I had a surprisingly productive day today. Let's run through my super duper productive day, shall we?

1. I woke up before 10 a.m.. This is impressive in and of itself, as I have been going to sleep quite late each night because I turn into a thinking machine after 11 p.m., and I become very productive in the wee hours.
2. I did an hour of tutoring.
3. I bought soap at Duane Reade, since I have been dealing with a lack of soap for the past few weeks, satisfying my need to be clean with my roommate’s soap.
4. I bought some fish at the fresh fish market down the street from my apartment, and bought some sushi rolling paper (aka seaweed) at the local Japanese store. More on this later.
5. I came home and had a very fulfilling conversation with Paula, my roommate

This is when my already pretty productive day turned into a super Duper productive day.

1. I spoke with one of the main interview subjects for one of my environmental stories that I will be doing in Florida next month. Let me back up here. I am going to be freelance producing environmental stories for Yahoo! News. The pay is pretty low but I do have the ability to shoot several stories in one trip, assuming of course I can find a few good stories that are all different and all near each other in a different city. This is something I have been working on for the past few weeks, and it looks like I'm going to be doing three pretty cool stories in Florida in late October. One about a dwindling bird population, the red knots, that will be preparing for their over ocean journey down south by stopping over for a bite to eat in northeast Florida near Gainesville. The second story is going to be about Lake Okeechobee, a huge freshwater lake just south of Orlando, which has had some major pollution problems over the past 80 years or so. The third, which is still up in the air, will be about a bird rehabilitation and release program near Orlando where they have just released their 300th eagle. Anyway, the woman that I spoke to today is helping with the first story about the red knots, and she was extremely helpful in organizing in scheduling the first two days of my trip to Florida where I will be interviewing several subjects and checking out the areas that the birds will be hanging out in.
2. Yes, it's that time of the season. Season 4 that is, of Iron Chef America, where I get to play Bobby Flay. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, basically it's one of the weirdest jobs you'll ever hear about -- I literally stand with my arms crossed for about five minutes at the beginning of the taping of each episode of iron Chef America where Bobby Flay, one of the iron chefs, is not actually cooking that day. I stand on a pedestal in smoke and shadows and pretend to be him for a very specific part of the show where they introduce the challenging Chef and require the three iron chefs, or rather ONE iron chef and two of the doppelgängers, to stand on the stage in the background. It needs to look like any of the chefs are ready for battle. Of course they already know beforehand which one of them is going to battle, so the other two don't show up that day, and instead they bring their stand-ins. That's where I come in. Anyway, I just found out my schedule for when I will be needed on set during shooting. So this is very exciting. And yes, I do get paid, and no I don't get too eat the food they prepare, but yes, they do feed us catered food. The other cool thing is that I have access to VIP tickets, so if anybody wants to attend a taping of iron Chef America, be sure to let me know, and I'll see what I can do. So far I have two requests from two of my students who think I have the coolest job ever. I tell them that yes, I do.
3. I also spoke with a person at wired magazine to find out about the status of an article I submitted two weeks ago. The article, I think, is quite funny and discusses my use of Skype on my handheld PDA while Maddy and I traveled around Europe during the summer.

Damn, I am one productive mother fucker mother!