With Good Reason

I'm in year eight-and-a-half of this doctorate. I am fortunate that only a very small number of people have come right out and said, "Why the fuck is it taking you so long?" I actually don't mind the candor of those rare few, though I do find them a bit annoying and, well, social-climbing or one-upping. I don't make much time for those who climb or one-up (yes, that's right: "one-up" is now a verb). While I wouldn't refer to these people as my friends, as I said I don't mind the candor. What I do mind are others whom I can tell are thinking about asking this question but don't actually have the balls to do so. I can pretty much see right through them.

So I usually explain to both those with and without balls that the dissertation is my third priority behind 1) the family and 2) the job. The order of importance will never change. My priority list may not seem to be a full plate to some, but my family life can be a bit different than it probably is for others much of the time...

For example, read the Wife's post from this evening. Then ask me again why I'm not done yet. After an evening like this, I think I have a good reason to let my brain fry in front of the TV for 90 minutes. I just don't see a problem with it. So maybe I won't make much progress on the dissertation this evening, but I did help comfort my kid as he mentally tortured himself for 45 minutes about an issue with our telephone that doesn't really exist. Being there for him was far more important than working on the fucking dissertation.

I don't intend to use my son's disorder an excuse. It's part of the balance of our lives, and I wouldn't give up that balance for anything. In spite of Moose's disorder, or my "mixed-up" (ha) priorities, or any of the other stuff that life has brought our way in the last several years, I am still making progress on TFD. Wife and I are still married. My kid is growing like a weed, and he's healthy. Bottom line, I am being true to my priorities, and the process is working for me.

No More Public School

As I mentioned earlier, Wife and I have been trying to make a decision on whether or not to keep Moose enrolled part-time in the public schools. As of yesterday, we indeed decided to pull him out. The decision is based on a couple of factors, first and foremost being that we're not allowing for either program (the verbal-behavior clinic and the public school classroom) to really have their maximum benefit when he's not attending either full-time.

Also, we had him at the elementary school in the first place to maintain a relationship with the public schools because we always thought that eventually he would catch up and be able to interact with his age-appropriate peers. However, at this point, given the fact that he's three years behind his peers in terms of their academic skills, we can't imagine he will be able just to magically make up that gap. He probably never will; let's be real about it. So WHY pull him out of the verbal-behavior clinic, that we know is helpful to him, in order to spend a few hours at the school, where we're uncertain of the impact? Maintaining a relationship for a just-in-case-he-could-go-there-someday scenario isn't really a good-enough reason.

It's funny: It just doesn't occur to me that he's behind his peers when we're interacting with him at home. He's all we know about child-rearing, so this is our normal state of affairs. Given that Wife and I will soon have five college degrees shared between the two of us makes it all seem sort of ironic. Schooling has been so important to the two of us. However, with our child formal schooling is really sort of arbitrary. It won't really make an impact on him. That's kinda weird.

It's not devastating or anything: I mean, he's not going to die of autism disorder. But it's just weird. Weird in an uneasy, sick sorta way.

Self-banishment Day 2

Hi. Posting a day late.

It went well. I indeed finished the edits on chapter 4 AND on chapter 3. I completely forgot I did the ones on chapter 3 quite some time ago, but I had a little further to go (I mean, is editing ever really finished?). So by about Noon yesterday, I reckon I officially finished 'good-enough' drafts of chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5! By about dinner time I had a solid outline of Chapter the Sixth, and before I hit the sack I had written about the first 2 pages. Writing the first few pages of any chapter is usually the hardest part for me, so I figure all in all it was a productive few days away.

I came home around Noon today, and I've been out with the fam running errands, buying new shoes (for the first time in about five years, seriously), hitting the grocery store, and now we're in for the evening. If I feel the energy, I'll plug away a bit more on the chapter tonight and will plan to do more tomorrow afternoon. May not have the entire draft finished by Monday as I had originally planned, but I'm making good progress. Bye.

Next Dilemma - to include, or not to include?

Wife just said it all: she does have a way of expressing my own thoughts, much of the time.

Gearing upwardly

The post would have been called "gearing up," but I thought it would be better to end on an adverb instead of a preposition. Right, Donovan? :-)

Am going to try working from the home office/prison today. It's a temperate, yet soggy, day outside, and I don't feel like going out there. My writing buddies are doing other things this weekend, so I'm locking myself upstairs here at home. I mowed the lawn yesterday, fortunately avoiding today's rain, so I don't have that hanging over my head or anything. We do need to clean and dust this house before the entire family arrives next week. Oh well: tomorrow for that.

Commencement is now officially less than a week away. It should be fun, though I will feel like an impostor. I will admit, I don't see the point of participating right now. However, it has at least kept me focused on making really good progress these last couple of months, so I suppose it'll be worth it. My speech is written, and I've been practicing it here and there. Should be fun. But I'm still an impostor!

I'm becoming bored blogging about my dissertation. I'd rather write about something else. Guess I should finish up here pretty quick. I'm random today.

Still editing

It's been a crazy-busy week at work, so I've made slower-than-desirable progress on my edits due to sheer exhaustion at night. I'm in the library with my writing peeps today, so hopefully their presence will keep me focused get through these things today. More on that later.

As it turns out, I was elected to speak at the commencement ceremony in just under two weeks. I was pleasantly surprised. Should be good fun.

I attempt to ignore the fact that I'm missing an Autism Day activity a local historic museum near our home. Next year, damnit, I'm there.

Editing Weekend / Commencement Preparations

Hi Blog,

Wife and Son went out of town this weekend, so my task is editing chapter 5. I took yesterday off from Work-work so I could do dissertation-work, and well, it worked! Got a good amount done in the library.

Today I've been a little lazy in that I did a few things around the house this morning and had a late lunch. Buckling down now for hopefully the next four hours or so to do more editing. Plan on doing the same later tonight and tomorrow before the fam comes home. It would be GREAT to have these done this weekend.

I've heard back from two of my three peer reviewers, both of whom gave me very helpful feedback that I will try and incorporate into this chapter. I'll also need to write up the details of that whole process in chapter 3, the method chapter, before long. The third reviewer told me she's working on things this weekend, so that's good.

So, it's all moving along. Meanwhile, I've ordered my cap and gown for commencement, which is coming up in less than three weeks. That's a bit surreal. I also learned I was nominated to speak at our department commencement ceremony, so my name will be placed on the ballot for that voting process among my colleagues. It would be a pleasure to do it, but if I don't get voted into the role, then I will gladly listen to whomever wins. It doesn't matter to me all that much, though it's certainly an honor to even be nominated.

Bye blog.

20-Year High School Reunion

I pack a back this evening, as I and the fam prepare to travel tomorrow morning to Large Midwestern Metropolis (LMM) for Thanksgiving. Usually we host the meal here at Chesterley, but this year my high school class decided to hold its 20th reunion on Thanksgiving Friday. I guess they assume we all still consider LMM as "home." That is definitely not the case for this researcher. In fact, I think it's odd that this assumption has been made, especially given that about 97% of my 850-person class went to college upon graduation (and most had to go out of town to do so). But who am I to skew their reality with data?

I am not always that stylish in my choice of clothing, but I do care about how I look. I have a vague idea of what the hell I'm going to wear Friday night. It's pretty vague, though. So I just ran a Web search on the question, "What does a guy wear to his 20th high school reunion?"

Most of the articles that appeared are about women pondering what "little black dress" they will wear. I didn't find much about guys. And it's funny, because the more I read blog posts about people getting nervous about their reunions, the more I realized I'm just not at all nervous about mine. I am looking forward to it, not because I plan on renewing old friendships (why?) or reliving the old HS days (why??), but because I think the experience is going to be fascinating. I plan on studying the crowd, making conclusions, and reporting the results. I am a fearless researcher.

I'm a complete nerd, I realize. And I'm damn proud of it.

Also, I will admit that there are a few people that I'm genuinely looking forward to seeing again. I actually had a good time in high school, probably because the place was so darn big (n=4,000), and this increased the chances finding others who were as odd as I was. I mean am.

I think a sweater, a button-down shirt shirt, and decent pants will suffice for the evening. I even got a haircut today, a pretty amazing feat for a bald guy.

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?

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.

Summer Crunch - Day 1 Report

Thanks to everyone for your good words both here in the blog and to me directly via electronic mail. All words of support are very helpful during this time.

Life here at the hotel is good - it's been a good productive day. I finally cleaned up the early version of the Participants section. There was too much in there related to the deeper analysis and not enough of the surface descriptions of participants. Now I'm on a roll with finishing up the descriptions of each one, briefly but respectfully, knowing I'm going to develop the characters further in the analysis section.

I still need to contact the participants to see if they agree with my characterizations. That's intimidating to me, as it's been about two years since I started the interviews. Two years? Geez. Oh well, I'm just going to have to get over that and move onward. I think I've mentioned I found most of them on Facebook. I won't friend them, but if I can send them a message that way, then I will. Thank God for Facebook.

It sort of feels like I'm writing a play with 14 characters. Few if any of them have ever met, but so much of what they are saying relates to that of their peers in the study. Sort of interesting.

I'm glad I did this hotel thing. Usually I'm closing up my writing shop around 5 or 6 PM on a dissertation day away from work. Today was totally different: I worked at a slow but steady pace, really relaxed. I have ESPN on in the background for noise (I don't even know what sport is on the TV, since it's behind me). I even grabbed a quick nap mid-afternoon. I'm about to take a brief dinner break (frozen pizza, here I come), and then I'll just get back to it. If I get to a certain point this evening where I feel things have gone along really well, then I'll reward myself with a good beer (or two) that I have here in the fridge. Then I repeat tomorrow. I'm glad I'm finally getting through this stuff.

More good news: I was supposed to go into work Friday for a meeting that was scheduled for 3 PM. Who the heck schedules a meeting for 3 PM on a Friday in the summer?? I received a note today indicating it was canceled, so now I don't need to interrupt my work Friday. Yippee!

I do have a parent/teacher meeting at Moose's school tomorrow afternoon, but that'll be fine. For one thing, it's not work: it's parenting, so it's far more important and well worth the time away from the diss. Second, it will be a shorter break than the above meeting since it's located relatively near the hotel. Finally, I'm REALLY missing Wife and Moose right about now! It will be a nice break tomorrow to see them both.

Dissertation Weekend

I'm back on the porch this afternoon. Yay! So glad that spring is here. I've been almost literally watching the back yard turn green today.

I don't think I've written yet that my transcriptionist finished transcribing what she could with my interviews. Yay again! One problem was that yet another tape broke. That makes three during the dissertation. Through a couple of connections, there's a person I know at LMUU who may be able to fix them at least enough for me to get the things transcribed. Keep your fingers crossed.

Moose and Wife are away this weekend, so I'm here holding down the fort with Chester and planning on cranking out multitudinous and prolific codes. No office cleaning allowed.

New Horizons

Been a while since I've posted here. Hi.

Many things have happened during the last few weeks...nothing Earth-shattering, but all good toward making some progress. Mostly intangible progress, but progress nonetheless.

First, we re-arranged furniture at my on-campus office. I switched to a different space WITH A WINDOW!, but it had older furniture not made for someone who does a ton of technical work on the computer. Now, I have my old computer-friendly furniture in my new space. This all may seem minor in the scheme of life, I know, but I finally feel settled in, physically, into my new office at work. It really makes a big difference on a lot of different levels.

Next, I attended my first ACPA conference (American College Personnel Association). I have an elected position with one of the leadership groups within the association, and I have come to learn this was a great way to get involved. I also felt rather "seasoned" (another word for "old," I suppose, but not at all negative!) at this conference. It hit me that I've been in the higher education field for about 14 years (started the master's degree in 1994). I could walk around huge all-conference receptions by myself and invariably run into someone I knew from one or more of the places I've worked. This was a first for me. Also, it was the first conference I've attended in YEARS where I came away feeling energized and had numerous ideas I could bring back to adapt to my work.

Third, Wife and I have finally started making friends here in LSC. We've found a falling-off-the-left-edge-of-liberal church that we like here in town, joined the choir, and even had a nice Easter dinner with Becky and David at Chesterley, along with my mom who came to town for a visit. Wife has a few of her own friends from a support group she's joined. Also, Jason and I got together for lunch last week, and it was good to hang out with someone else who 'gets it' about kids with special needs.

Finally, I completed yet another purge of the home office/prison. I know, I know, my cleaning obsession is getting ridiculous. Readers of this diary know I hate filing, so I avoid it. As a result, things I need to keep pile up, even though I admit I do have plenty of file spaces. In our last house, I had several piles still left un-filed when I was packing to move. On my last night in SCT, good friends Julie and Kim & Michael finally just said, "Rob, we're packing the piles. Find a couple of boxes." So we packed the un-filed piles and moved them to the new place here in LSC. They've been sitting in a closet acting as a burden on my back, just like the dissertation. More piles had formed, and it was about to get to critical mass. I needed to clear off that burden before I could undo the burden of the dissertation. Besides, I sort of need to start "liking" my home office/prison again. And behold: Last weekend I cleaned it all up. It took forever, and I didn't get nearly as much time outside to tend to the yard as I would have liked. It's not perfect, and I still have a way to go. However, it's complete and functional, and it's a good lesson learned.

I need to keep this same attitude and energy toward the dissertation, and, heck, also toward a lot of the research I will conduct in this career. The old mantra carries through to many other things: "A completed dissertation is better than a perfect dissertation." Similarly, a clean, functional office space is better than a perfect Architectural Digest office space. I think I've been avoiding making progress on the office cleaning because I knew it could never be perfect, or even completed, in one weekend. What a crock. And true to form, once I got into it, it wasn't that tough. It was actually sort of enjoyable. And MAN do I know where EVERYTHING is located now.

I may be doing the same avoidance thing with the dissertation, but to a lesser extent because I am definitely making progress. I just need to ramp up the progress and strive more for completion than for perfection. Sort of feels like it's spring for my dissertation season, in addition for the lawn that's greening up as I write this. It's an exciting new horizon on the dissertation front, I think. Yay.

Sludge

Dissertation things are moving as slowly as the sludge in my head that I feel sloshing around tonight as a cold-ass arctic front is moving in (please make the front move in faster so my head will stop hurting). Wife was sick most of this week, which means I've had primary care responsibilities for her and Moose, especially the last few days. That's life! She's certainly done that for me when needed, and it's what families do.

Of course the time away has gotten me behind on a couple of things at work, which at this point trumps any dissertation progress. I like my job. But I really don't give a shit about the dissertation today. Maybe I'll find some focus and energy to get something done this weekend. And maybe not.

Maybe I just need to go to bed. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

100 Years

I almost let the entire day slip by before I remembered that today would have been my grandmother's 100th birthday. She died less than two years ago, and I still think about her and her place in the woods quite a bit. Funny: while age 98 certainly seemed "old," especially to HER, it still seemed a long way off from age 100. Not sure why. 100? I mean...wow. Can't imagine that. Age 50 literally meant 'middle age' for her. Guess I'm just a spring chicken at age 36.

I just felt a need to mark the occasion here. In some ways I can hardly believe she's gone; in other ways it feels like it's been forever....

Tree 2007

Late last December and early in January of this year, I wrote a couple of posts on our Christmas Tree. The post in January discusses a bargain tree that Wife found at Chain Grocery Store Near Our House (CGSNOH). Said tree is now up and 'glowing' in New Chesterley, and we think it looks mighty fine. Figured I'd put a few pics here.

First, with the flash to display the ornaments:


Next, a shot without the flash to display the lights:


We've told the story of the $10 tree quite a bit this year, so I just had to add a this post here as a reminder.

Dissertation Week 2007 - Day 5 Report

I almost forgot to comment on how things went yesterday, the last day of this year's Dissertation Week:

It was just fine, thanks.

I still have continued frustration with obtaining the qualitative data management software I decided to purchase, and I suspect it's due to the advanced age of my laptop. It will be 5 in April. Ugh. I really just wanted to use ONE computer for my doctorate (I purchased this one at the end of my first year). The prospect of needing a second one to get through the dissertation is not pleasant. And it may be costly. I dunno...maybe I should just get a used laptop to get me through? Not sure.

Yesterday I did get more coding done, which is nice. No more transcribing, though. I am quickly going to need to find an additional person to help me with these, or just take off some more time and literally chain myself to the desk.

My wife's family arrived earlier today for Christmas, and I'm sure we'll have a fine time. My sister-in-law, who is a physician, was asking me about the details of my dissertation. When I showed her one of the documents I was coding, she suggested I only do the coding with some form of alcoholic beverage in my hand because let's face it, the task really SUCKS. Not a bad idea. I mean, I could finish the data analysis and become a snooty wine connoisseur at the same time. Or better yet it could be scotch. The analysis may become a little bit disjointed, though Hmm...there's gotta be a balance there somewhere, ya know?

Thanksgiving Photos

This is my first time embedding a Picasa slideshow...let's see how this works. Photos from Thanksgiving at Chesterley.

This will be a house blog someday

You know, I really can't wait till I can turn this blog away from the topic of my dissertation and more toward one that discusses the remodeling of my "mid-century" home (I hadn't heard that term "mid-century" till I moved to this neighborhood). I'd much rather spend my weekends hanging with the wife and kid while slowly redoing various aspects of our house. I'd like to learn how to install a new light fixture here or there. How about upgrading the round thermostat to one of those programmable ones? And perhaps I'll get around to painting away the stark white walls in the hallway and kitchen (apparently these were dark-green fuzzy wallpaper and aquamarine, respectively, prior to when we bought the place).

But no, the dissertation still looms overhead, blocking out the light like "dark, black giant butterflies, obliterating the rays of the sun" (from Shönberg's Pierot Lunaire). I'm tired. I just want to have one life instead of having it split in two. Work is great, but it takes up time...time away from the dissertation. The dissertation takes time away from the family. So what ends up happening? Work happens because it must. And then family happens because I want it to be as such. The diss will get done. I just don't know when. I'm still aiming for this spring as my final destination for this space ship, though the earth is quickly getting larger in my window, and I need a re-entry plan from Flight here pretty darn soon.

So do I spend the rest of Saturday night transcribing interviews, or do I watch a movie with Wife now that Moose is in bed? I dunno. But at age 36, I'm getting too old to have homework anymore.

Settling in

Oh yeah, my blog. I forgot about this thing. Hi. Getting settled in here in terms of a few different areas:

First, the house. We live here now. It's really our place. We actually spent much of the holiday weekend finishing up the unpacking process, at long last. We got the garage to a state where we can fit both cars inside, which is fantastic. We drove the cars inside, which was very exciting, but then the garage door opener decided to malfunction...again. Fuck. Fortunately it turned out to be that one of us (probably me) had knocked the sensor loose (but the sensor lights were ON and functioning, I tell you!), and it was fixed up pretty quickly this morning.

And then we looked closely at the walls: Prior Owners painted the walls BLUE. Blue?? Yes, blue like highlighter blue. And there's also wood paneling up about four feet from the floor. Wha'? Not my choice in a GARAGE, but to each his or her own.

After some discussion, we decided that we needed to spend the time now to get rid of the blue. I'm in the process of painting it white (not the paneling, just the drywall). I know, I know: in an earlier post I said I was hanging up my paint brush for a while. I had painted four bedrooms in a row and had enough. However, Wife and I both knew that if we didn't paint out the blue now, then we'd get our stuff settled into the garage and the painting would never get done. And neither of us really want to live with a blue garage. I mean, it GLOWS! Also, I will need to paint the ceiling, because it, too, is blue. Ugh. It's going OK...I'm just about done trimming in the primer coat. Hopefully it won't spatter too much as I paint the ceiling. I keep saying...it's JUST the garage. Doesn't need to be perfect...just done.

Speaking of just needing to be done...dissertation data collection is moving along OK. I conducted another interview last week. Not sure it's going to be usable data, but we shall see. Just four more to go. I need to recruit the last four people as soon as I can so I can ramp up my data analysis efforts. I think once the interviews are completed and transcribed, then the light in the tunnel will brighten up significantly and it'll kick my ass to get the study completed. Hard to believe I'm moving right along OK after all this time.

The new job is good, and I really like working with my colleagues a great deal. I'm slowly getting back into the full-time working routine. I do think it suits me well...I find the structure of The Work Day to be helpful on many levels.

Moose seems to be enjoying kindergarten. It's not like he's running home and telling me what he learned each day. Perhaps those conversations will happen someday, and I'll look forward to that. Till then, we're just thankful we're able to live where there are decent schools. One thing is for certain: the special education situation here is FAR better than what we had in SCT. So glad we're here now.

Wife's sorting out her career stuff. The likelihood of finding voice students here is much better than in SCT, so we'll hope for the best.

Bedtime. Bye.