An epic Risk game with some parental units. I lost miserably.
We are so distinguished!
The bike camping trip.
Most miserable backpacking trip in my memory. Black flies, mud, humidity, thunderstorm, high winds that knocked over trees onto boats. Horrible.
Evidently it’s been nearly a month. Time flies when you’re having fun and all that. Summary:
Weekend 1: Went bike camping. Rode 35 miles. Camped at charming free campground off of trail. Listened to trains all night. Started raining. Ken blew out his tire. Not tube, tire. Ken and Jason rode to conveniently located bike shop to buy another. Continued to ride through the rain. Were freezing cold, starving, and grouchy. Some participants vowed never to set butt on bike saddle again. Hot food never tasted so good.
Weekend 2-Week 2 – Weekend 3: Parents and sister arrive. Week of revelry and NO WORK commences. Details of the whole trip found here and http://whorse.xanga.com/747982914/ohiony-trip/. Thanks Sara.
Weekend 3: 2:00 Graduate! You may call me Dr. 5:00 Pour tea all over diploma. Rest of life: never hear the end of it from Ken.
Week 3: Much anxiety and loneliness caused by sending cats to WA with family. Set up 2 on-site interviews for early June.
Weekend 4: Hot weather. Took Ken’s new rifle out shooting. Only shot six rounds through it because I’m pansy. Ken developed bruised shoulder after 40ish rounds. Rode the towpath and train Sunday afternoon. Ken’s face swelled up twice it’s normal size. For future reference, bring allergy drugs when contact with outdoors is expected.
Week 4 (that’s this week): Went to Pastor’s house for dinner and bike ride. Instead played Uno and read books to kids as a huge thunderstorm with funnel clouds and hail the size of marbles hit. Finished drafts of 3 papers. Finally had friend from church over for dinner after 3.5 years. Put away laundry for first time since last blog post… Getting very excited about interviews. Hoping all this works out so we’re not homeless.
Maybe someday I’ll get pictures off of the camera and post more details, but since I’m spending the majority of the next two weeks traveling to and from interviews and after that we’re moving, I wouldn’t count on it.
One thing before I leave you again for a month: One of my interviews is in Albuquerque. I think we would REALLY like living there. I have most of an afternoon and evening to explore with a car on my own. Anybody have advice for things I should check out with an eye towards possibly moving there in two weeks? Information about Albuquerque in specific or about things to look for when relocating in general would be appreciated.
I wrote up this beautiful post about my angel food cake, but it’s meant to have pictures in it and once again finding time to get them off of the camera and onto the internet eludes me. Maybe next week? I know you’re all on the edges of your seats.
With Laura as my inspiration, I made grapefruit curd with the egg yolks. It’s really good, but I haven’t quite figured out what it goes best with. So far I’ve tried it on the angel food cake (too sweet), by itself (good, but so rich and sweet you can really only have a few bites), and in malt-o-meal (random? Yes, but that was one tasty bowl of malt-o-meal). I think it would be best over top of a not too sweet vanilla ice cream. Home-made vanilla ice cream would be perfect. Too bad Ken hasn’t found a good deal on the ice-cream maker he wants yet.
I’ve finished first drafts of 2 papers at work, and hope to get another paper to 1st draftable condition this afternoon. I’ve also applied for some more jobs, since I have heard very little back from anybody about the ones I’ve already applied for. I hope whatever job I get won’t require just sitting at a computer all day every day, because I’m getting pretty antsy.
Tonight we leave for Pittsburgh and our second bike-camping adventure, which I’m pretty sure is going to be less intense than our first. I hope so anyway, because I am in far worse shape this year. On the other hand, I now have fancy-dancy clipless pedals on a beautiful old french touring bike so it should make 38 miles of mostly flat riding a joy. The weather is supposed to be nice (only 40% chance of thunderstorms) and we’re going with our outdoor adventuring friends. I’m excited!
If it’s written on a wall in chalk, it must be official. Now somebody give me a job.
Yes, I did.
It was kinda fun, actually. Not that I want to do it again…
Thanks everybody for your well-wishing and prayers!
At 2:30 I start my presentation – easy peasy. I could give it in my sleep by now.
At approximately 3:10 the public is dismissed and I start the really difficult part. I am not as terrified as I ought to be, I think. A glance back into the archives at this post tells me I was freaking out way more before my Masters defense. Probably about the same as before I gave my proposal exam.
I’m pretty sure freaking out isn’t going to help me know any more, so it seems rather pointless. I feel like there is no way that I will ever know as much as at least two of the profs on my committee no matter how long I live, so I just hope they ask me things about which I have some clue. Luckily, I’ve been studying this subject matter for 4 years now, so I should have a few clues. Hopefully they don’t flee from my brain at the crucial moment.
Hopefully I’ll have good news tomorrow night.
So, I’ve just passed the 12 hours at work mark. Not overnight though! I got an email last night at 10:30 as I was getting ready for bed that my advisor had put my dissertation in my mailbox. The man is super dedicated. Best advisor ever. I don’t work well after 11 PM, though, so I got up early and was at school by 6:30, figuring that whatever comments he made, it certainly wouldn’t take me more than 10.5 hours to make them. Yet here I am.
…and that’s the end of that story, because I just got my final comments back! Time to make changes, then make copies, then go home. Do I even post this?
I think so.
I promise I’ll put up pictures of our honeymoon (that sounds really weird), but for now and update on school stuff. Because that is what I do.
Dissertation = 179 pages and off getting its last proofread. It needs to go out to committee members on Thursday (that would be the day after tomorrow), so I may be pulling my first all-nighter of my educational career tomorrow night if I get a lot of changes. I would find that ironic. I got this far without ever staying up all night. Last night was the first time since we got back (excepting Sunday church and two half-hour Discovery show Hulued) when I wasn’t writing, eating, or sleeping.
Today has been busy trying to get a defense date scheduled. Coordinating 4 professorial schedules is NOT easy, but I think we are set for 2:00 on the 24th. Yikes.
I need to decide before Thursday whether or not I’m walking in graduation.
Against:
It costs $200 just to RENT the silly robes.
Case, in it’s infinite wisdom, holds graduation on Sunday morning. Clearly no Christians go to our school!
For:
I think my parents and Ken’s dad are tentatively planning on coming out.
I think my advisor wants me to.
It’s a once-in a lifetime opportunity.
Thoughts? Convince me one way or the other.
1. The warm snap has ended. An inch + of ice fell last night, and another couple inches of snow today. Snow I like, but ice not so much. I chickened out and walked to and from school instead of riding.
2. Dissertation length at noon today = 76 pages. Dissertation length now = 111 pages.
Unfortunately I think I’ve now finished most of the easy stuff – putting in pictures, already published paper sections, etc. Now I have the hard stuff that’s actually writing as opposed to organizing. I told my advisor I’d get him a copy of my background, experimental methods, and results before I leave on Thursday, so that’s the goal.
3. I’ve had a deadly cold since Friday. I haven’t been this sick in a while, but I’m hoping I’m on the mend. I haven’t blown my nose or coughed something disgusting out of my lungs in nearly 15 minutes, so that’s pretty impressive.
4. It’s bedtime. Goodnight.
This was written at lunch time on Monday, but I realized I wanted to put a few pictures in from the weekend and decided to wait to post it until I got home. And now it’s Sunday. Such is life.
Happy Valentine’s Day! I hope everyone reading this has the opportunity to consume chocolate. I got Ken a pair of shoes. Nothing says romance like having dry feet for a change.
I talked to my advisor on Friday, and he’s disappointed that I couldn’t get the experiments to work, but sounds like he’s ready to let me finish them up and concentrate on writing. So, I have a week and a half to finish a poster, make and practice a presentation, and get as much dissertation written as humanly possible. Sunday Edit: At this point, as much dissertation as humanly possible = 2 pages. But I fixed some problems in what was already written, so it may not be longer, but it’s higher quality!
I took the weekend off of dissertating to go camping. Yes, it’s February in Ohio. I was not hugely excited about it, but Ken and our camping buddy Jason have been planning this for months so I was determined to try to enjoy myself. It turned out to be fun! It didn’t get too cold (Friday night low of 25, Saturday night low of 27) and thanks to Jason we had a ton of wood to burn to stay warm.
We ate a lot of good food.
We explored the frozen arctic on skis. Ok, I guess it’s just a frozen lake, but it was pretty neat.
We the guys built their signature giant fire.
It was a very relaxing trip and good to stop working for a few days.
The big news for today is that the temperature is currently 38 and I rode nearly the entire way to school on wet pavement! If this keeps up as forecast the snow that’s been on the ground since the first week of January will be gone! Edited to say: It was in the 50s (!!!) all week, and the snow is mostly gone except for a few big piles.
In pursuit of cold work 