up at ridiculous o'clock to be there on time for my first meeting. WOE.

But, as I say: I am now at 10:41 o'clock ready for bed, so all the bullets on the above bulleted list have just about exhausted me, clearly. And that is how I know that I am not yet 100 percent. Frankly, I am not sure when 100% megastore will be back in play. What with this weather, extra hot, and the jet lag, and my--let's be honest--bad attitude, it might be awhile. 

*Exemplary Salad: take equal parts herb salad and arugula and strew them upon a plate. Slice a number of cherry tomatoes atop the greens. Ditto English cucumber and fennel. Arrange upon the plate the precise number of artichoke hearts commensurate with your artichoke hunger. Crumble a requisite amount of feta on top of that. Take steamed green beans and sliced boiled new potatoes and put them on the top. If you like smoked salmon, some of that will be swell, too. Drizzle the following vinaigrette over all: glug or two of olive oil; petite dash of sherry vinegar; minced garlic clove; half teaspoon of Dijon-style mustard; salt and pepper. Whisk with a fork until it emulsifies.

Serve the salad with a piece of French bread torn with your wild-animal hands directly from the loaf.

**Temperature of the instructional team: fluctuating. Volatile. Centripetal.

***She is still alive, the soul of efficiency and capability. I am pretty sure that they can't be paying her enough.