Commute time

Yesterday I had lunch with my friend Kendra, who is an avid fan of all things Icelandic and also a professor at UCLA. She had the keys to my storage room--long story--so it seemed wise to just drive up to LA and get them instead of having her mail them. She always asks me about my progress on the dissertation, since she's a Berkeley PhD and knows how tough it is to actually finish. So I was telling her about how hard it has been to figure out where to work on my dissertation in Iceland. At my apartment, I have a very nice home office with a comfortable chair and a great view, but being alone all day is hard for me. So I reserved a desk at the Arni Magnusson Institute, where there is a nice routine of coffee breaks and interesting people around and lots of books, but the chair and the desk are so uncomfortable, my back, arms, and wrists are killing me after working there. Kendra always worked at the National Library, and I like working there also, the desks are clearly more comfortable, they have all the books one could need, and there are people around. But the people there are not very friendly; ie. it is not the sort of place where I could jump up and go "oh my god, I just found the coolest reference!" which of course you can do at Arni Mag, if the references is truly cool (by geeky medievalist standards). This is rather important for me; I believe working on the dissertation should be exciting and fun. The main problem with both Arni Mag and the National Library though is that it is a 45 minute drive both directions from my apartment, an hour and a half commute each day. When I told this to Kendra, she rolled her eyes and said, "Elisabeth, I am living in Los Angeles." I knew what she meant. A 45 minute drive to work is considered really good by LA standards; our drive back from Los Angeles to Mission Viejo yesterday was 2 hours, and that was with traffic generally flowing.