Y?

Harumph

OK...so after much kerfuffle - if i get my abstract and final 5 pages done and proofed tomorrow, and my thesis  done and in tuesday, I will get it back wednesday with final comments and then it will go to my committee thursday AM... which is when I plan to go camping for the weekend in Alberta.

Then and only then will I squeak in the deadlines with not a day to spare and get everything to everyone in time for everything...and I can defend on Aug 30th.

Can I do it?

Do I have a choice?

I have to try.

Here we go...

Well fucksticks

So I may not defend until september after all.
One of my committee retired and can't be bothered to return for it. The other will be in Europe so we may be short people even if I can get my thesis in on time.
Know what?
I give up.
I'm just going to work my ass off this weekend (at the lake with my dad...I didn't want to visit or relax...that's for normal people) and hand in my thesis next week if I can and then take whatever damn date they give me. I'm not going to get excited about anything to do with this anymore. I just can't take this emotional rollercoaster. Whatever $$ it costs. I will believe nothing until I get it in writing.

I absolutely hate this whole process with every fibre of my being.

Useful Instructions

Back to the future

For a minute there I thought that today is the day Marty McFly went to...
Oy world - I would like to point out my lack of shiny plastic pants and flying car!
Get with it huh? :)

LATER:
Wow. I have been reprimanded by pretty much everyone I know and most of the internet!
Yes...if I wake up from my thesis induced, sleep deprived state and pry my eyes open with toothpicks I realize that Doc and Marty go to October of 2015 not June of 2012. 
Oh the shame...I am the victim of a crappy web hoax and have opened myself up to weeks of mockery (since usually I'm the one ranting against hoaxes...).


I did not mean to cause such a kerfuffle!
Feel free to  mock me mercilessly.

You Can Do It

Picked up a print of this at ComicCon.
So very much wish I could hang it in my office.
It will go in my mad lab at home instead...

Image by Kyle Burles. He does some amazing stuff.

Dare I hope?

I have just learned that an expert external reviewer for my thesis has been found (whew) who is agreeable to a teleconference review in August. And....there may be a tentative date in the last week of August for my defence.

It hasn't been rubber stamped by my supervisor yet, I will know soon. And then.
Then?

I have to submit my thesis by mid july and then prepare for the speech of my life. And an oral defense.

Meep.

Firefly

Went for a long walk this weekend with J at dusk. Saw fireflies! A rare treat. It was like nature knew we needed a break together...we saw (and heard!) bats, many types of birds (one I've never heard before sounded like some kind of scifi laser), fireflies, snakes and even a lumbering porcupine! (and mosquitos...he heh). Spent all saturday with J. It was amazing. Felt like a kid in skooshy love again.

I've had this song in my head ever since...

I was up until 4 last night proofing a thesis draft which was completely overhauled by my supervisor in TO and it is really coming together into a tight, fierce package 'o science. I needed to give it back to her to go over one last time before it goes to my local supervisor for what I hope will then be the last once over. My local supervisor is currently trapped in BC with his wife due to flooding and road closures so I have an extra day or so to work :). Things like that happening have changed my perception a bit -I'm just doing all I can on my end so that whatever happens time-wise I know I've done my best. What will be will be. Maybe it's the 3 hours of sleep talking, but I am weary of trying to force the world and others in it to do my meet my demands for August graduation. I am simply going to do all I can and hope for the best. Life will go on and I will finish in the end.

Courage.

Open letter to the cats

Dear Gavin and Geek,

I don't know which one of you is doing this (altho I have my suspicions), but I want to ask you both: could you PLEASE stop randomly pooping under the table? I don't have time to shampoo the rug and really have other things more pressing to look into right now. I know you're both very old, but I ask that you try to keep it together if you can.

If you do not desist I will take a dump in your food dish and see how you prefer it.

Charmed I'm sure.
Geo.

Time

Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can't buy more hours. Scientists can't invent new minutes. And you can't save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you've wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow. 
~Denis Waitely

jesus mary and joseph on a pogo stick

Once again, grad school farts in my face.
Seriously, my supervisor has had my discussion section since friday and only started to revise it tonight (she was "busy") and only sent me 1/3 of the total revised, when it was to be completed tonight. And it gets better - she feels there are "extensive" revisions remaining.
I am pissed.

But the thing is, I can only get so pissed, since all her revisions she has sent me are really good. They honestly make things WAY more clear and concise than I wrote them to be. They make the thesis better. She is the expert int he material and although my other supervisor has gone over them extensively and corrected for flow and grammar and general "making sensiness" she has the real nuts and bolts of it all in her head and is far better at making sure it all is expressed clearly.


It's just all the delays I can't bloody stand. All the back and forth. All the sending it by two people crap. She is so busy, that she just drags things the bloody well length of a football field out as far as time goes. She comments on all my hard work and asks why i don't involve her earlier but I do, in stages, when I can and she generally approves things before I go forward...and then revises the ever loving shit out of them again. Revising her own comments.  It's always for the better...but seriously.
Seriously.
I thought the point of a final draft was that you were almost done.

*I had a lot of bitter angry rage here but I deleted it...cause I'm a bit calmer now and I don't want to put that kid of spite and anger out there for you to absorb. And I"m calmer now...so think about a bunny K? OR a piece of pie...

Mmmm...pie...

Post thesis planning

don't be shocked by the tone of my voice

He hee. My 3 year old niece Lily can't quite put together father's day in her head yet. She figured it's a party with cake, so it has to be a birthday. She proceeded to wake up J's brother by wishing him happy birthday, and then wished all of *us* happy birthday too at the family BBQ we had sunday. We all just smiled and ate cake. It works  :)
Got to be a real human bean this weekend after a lot of thesis slavery. I am currently waiting for revisions from both supervisors now, so it was a busy fun weekend of things I wanted to do. Even got to bake up a storm on sunday to use up my giant rhubarb plant in the back yard...it was nice. I have some rhubarb matrimony cake for everyone at work today too...yum...
Just have to keep it together a little while longer and Mt. Thesis will be through revisions and on to the panel for their review before defence. With any luck it will be in before I take a week off to visit Dad and go to a music festival in the beginning of July. It all comes down to how crazy my one supervisor is. She is utterly unpredictable. And I hope she just reigns in the crazy so I can meet my deadlines. I am waiting to hear who my external reviewer will be and when they can be available for reviewing...
Because I want to defend and be done with this mess. I don't care if it's perfect. I'll settle for adequate.
Then maybe take a week off and sleep.
Oh to dream...

I was told that there would be cake...

Ran a 5K this weekend. It was nice, despite the rain. Well except for the blisters from my soggy shoes part...but what can you do. I knew my shoes were wearing out...Got cold and was rather a grumpface for the rest of the day I'm afraid. J got the brunt of it, but thankfully he still puts up with my crankface.

I ended up at my brother's for supper with my Dad which brought me back around. Sipping wine and chatting with my Dad always cheers me up. And my brother has sort of adopted a cute old lady who is a firecracker and must have been fantastic when she was younger and less frail...at first I was a bit resentful that my brother had decided she would be coming to most of our family gatherings, but as I get to know her I see why. Her family is all in the US and she can't travel anymore, so for her, it's' huge to be able to get out to family gatherings again...when you're old and frail I imagine that makes a huge difference in just wanting to go through the day. She's an amazing old lady, and I think, now that I've gotten to know her, it's nice having her around...I never really got to know either of my grandmas, so it's a neat thing. We sat and sipped tea after supper and she told us stories about walking home form barn dances as the sun came up singing and we agreed on the utter perfection of matrimony cakes as the best square ever.
They are you know.

Ha HA!

HaHA! Appendices!
(sorry...obscure Harvey Birdman joke...)
I am finished my mind numbing thesis appendices. Page after page listing all my recipes, chemicals, equipment, consumables and software used in my thesis and the companies that make them. Easily the most boring thing I've ever done. I had to resort to beer and full on dance music to keep going. J was out with friends so I had the house to myself, with the occasional dancing rant about the room. Finished right at 1AM when J got home. Feel very satisfied.
It really is coming together. I have a template of sorts to plop the thesis into now for the whole thing with all the borders and numbers and blah blah blah. And I am finishing up edits on the whole thing in the next few weeks with suggestions from my supervisors. It looks like a thesis now. It really does. I am hopeful that I actually may finish! To be honest, it is the first time I've actually felt this without a nagging doubt in my mind. I will finish. Even if my defence is delayed due to extraneous circumstances (like my external examiner being in an accident. Which (no joke) has already happened, so what else could possibly go wrong? Oh was that out loud? :P) this really will wind down soon...
Hot damn and hallelujah.
I"d better get brewing that celebratory IPA soon. This weekend perhaps?

Microsoft can bite my arse

Up until 1 working on editing and formatting. Not all gloomy though - I had some company towards the end, since J had some of his music show volunteer crew over and out on the deck after his weekly shoot - it was nice to have people about as I edited. They're all great people...hearing laughter in the house always makes me smile. They were still enjoying themselves when I went to bed to sleep like a baby rock. Since my knee is *still* being a pain there was no workout today either...feeling downright lazy. Will get back to some fitness next week...I signed up for a fun run 5K this sunday which I am hoping to actually run so I'm giving my knee all the rest I can. We'll see - it may be a fun walk instead.


Spent the day fighting with Microsoft Word. Literally. There was yelling. Yes, ze Formatting, she is a bitch. And, yes, it *is* a she - no man could be this complicated! Particularly ranty with the new Word 2011...where everything is arbitrarily moved, it would seem. And, to do some more obscure formatting required for the thesis (which I must submit electronically) I must first find them in the new rediculously convoluted menus!! 

Soon my minions. Soon...

BUT, I am getting there. Sections 3 of 4 revised. Waiting for feedback on the last section and putting together all the supplemental appendices and such (oh the endless lists of chemicals, recipes and protocols). It is coming. Slow and steady win the bicycle...or something like that...

The Big Chill, courtesy of Mr. Scruff

I like Mr. Scruff. He's a DJ from Manchester who plays and produces funky, nice music, and has a mild obsession with fish and tea. So much so, that after lamenting the lack of good tea at festivals he proceeded to start bringing his own to sell...and it's sort of blossomed. His tea is now available at festivals he plays at and thru his website...
I admit, liking his tunes and being a tea fanatic I've been curious to try his tea, but not enough to order some through the mail. Thankfully when we were in the UK, when stopping to get my fix of Kent apple tea in Faversham, I notised that the funky little foodie store also had Mr. Scruff tea. Had I been thinking I would have gotten more than jsut one box, but I already had a lot of food/jam/tea to cram into our suitcase and figured I'd just pick one. I am currently drinking his Look Lively tea and listening to his album Ninja Tuna while editing documents...
Yummers...

family

A week of hard work and another late night of errands and cleaning and bit of thesis work. Not as much as I'd wanted, but some. It will come. The house and yard are acceptable for my family invasion, and more importantly - there are muffins. My knee still aches from the random thing I did to it on monday so I slept in today and skipped working out (honestly have no idea how I hurt it -I climb a mountain with no issues and then come home to instant random knee twinge from daily life??). Now I am stuck trying to focus until I can head home and spend lots of time with my family. They'll arrive on the plane and Dad will meet them and bring them home right when I get home. My whole family. 

Yay. *kermit hands*

J always smiles when my whole family is together. He is always slightly in awe of the strength and closeness of my family...more because sometimes his can be a gong show of weirdness. My family? Well...no we aren't normal, but I grew up with us all together laughing and enjoying time as a whole. Dad was a teacher and so we spent summers off at the lake all together...and it's been a long time since the whole has been gathered.  I've grabbed some wine and hopefully they'll all fit in our house!

Meep. :)

I hate that I'll likely have to hide for 2 or 3 hours on saturday and work on my thesis (and work on it all sunday after they leave...*sigh*) as I have to meet with my Toronto supervisor and hand in my edited conclusion section here on monday, but I will make it all happen even if I pull an all nighter. My family visiting was a happy surprise and I really can't wait to see everyone, even for just  a few days. They are here at my place until sunday when they go up to visit dad for a week at the lake. I had hoped that I and J, and maybe my brother, could get away to be up at the lake with them, but it just won't work right now with life being it's crazy self. Even so - I am so glad to everyone, even for a little bit (besides - I don't think we'd all fit anyways!). They live in Ontario and last time we were all together was Mum's memorial almost 2 years ago. I look forward to much more laughter and smiles. My sis and her hubby look after 4 foster kids and this is their first family holiday in almost two years, and maybe the last one with all their kids together, since my niece and nephew are in their 20s now (wow my sis is 10 years older than me but that made me feel OLD to write!) My gorgeous niece is in university now and my nephew is married and a new dad - and I get to meet my little great nephew tonight! 

Meep.

Man, I am SO excited. I am looking forward to an evening of visiting in the house and sitting out on the deck. No real plans yet, just visiting. I admit, I am determined that not even my brother's wife (who is an emotional handful and can be very challenging, especially if things don't go her way or aren't planned to the minutia) will interfere with the weekend. I can't wait to get home!! :)

Hope you all have a great weekend!