Ideas for Homebound Sabbatical

After 16 years in academia, I am taking my first sabbatical. Many of my colleagues take this opportunity to go to different cities or countries to work with colleagues and get additional training. This avenue just doesn't work for my husband and teenage son and so I am going to construct my sabbatical around my trips to conferences and Ann Arbor broadly. My sabbatical goal at the moment is to increase my knowledge of brain imaging and genetics in order to add these topics to my ongoing research projects looking at children growing up in different socio-economic situations. Another potential goal will be to write a book on how parent's use language to socialize children. We generally look at parenting behavior to understand child outcomes but recently I have collected two years of data on parent and child conversations and there are some interesting findings to discuss. The intent of this blog is to catalog all the different places that are recommended to me as good reading and writing places and critique how successful I am at getting work done in these different places. So, if you stumble onto this blog and have suggestions--please share--and I will let you know how it works out. If you are interested in my research topic--I may be updating a little on that as I go along as well. You may also see some of my rants regarding how psychology needs to increase their scientific integrity by designing better studies. However, those will not be the primary posts. My list so far includes the following:

1. Take a day trip on the Amtrak train between Ann Arbor and Chicago. Not sure yet if I will stay in Chicago and do work or just get back on the train and return. This should get me about 10 hours of time for work. 
2. See if the Gallup Park Education Center is available to rent at a reasonable price. I know I write and think better when I'm looking at nature.
3. Work at the Zingerman Bakehouse where coffee and picnic tables are available.
4. Work at various Ann Arbor libraries. 
5. Coffee and work at Jefferson Market. 

As you can see, I am trying to find spots that are not on campus but also conducive to getting reading and writing done. I'm also looking for places where it will be hard for me to see people I know. My goal is to start this in September. I already have a trip planned to San Diego then and I'm thinking of including my time there into the reading and writing time of my sabbatical as well as some methodological training. Feel free to come along for the ride as the Psycho goes on Sabbatical!