My Eyes

My mother visits this weekend. Her visits are often marked by going out for Italian food. So we went to a local Italian place up the street that we discovered last weekend. I am pleased that I did not overeat this time. Not the case last weekend, but I digress.

Mom footed the bill, which was very nice. She showed me the check and asked me how much tip she should leave. I pulled out my trusty tip card from my wallet: it's a series of charts that show dollar amounts and their 15% and 20% tip amounts. To my horror, I could hardly read the little card unless I held it about TWO FEET away from my eyes. Wife laughed.

Honestly. Bifocals at age 38?

Where was I?

Time flies when balancing the various components of life sucks the energy right out of one's brain cells. I'm finishing up the re-coding process. The more I do it, the faster I get with it. This is merely an organizational step that must be done in order for me to provide evidence toward the large chunk of the results chapter I've already written. Pain in the ass, but I'm almost there.

I've taken part of this week off from work to get it all done. It's been alright. Not as productive as locking myself away in a hotel was last summer, but certainly more affordable. It is helpful, also, to anticipate going back to work and not being so behind as I was after the summer time off I took. Today I'm in the library again, and it's going well.

Actually, I'm sort of entering a "summer" season at work because I just completed a large annual report. There are a few major tasks here and there, but I'm no longer launching anything new for quite a while. This is good.

Back to it, then.

Halloween 2009

We had a nice Halloween this weekend. Wife's sister was in town. Unfortunately we didn't get any photos of her, probably because she was taking most of the ones you see here. More later.

Slow and Behind

I haven't posted here in a month. Probably because I really haven't worked on TFD in a month. We moved Moose into his new school today, which is GREAT. His school/therapy will finally get back into a routine, which will be good for all of us. [contented sigh]

I'm behind on a couple of projects at work, probably because I am constantly sitting in meetings to which I'm called or invited. Tomorrow I have meetings from 9:00 AM-5:00 PM straight through, save one hour in the middle of the afternoon. Seriously. I mean, I understand why we all need to meet together, but when exactly does one get one's work accomplished?

I am getting through some hurdles, though. Settling the school thing is good and removes some of the stress from my plate. Also, I attended a conference here in LSC and even did a workshop with my boss and a colleague. It went well, and it was important for me to attend this meeting. I made some new connections and revived a few that were dying off, so it was time well spent. Last year I attended this same conference, and it didn't feel like my time was well-spent, so this was a welcome surprise.

Assuming I indeed am able to plow through these next couple of projects and then finish a division-wide report by the end of next week, I will be able to take a week off (11/9-13) to focus on TFD. Finally.

And I thought I'd be defending the dissertation by Thanksgiving. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Honestly at this point I'll be surprised if I ever finish. I know it will probably happen, but I have absolutely no idea when.

Droning

I've created a playlist of songs on my iPod that is basically songs that drone. These are sort of repetitive songs with a steady bass line, easy rhythms, just enough to block out extraneous noise and let me think. Hearing the same songs each time I work seems to help me focus. Guess it's sort of training my brain to focus when I hear these songs. Interesting.

Back to the drone...

Re-Coding

This is the first week in a while where I actually spent more than just one day on the dissertation. I was glad to be back at a cafe I've found nearby on recommendation of a couple of friends.

I've written at a conceptual level on the results chapter for while now, and that's been an extremely helpful process. I now have a good picture of the theory itself as it starts to take form. However, more recently I realized that I was struggling to remember the details of the interviews. Also, I am starting to mix up which participant said what quote. Last March, I took a pretty big shortcut by using NVivo to code only interview summaries (to save me time) and not the interviews themselves. It was a good decision at the time, because it allowed me more time to start writing. However, now I need more detail. I'm now using a concise list of my most relevant codes and am going through the interviews, adding codes where needed. I think it's the only way I can keep all of the details straight in my head. Yes, it's time away from writing, but I'm at a real block now and I need to do this to get through. This morning it took me only an hour to code one of the longer interviews. I'll get better at coding with my short list as I go along, so I figure I can get that one-hour time down to perhaps 30-45 minutes. Hopefully I can fly through the recoding process during the next week and be set to finish up the results chapter in October.

However, as my wife always says, "Want to see God laugh? Tell him your plans!"

Updates

Oh yes, that's right. I keep a blog.

There has been a ton going on, and none of it is related to the dissertation.

First: we had a stellar moment for our son at our falling-off-the-left-edge-of liberal church last weekend. It was the Sunday for a children's sabbath program. Typically, we have Moose sit out on these things. Frankly, that always makes me and the wife shed a tear or five. Seeing the stupid typical kids up there singing their little hearts out off pitch is pretty hard on the ears when we know Moose can out sing the entire group. That statement is from my unbiased perspective as a musician, and not as a proud parent. OK, this is slightly tongue-in-cheek, but not entirely. Moose is a really good musician, but no one would know this since he cannot share his talents in these typical environments.

While we had no major musical breakthroughs, we did have one cool moment: he was able to participate in the children's processional with the rest of the kiddos for the first time. Many tears were shed, and there was great rejoicing. Maybe he'll be directing the children's choir in a few years. haha.

Second: we are probably pulling Moose out of his school. There is an excessively-long story to go along with this, and the last two weeks have been a bit rough. I won't share it all here, so if you'd like more information, contact me directly. Fortunately it's very likely we'll be able to get the same training for Moose in spite of all of this, but it's been rocky nonetheless. I am SOOO glad we don't live in SCT anymore. There is no way we would have any other options for Moose's education if we had stayed there.

So, I'm back in a cafe continuing to plug away on the dissertation that I easily forgot about the past couple of weeks. I pretty much have no chance of defending the entire piece prior to Thanksgiving as I had hoped. However, I'm going to attempt to pretend that Thanksgiving s my deadline nonetheless. I will be lucky to have a shitty draft by Christmas, but if that actually happens, then at least I'll be finished with TFD by graduation in 2010. It's only four years after I had planned, but fortunately two years prior to the real seven-year drop-dead deadline.