The day kind went by in a blur and felt almost like it was over before it started, but when I look back on it I was actually pretty productive. I got to the office on the early side of normal, made coffee and took care of a few administrative-type things before putting in some solid work on the thesis I’m supervising.

At lunchtime I walked to town with a friend who also happens to be both my boss and my dissertation supervisor (ah, the beauty of the minimal hierarchy that pervades Swedish academia), and we had a reasonably good vegetarian lunch in a very crowded restaurant. As luck would have it, we got there just before the real rush started and we didn’t have to fight (much) for seating or a place at the buffet.

On the way back to work, I decided to take advantage of the beautiful sunny-but-not-too-warm afternoon and walk over to the archives for a few hours instead of going back to the office. While there I got an “official” count on the number of letters I’m using for source material (there are 380 of them, roughly; some of the documents I’m not really sure how to count at the moment, so an approximation will have to do for now). I also took pictures of the letters from the first fourteen years of my study (1685-1699) so that I can transcribe them from the peace of my own deskspace.

Back at the office I worked a bit more on my supervisory tasks then met up with some fellow Ph.D. students at our local pub for food and drink. Some hours later I returned to my apartment, where I half-watched re-runs of The Big Bang Theory and finished up a bit of work I’d left undone.

I do actually have more work that I could or should do, but I’m tired and it’s nearly midnight and, well, there’s more to life than work, right?