I had just decided that if I was going to get any real work done, I would have to stop getting up from my desk every 10 minutes to make a snack.   Either have breakfast or write emails.  Not both, simultaneously.   I checked my cell phone and saw two missed calls from my sister, both before 9:30am.  In a family of night owls, an early morning call raises eyebrows.  Two create panic.

“I decided to take half a day and come to Madison,” she says.  “I’ll be there this afternoon.”  Oh, how easy it is to work when it has a definitive time limit!  I got so much done in the hours between her call and her arrival because it was not worth having work on my mind when she was here.  Something about extended leisure time motivates hyper-productivity in short bursts.

We ate dinner at Lao Laan Xang, my favorite restaurant in life.  We talked about books, magazines, work, science, maps, the video games we played when we were little.  It was an excellent way to spend a Wednesday; break the routine.

Today, I am grateful for all the things that make a surprise visit possible: cars, flexible bosses, the interstate, and mostly, my sister.