The Date has been Set

I will defend my dissertation on Wednesday, November 3, 2010 in the early afternoon. Crazy.

No More Waiting

Got a note from DC today with just a few suggestions for edits, but nothing too major. She suggested I get to work on scheduling the dissertation defense sometime in the next 6-8 weeks. Wowzas. She even said this:

This reports some really interesting stuff! You WILL publish this model...it is good.

Seriously?

Looks like we'll have plenty for which to be thankful at Thanksgiving.

I wait

I wait for a response from DC. This has been a long week. I grow impatient. I also grow to enjoy not working on the dissertation, which is BAD! Hopefully my impatience will be kept at bay.

Remembering 9-11-2001

I neglected to mention yesterday that Wife and I did spend some time remembering the 9-11 tragedy. We were living in the Southeast, within two hours of the Pentagon, actually. Moose was not even two months old. Amidst all the tragedy unfolding relatively nearby and in NYC, it was the first day that Moose smiled. Imagine the irony in it all when that happened? Crazy.

A Different Saturday

It's pretty swell to be using an early Saturday morning to finish up a conference presentation proposal that pertains to my job and not to my dissertation. It has a tangible end to it, like in the next 30 minutes or so when it will be submitted and complete.

I've not yet heard from DC on the chapter, other than a confirmation e-mail on Thursday that she's adding it to her "To Do list." Fine by me: gives me time to take a breather from it. When I have time this weekend, I'll incorporate edits from a former colleague of mine who graciously took some time to read it last week. But the rest of the weekend will actually be a weekend. What's that like?

Out of My Hands

Yesterday afternoon, I turned in the draft of Chapter the Sixth to DC. Glad it's now out of my hands!

I've had some fun with pulling together all of the separate Word documents into one long document for the dissertation. I know, I know: it's strange that I have "fun" with technical stuff when most people run screaming from the room. Nevertheless, it's really swell to see it all coming together in one document. At this point, I need to write the abstract and official dissertation defense announcement pages. The former is a formal 350-word summary of the study, and the latter is a more informal announcement of my dissertation defense that's supposed to be in non-technical language. Honestly, if someone said I'd need to run defense for the Chicago Bears in order to defend, I'd do it. I really don't care - I'll do whatever the hell they tell me to at this point to get the fucker done.

I slept really well last night. I think I'm slowly beginning to unwind after 8 years of being pretty wound up. I know I still will have plenty of editing to do for Chapter the Sixth unless by some miracle it actually makes sense to DC. But somehow the thought of editing and writing the silly abstracts and stuff isn't nearly as daunting of having another full draft of something hanging over my head.

'Night.

I landed the plane

The landing gear came down and locked in place. It was a relatively smooth landing, if I do say so myself.

I just finished the first draft of the final chapter of my dissertation. It's all about editing from here. Holy SHIT that's pretty tough to believe. Honestly, I'm not yet certain the chapter is all that good, but at least the drafting is done. I will edit the shit out of it tomorrow and then send whatever I have to DC for her feedback.

Can't wait for this to be over. Time to watch Mad Men now.