Monday started as every Monday does at Studio Pilates with Claudia. I can tell that I’m getting a little bit stronger, but I have a long way to go to be Fabulous at 50. The rest of the morning was filled with the very important task of preparing for the law school’s budget presentation.

At noon we had a faculty meeting, and directly afterwards it was time to go over and deliver the budget presentation to the Budget Committee. Lynn Stewart, our Budget Director, goes with me each year. This was my second year presenting, and I think I was a lot more nervous the first year. We submitted a modest proposal and spent the majority of our time updating the Budget Committee about developments in the law school, some of our priorities and goals and explaining what we would do with the budget we requested. We shared the fact that we feel the changes we are making will benefit the broader University as well as the law school. The presentation went well. Thank you, Lynn, for your hard work!

Later that day, I went over to observe a piece of public art. The artist, Kelsey Felthousen, constructed a house inside out in the Union Mall for her masters art thesis. She is sleeping, eating, and living in the Union Mall for 13 days with no walls or ceilings around the bedroom, living room, kitchen or bathroom. When I first saw it, I had no idea what that was…it just looked like a house sitting out on the Union Mall, so I went over and took some pictures . The inspiration for her project, entitled “My Space,” is to demonstrate to people how internet social networking sites like “MySpace,” “Facebook” and “YouTube” are allowing people to give away the last remnants of their privacy. To demonstrate this, she has set up cameras around her project, which feed to a viewing area in the Fine Arts Gallery, so everyone can observe her life. She is quoted as saying, “You’re not just telling your friends an inside story; you’re telling the world.” It’s very interesting, and has recieved quite a bit of publicity.

Because I haven’t been able to lately, I took my mom to Taste of Thai for dinner Monday evening and we had a wonderful, quiet meal. For an appetizer, we had the chicken pot stickers that are grilled and served with homemade sauce on the side. For dinner, mom had the Pad Thai Lay Puk. It’s a seafood dish with prawns, fish and scallops stir-fried with mixed vegetables in Thai brown sauce. I had the house combo: sauteed chicken, pork and prawns with baby corn, snow peas, onion, green onion and fresh mushrooms. We spent a relaxing evening together and I was able to catch her up on all my recent travels. My mom had never been to Taste of Thai, and she enjoyed it very much (especially the fact that she got to keep all the leftovers from both meals).