Garage Door

We've had a comedy of errors with our garage door, and it finally all came to a head last night. The blow by blow:

When we had the house inspected prior to closing, it was brought to my attention that the garage door opener was connected by two modified extension cords, and it was not very safe. I could picture Moose pulling the cords apart and frying his hands, or worse. So, I knew the thing was going to need a little work before we signed on the line. Looks like it had been installed by the Prior Owner, and he wasn't necessarily an electrician, bless his heart, may he rest in peace. Also, the security eye beams that usually sit near the bottom of the door tracks to keep it from closing on, say, your SON or your DOG, were installed at the ceiling, right next to the opener, pointing at each other about six inches apart, entirely useless!!! Clearly, Prior late Owner, wanted the door to work quickly, so he slapped the eye beams up at the ceiling and didn't bother worrying about the extra wiring it would have taken to make those beams function as they were designed. Ugh. Oy. More electrical work. Fine. I can accept that.

When we closed on the house, we were only given one garage door opener by owner (the widow of the garage motor installer). I should have asked about it at the time, but she and her late husband were the original owners, she's in her 80s, and I figured they only had one car at the time they moved out. OK, OK, one more thing to repair with the garage door. Deep breath, it's just not a major deal.

Very soon after we moved in, we had the door opener hard-wired by a licensed electrician. Not cheap, but they did a fine job, and they also did a lot of other work on the house that came up in the inspection as well. They did not have the ability to get me a new remote for my car, however.

So, I went to Sears to find a replacement remote. It's a Craftsman door opener, and those are sold by Sears, so I expected it would be pretty easy. Low & behold, I found a remote identical to the one we already have for just under $40. Cheaper than an new opener, I thought, so I bought it.

Got it home, and I couldn't get the remote to mate with the opener. One of the "high-tech" things that generates a new security code each time you press the button. OK, OK, guess I need to find another option, I thought. Then I got busy with the new job and unpacking and such. Finally went back to Sears last night and got a different remote. And it worked!

And then the gear on the #$%^ motor died!!! I couldn't believe it. So I can operate the motor from my car, but the motor neither raises or lowers the door. DAMN. I had to release the door by pulling the rope thing, and then I did a sort of ballet dance to get the door to lower before it popped back up to the open position and locked again. I finally got the thing to go down, and BAM it closed with a rather loud crash. Nothing was damaged, fortunately. But geez, that's a heavy, solid wood, 43-year-old garage door! Today the garage door doctor, or whatever the hell they're called, is coming to fix the motor. I just hope we don't need a new one, because the remote I got at Sears will have been all for naught. If I weren't bald already, I'd be pulling out my hair.

It's getting Money Pit out. Let's hope it doesn't come to that, though!

UPDATE: wow, within 30 minutes the thing was fixed! Chain came off the track. Guess we're not getting into Money Pitt-edness after all Whew!

New Cafe in A New town

Finally, it feels like we're settling into Large State Capital (Capitol? No, I think it's Capital, right Jason?) to the point where I'm taking a day to work on the dissertation. Believe it or not, my new employer is giving me time away to get this thing done. Lots of pressure to produce, therefore, since I'm literally being paid to finish up this project. This will be good pressure!

I've found a couple of cafes near New Chesterley that have wireless Internet access, so here I sit replicating my productivity from when I lived in Small College Town. Today I'm going to try contacting a couple of folks I know back in SCT to see if I can recruit the few more participants I need for the study. Then, I'm going to continue what I started earlier today...some edits to the proposal. If I can get just a lot done on my dissertation days (D-Days, as a colleague called it yesterday), and a bit more over the weekends, then I will hopefully finish things up this fall. Imagine that! The minute my new boss told me to take the time I needed this fall, I finally became able actually to imagine finishing. Remarkable.

Mid-afternoon today just about my entire extended family will come to town to celebrate Moose's sixth birthday this weekend. Should be much fun. It required getting a few more boxes unpacked so my two nephews can crash on sleeping bags/Aerobeds in my office/prison. I hope they find it comfy. Perhaps I'll post a few pictures at the end of the weekend.

No More Painting, Please!

Hi Blog,

Last night I finally finished with the initial round of painting I had hoped to do early on in the tenure of our residence at New Chesterley. I painted two bedrooms prior to when we moved in: ours and Moose's. As of last night I finished the other two bedrooms, which wife and I will use as office space and will eventually have places for guests to stay as well. If Moose were fortunate enough to ever have a sibling, then we'd easily turn one of those office/guest rooms into a nursery. I'll probably post some pictures sometime soon.

I have enjoyed the process of painting, and, darn it, I think I'm pretty good at it, too. I didn't need any of that painter's tape or anything. I've done this enough that I was able to keep the brush under control, usually. haha. There was the occasional drip that I needed to clean up (especially last night on the last room...ugh!), but that wasn't so bad. The house has good baseboards varnished an "oak" color, wood floors, and solid wood doors on the rooms and closets which are also varnished to match the baseboards. I'm thankful I only needed to paint one color in each room and not have to also paint the trim separately!

I'm going to hang up my paint brush for a while, even though there's a white entry hall and second floor hall that call out to me each day: "Rob, please paint me something other than white!" A neighbor told us those hallways used to have green fuzzy wallpaper as recent as last winter!!! I guess white is a good alternative, but sometime in the next couple of years we'll probably change that. Sort of fun.

But sort of exhausting to think about now, so I'm not gonna. K, bye.

Approaching Normalcy

Well, I really do laugh in the general direction of normalcy. After all, "My kid's autistic...what's you're excuse?" (that quote from a really funny series of t-shirts my sister-in-law found).

But what I mean is this: I'm now officially one week into working full-time, and I actually didn't fall asleep at my desk even once! haha (after not having an 8-5 job for five years, I was a bit worried about making it through the day in one building. Well wait a sec. I suppose I did that most Saturdays for the past year as I wrung the first half of the dissertation out of me like trying to obtain water from a dry sponge, but for some reason a full-time post feels different). Things are coming together quite well. I spent these past few years as one of about 25 researchers, all with slightly different views of conducting research and sharing the results. All part of the academic process, I suppose, and the argumentation was "fun" in an odd sort of way. Now I've entered a division of practitioners whom I respect a great deal, but researchers they are not. Suddenly, that's "my" job to assess things and help them improve. I went from being one of many to being one of, like, TWO. Fortunately the other researcher type appears like he'll be a good colleague. He gave me a good reality check the other day. I suppose it will be a good change to be one of just a few instead of one of many. Suffice it to say the transition is going just fine. Almost feels like "normal."

The other part of finding normalcy is that I've finally started back in on the dissertation after about a month away for the move and finishing up the GAship. I communicated via e-mail with My Committee about where things stood prior to the move. DC provided some more advice on how to recruit more participants. Oh yeah: funny thing happened. I was hoping to interview between 8 and 12 participants. I was able to find 9 pretty easily. All but one showed up for the interviews, which was pleasantly surprising. After the initial rush of interviews I looked more closely at the demographic breakdown of my participants. Hello...SEVEN of the eight are men?? And I didn't notice this before because...? Ugh. If this were a study of men, I'd be set. But if I don't find more women participants, then I'll be chucked in the student development gender oppression trash can with the rest of the higher education theorists from the 60s and 70s. Not a good way to start off as a researcher, eh? So, my goal is to recruit about four or five more women who qualify for the study and are willing to talk to me about college for about an hour. Not an impossible task, right? How the hell did this happen when there are far more women in higher education than men? Oh well, I could have worse problems than this. And I feel better now that My Committee is aware of the situation and hasn't fallen over in complete disbelief.

Related note: Pink successfully defended her dissertation last week! Congrats to her! Very inspirational to the rest of us.

Normal has not been achieved on all counts just yet. Moving to a new town is challenging for Wife and Moose...they have no built-in way of meeting people the way I do at work. Not easy. Today Wife is attending a nearby church to check it out for us. We can't all go, since Moose needs to be either in the nursery or with the other kids his age accompanied by an aid. We are the natural aids for him in this situation, but then one or the other of us cannot attend the service. Normally church nurseries are for kids up to age 4, and he's almost 6, so we can't just walk into any church cold without having made prior plans. Again, "my kid's autistic, what's you're excuse?" Normal is different for us. I am not complaining or asking for sympathy. Rather, I'm just stating the facts. Wife will go to church today solo and will let me know how things go. Seems like a pretty interesting and progressive place, according to their Web site, so we shall see. If she likes it, then we'll phone the minister next week and see if we can make arrangements for Moose to hang in the nursery with the toddlers. We're hoping to find some family normalcy pretty soon, but we know it takes a while.

Settling in slowly but surely

Hi Blog,

I'm now in day two of the new job, and it's going just fine. I won't discuss the details here, but suffice it to say I'll be working with friendly talented people, and my work will be cut out for me. The first day was a bit slow, with meeting a few people and mostly having my head buried in my predecessor's files. Today should pick up with my first meeting with my new boss and hopefully getting a better feel for what projects I'll be working on. Nice preposition at the end of that sentence. You can tell I've been away from my writing for a few weeks.

The new house is fantastic, and we're getting used to things pretty quickly. We've been living on our screened-in porch overlooking the back yard. The weather has been nice, but even when it's not we're still out there. Ah. Something I've always wanted...a porch! We also just got a trampoline for Moose, and yesterday he spent much of the afternoon bouncing and laughing. He just loves it. It's good to see him so happy. Of the three of us, I think he's adjusted the most quickly to the new house. He has slept through the night from the first day in the new house. Wife and I are still getting used to Chester's toenails clicking on the wood floors ... it can be difficult to sleep!

Oh yeah, the move was just fine. No real complaints...just one minor bump in the road where the local moving company had to go back to the old place the following day to get the stuff that didn't fit in the truck initially. Oh well. We lived.

Dissertation. Yeah, I should get on that. Just lemme finish unpacking boxes. I was lucky to have found my box of shoes yesterday morning when scrambling around my house getting ready to leave at 7:15 AM for the first time in about five years.

Paint in the Fingernails

I have been painting lately, so much, in fact, that I'm seriously considering borrowing some of Wife's nail polish remover to remove the stuff from my hands. We closed on New Chesterley last Monday, and I've been trying to get a couple of rooms ready prior to when we move in. It's been slow and rather tedious work, but it's worth it now since it's DONE. And movers will be here in about 8 hours. Obviously I've not packed my computer or wireless router, etc. However, other than the electronics and the crap that always manages to appear without a logical home box during a move, we're pretty much ready to go. Also, we still have Chesterley for a few more days, so having the backup time is comforting. Man I'm tired. Today was indeed the longest day of the year. Time for bed. I think this is one of the first moves where I didn't feel a need to stay up all night packing things up. We are VERY thankful for the five gazillion friends who were here last Saturday and earlier this evening to help us pack. I honestly don't know what we would have done without these good friends. We will miss you all!

Dragons in the Garage

Wife and I spent the greater part of yesterday afternoon slaying dragons in our garage. Let me 'splain. Our current house has no unfinished basement or attic areas. This gives us very workable interior spaces, but absolutely no proper storage. The silly thing is, the garage has a pitched roof, but it was never "finished." I mean, it's "complete," but the interior has no walls, insulation, or ceiling. Only exposed beams and rafters. There SO could have been a sweet attic up there, but that never happened for a reason completely unknown to us. Fortunately there are plywood boards on the "ceiling," so we have had boxes and packing material stored up there these five years. It's hotter than hell in there, though.

Our respite-care worker came over yesterday and took Moose on an excursion to the local children's museum, which he LOVES. This gave us three solid hours to battle the garage. I think we won yesterday's initial battle, and I don't know what we would have done without the help. All of the boxes, etc. are now down and off the rafters. We saved many more boxes than we remembered, and this will be helpful. Wife did a great job of organizing where the packed boxes should go, where the "box with a specific purpose" should be kept (e.g. the computer boxes), and finally where the random empty boxes are. I need a lot of direction in this kind of thing...my mind wanders too much when packing. Must focus and kill dragons!

I am coming across things I haven't seen in about five years. This is bad. These indeed are my dragons. That's the stuff I hate dealing with: stuff from my past that I think I want to keep, but it seems strange to do so when I literally haven't opened the box during the time we lived here (many of these boxes came to me just after we moved in... "Rob, now that you have a house, get this stuff out of my basement!"). Although, I think I'm painting a worse picture than it is. When push comes to shove, there are only about 6-8 boxes out there that I need to deal with. They are sorta big, but I guess that's not so bad. It'll be far easier than writing a dissertation proposal, that's for sure.

The other thing we desperately need to do is organize things like tools, etc. These home-improvement materials are stored in two rather cluttered sections of the garage. This is another dragon I must slay (sleigh? slae? sleh?). I'm thankful for the built-in workbench and storage that we'll have in the new garage. I am also looking forward to having time to actually DO home-improvement projects more frequently. Perhaps just the act of doing those regularly will keep the place organized? Nah.

Anyhow, yesterday ended up being very successful, and I think we're winning the battles against the dragons in the garage.

Oh yeah, I have dissertation data to collect. Gosh...almost forgot about that. Oh, so THAT's the heavy weight on my back right now...oh YEEAAAH.

And the days go by...

I think it's just now starting to hit me that I'm about to go through a pretty major shift in my professional identity. The move is on my mind, as is our accute need to PACK. Last night my body said "night night" at about 10:38 PM, which is extremely early for me. I literally fell asleep at my desk, hands on the keyboard. Kinda funny. This morning I woke up bright and early at just before 5:00 AM. I let Chester out, fed him and myself, read the paper, and here I am starting a blog post at just before 6:00 AM. Guess I'm getting the body and brain ready for full-time work.

One week from today is my last day as a graduate assistant, or GA. The GA term is really quite broad, and fortunately I've had a variety of experiences in this role, true to its definition. I started out in the fall of 2002 as one of two researchers on a large qualitative program evaluation. It was my first time working on a formal qualitative project, though I had been involved in running focus groups and the like while working full-time as an administrator in higher education. I learned a great deal and still use many of the skills I developed there each day in my current job.

The following year I joined the large research center where I'm fortunate to work now. I've had a variety of roles there, starting off with participating in a research project alongside a group of scholars I thought I would NEVER meet anytime soon. Later I learned all about the world of survey administration, and last year I became a supervisor for some of the other GAs on the project while still maintaining my own GA status, thus giving me some time (though not a ton) to work on the dissertation. Was that a runon sentence? Oh well, it's 6AM. Anyhow, I feel like I've had good experiences on both the qualitative and quantitative side of the research house, and it's likely they contributed toward landing the job I'll start July 2.

I really have very few, if any, complaints about the course of my graduate school career, except for the fact that I'm not yet done with the dissertation at the end of year five. The thing is, I wouldn't trade these experiences for the world [Well okay, I WOULD trade the >60% pay cut I took when I started here in 2002, but I realize no one forced me into this full-time student life five years ago]. And it's very likely I'll finish up the dissertation around year five-and-a-half, assuming I can hold it all together, with "it" defined as the balance between family, full-time work, the dissertation, and anything else I cannot predict.

When I first came here, I'd dream about what it would be like on the back end of the Ph.D. What will I have learned? Will I feel like I've established an area of expertise? How will it manifest itself in a new job? Will I find a new job, and where will that be? Now, here I am on that tail end, and I'm ending my GA career in one week. I have a job in hand. Hell, I've even bought and sold a house. Quoting Talking Heads like I did in this post's title: "How did I get here?"

I went through a pretty major identity shift during my first year, and many of us did. I had worked as an administrator for six years and served as an advisor to numerous students, was a director of a small department, and was comfortable meeting with students, their parents, professors, other administrators, the board of trustees, etc., as a pretty regular part of my job. I came back to school, and suddenly I had professors wondering if I understood university administrative structures and student development because I had not taken their courses in those areas. Hello, I've worked with ACTUAL students, ACTUAL budgets, ACTUAL administrators...I think I know what I'm doing. And I did, though the coursework and research have more than certainly enhanced my professional experiences. I've come to respect the graduate student process because I see how important research is to developing new knowledge in the field. I also respect it for how it informs practical work, as well.

So now I need to make yet another identity shift back into full-time administrative work. In some ways, I can't wait. In others, I'm scared as hell. Grad student life is pretty comfortable. Academic discourse involves many things including the discussion of ideas, having them critiqued, and then moving onward with the feedback to make improvement. I suppose administrative work is similar in many ways, but I'm feeling pressure to be An Expert in My Field now that I'm just about finished with the Ph.D. and have obtained full-time Work in My Area. That's a little intimidating. However, I already know my future work place is one that values critical thinking toward improvement (hell, I'll be working in institutional assessment!), so I'm probably very lucky in that regard.

I think my transitional angst is pretty normal. With the hectic nature of finding a new home and making arrangements to move, I think I've forgotten to consider my own personal/professional identity shift that's coming up. So, it's time to take that into consideration when working on packing boxes, setting up utilities, cancelling utilities, scheduling a mover, arranging for repairs in the new house, finding Moose's new school, etc. etc. etc. etc.

Glad we took a vacation last month. Woosh!!!

Movement

Hi Blog.

I'm finally feeling that I can focus on finishing things up here in SCT rather than a constant worry about things like inspections, mortgages, assessments, utility set-up and cut-offs, etc. etc. etc. I get mired in the details...perhaps earlier than others would, but I like for all these things to be done well in advance. Moving is stressful enough without all the other details that go into making things happen. Now I'm working on things that are more "fun" than stressful, like, "DSL or Cable for Internet access?" and "What color shall we paint Moose's room?" If those are now the major stressors in my life, then life is pretty darn good.

As I think I said before, I've completed 8 interviews for the dissertation. I feel pretty good about that, though I really should have at least two more, and at this point I'm not sure where else I'll find these people. I figure I'll ask the 8 participants, again, if they have friends who would meet the criteria to be interviewed, but I'm not sure if that's going to produce any more viable participants. We shall see. For some reason, I'm not all that stressed about it. Perhaps I should be? I dunno. Somehow, finding two interview participants doesn't seem like a daunting task. I do need to get on this, though, because moving without those completed is not a good idea.

I've made very good progress with cleaning out the office/prison over the weekend. Well OK, "cleaning" is not exactly the right word at the moment, but I think the "throw-away, recycle, shred" piles are actually larger than the piles of papers I need to keep. This is good!

Moose started summer camp today. He had a BALL there last year, and it provides Wife some respite and guilt-free time to do other things, like complete the paperwork for his ongoing verbal behavior analysis program, continue with getting estimates from movers, etc. etc. Not like she's going to sit around eating bon bons or anything, but I'm happy that she'll have some time in the middle of the day to do some work without feeling like she always had to be entertaining, or educating, Moose. I can relate to these guilty feelings pretty easily. I adore spending time with him, though on the weekends when I need to take a few minutes to work or write an e-mail, etc., I feel horribly guilty if I'm just letting him chill out somewhere in the house. I sorta feel like he could just waste away if he's ignored, because he so easily can go off into his own mental Nirvana by himself. It's really a horrible feeling...like a notion of entire complete responsibility for keeping him from just disappearing. Kinda feels like pushing a button every hour to keep the island from exploding (I've only seen a few episodes of Lost). Not trying to be dramatic here, but that's the feeling I get. I mean, I LOVE hanging with Moose...I'm not afraid of him or anything. But caring for him can be stressful...feels like making a mistake now can be really damaging later on. I guess that's no different for any child, but for some reason it seems pretty acute with Moose. Anyhow, Last week was a bit rough for Wife and Moose since he had finished up school. I'm glad for both of them that camp has started up this week.

K, back to work. Bye Blog.

Peanut Butter Jelly Time

I LOVE PB & J sandwiches. It was pretty much all I'd eat for lunch and dinner between ages 3 and oh, probably 10! I don't eat quite as much now, but it's a pretty regular thing for me a few times a week. For this little test, I chose smooth PB and strawberry jam on wheat bread, cut into rectangles. Here are the results, below.

(Oh yeah, Chad is about the only other person I know who eats more PB & J than I do. I hope he shares his results too.)

What Your Peanut Butter And Jelly Sandwich Means

Your eating style is reserved. You are a bit of a fussy eater, and you have very specific ways you like your food prepared. You have an average sweet tooth. While you enjoy desserts, they aren't exactly your downfall. Your taste in food tends to be pretty flexible. You may crave sushi one night, and your favorite childhood recipe the next. You are probably a fairly normal, upper middle class person. You don't rock the boat too often. You are a tough person who isn't afraid to live life fully. There isn't a lot that scares you. You are a pretty easy person to please, but you do have your own little personal quirks. You're far from neurotic, but you can be a little picky at times.

What Does Your Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich Say About You?

Motivation

Hey, a guy's gotta have some motivation to finish the dissertation. This may be it. Waaaaay cool. Fuel efficient too. I'll need a new car here pretty soon. Hmmmm.....

Packing Day 1

I finish up my current job in about three weeks, which means that our move to Large State Capital (LSC), is happening in about a month. I officially started the packing process today, which for me involves cleaning of...yes, you got it: the office/prison. It needs another round of de-cluttering, AGAIN. Makes sense, I suppose. I've done A LOT on my dissertation since the last major purge, and the other stuff, like the paperwork from bills I've paid, are in neat, organized, squared-off piles on the floor. Well, they WERE. I have done a good job of cleaning those much of this afternoon. And frankly, I threw out a good amount of paperwork I thought I'd need, but I really don't.

Question for anyone out there who feels like responding: should I throw away my master's degree? I finished it in 1996. It's in the same field as my Ph.D., so I've been hanging onto it. However, here I am finished with coursework, halfway done with the dissertation itself, and I've probably used just a few files from the two file boxes that I've moved three times. I think I'm gonna just chuck most of it, but if anyone else has any ideas on how long to keep this stuff, please feel free to leave a comment here.

It's dinner out, and a friend's coming over. Bye.

Lots on the mind

Lots on the mind these days.

First, we had a great vacation to Undisclosed Location. It’s pretty nice there this time of year, though rather warm. Was a really nice way to celebrate our tenth anniversary. TENTH? How’d a decade go by so fast?? In some ways, though, it seems like a long while ago.

Next, the house. Oy, the house. It’s all going OK. I’m still confused about how the closing of our present place is going to go, but hopefully Realtor Woman 1 will work that out for us. We inspected the new place, and Realtor Woman 2 helped us negotiate our way through that. We’re gathering some more information to respond by early next week. Hopefully both transactions will be finalized after this long holiday weekend. I am getting sick of having various provisions up in the air.

Oh yeah: while there were no deal breakers on the inspection, there was a funny thing that happened. First, keep in mind we’re about to buy a fairly substantial 1965 two-story + basement house from the original owner in her 80s. The place has been vacant since the wintertime. Low and behold, Inspector Man and I were crawling in and out of the attic, the crawlspace, the darkest corners of the place. Then we checked out the fireplace in the basement rec room area to find a LIVE RACCOON or ‘POSSUM or something in there! I ran halfway out of the room, and so did Inspector Man. It was still alive. The flue was part-way open. Sort of a comedy going on with the two of us saying, “Holy SHIT there’s something in there, it’s furry, and it’s MOVING!” We were laughing. The fireplace upstairs had a dead bird in it. Nice. Yeah, we need some chimney caps pretty darn quick! Ah, spring in the Midwest.

New subject. Yesterday, Wife and I attended the funeral of an eighteen-year-old young man we never met. We know his mother pretty well, as she works with the local schools as the preschool coordinator. Her son died in an auto accident last weekend. I’ve never been to a funeral of a young person before. The hardest thing to watch was the number of other young people there who had to learn about death way too soon. Another tough part was hearing about the potential this young man had: someone who wasn’t afraid to argue, had good sense of humor, worked with disabled children, and cared about issues of human rights and equality. He was supposed to be off to college to study political science in the fall. We need more intelligent people who give a shit about these good issues working amongst people in the real world, and unfortunately this guy will never get that chance. Sad stuff. The experience really sucked, and I don’t envy the mourning and recovery process that our friend has ahead of her.

Before I forget, on the dissertation data-collection front (oh yeah, this is a blog about my doctoral program, right?), I’ve been blown off twice this week, but fortunately they rescheduled for next week. So, if all interviews come through, then by this time next week I will have completed eight of the ten or so interviews I need to do. Yahoo! As long as I can get a few more done prior to June 15, I should be good to go for analyzing the data late summer/early fall and then writing up the results before or around Thanksgiving.

OK, it’s getting weekend out. Gotta go.

Interviews

During all the haze with our house-selling and searching processes, I have been conducting interviews for my dissertation. I have been looking forward to this time for about two years now, so it feels good to be on a hiatus from writing and now actually conducting interviews. Feels good to be doing something more tangible for a change.

The interviews have gone well so far, with the exception of a broken tape cassette here. Please don't tell me to use a digital recorder instead, as those are worthless to me for doing my own transcriptions (I have an aged transcription machine, foot pedals and all).

I've conducted five interviews, and I think I have a sixth scheduled for after Wife and I return from Undisclosed Location. Only about four or five more, and I should be good to go. Ten or eleven hours of interview data is plenty for this study, thankyouverymuch.

I just wanted a little reminder to myself in the blog about this process, so this post is short. K, bye.

Into Place, Things Are Falling

Like Yoda in this post's title, I spoke. Probably because philosophical and reflective, I am feeling. A good thing, this is.

Today (or what's left of it) is our tenth wedding anniversary. Wife's parents are here to be with Moose while Wife and I go away to an undisclosed location for a week to celebrate. We've been planning this trip for months, and we're very fortunate to have parents that will come in and help out with Moose when needed (I'm including you on this sentiment as well, Mom). TEN years since the wedding day?? I mean, I guess I can believe that. So much has happened since then, and it does feel like it was a while back. But then we start discussing that it's been "a decade," and then one thinks about the swift passage of time. And philosophical, one gets.

The last day of the first decade of our marriage (e.g. yesterday) was a banner day in the house of Chesterley. We bought and sold a house on the same day! Monday we placed an offer on a house we adore in our new city. The owner countered and actually came down quite a bit further than we expected. Tuesday night after a great deal of discussion, roller-coaster emotions ("can we really afford this?"), wailing and gnashing of teeth, we signed on the dotted line and sent in the paperwork yesterday morning. Then, yesterday evening we learned that the response we wrote to the buyers of our current home regarding a few points on the inspection report were accepted, meaning our house sale was a done deal last night. Needless to say we each had a stiff drink and danced around the house like happy people.

And then we slept well for the first time since the beginning of April. We are very thankful that the house stuff, in particular the sale of this place, went so quickly and relatively smoothly. I know of a few others who have struggled with selling a house, and I can only imagine what a long process would do your stress levels. I don't know when before I've been this stressed out continuously for several days in a row. Not a healthy way to be.

We'll get an inspection done on the new house after we return from our vacation. We do adore this house, though I'm determined to not call it "our house" till after the inspection is complete. Still, it's hard not to be placing furniture mentally or planning improvement projects already. Must stop! OK I won't, but I sorta feel like I should say that here. :-)

So Decade 1 ended on a high note for this family, and may all the remaining ones end equally as high. It's amazing how the various aspects of life can fall into place sometimes. And experiencing all of these changes with the same person right by my side over time is simply priceless. I am one lucky man.

Houses and Stuff

I thought our house-purchasing process when acquiring the residence presently known as Chesterley was rather stressful. We came into town for three days, and thankfully we had a realtor who spent the majority of her time with us. Moose was just under 10 months old, so of course he needed 'round-the-clock care, feedings, etc. We put an offer on one place, and of course we were worried it was going to stretch our budget. We low-balled the offer and hoped they'd take it. And then we LEFT TOWN with nothing definite on where we would live, and no plans to return to this town before actually moving here. Stressful! Fortunately it all worked out, they took our low offer, and Chesterley has been a wonderful place to live.

However, selling this house is also pretty stressful in itself. I think we're finding the prospect of leaving this place more difficult as the weeks go by. During the time we've lived here, our family has been through a lot. Between me and wife we've lost two grandparents and a parent, Moose was diagnosed with autism disorder, and we had the typical growing pains of a growing family, money concerns, low academic and career self-esteem, and other difficulties. We've had some high points as well: good progress through a Ph.D. for me, progress through speech and physical difficulties for Moose, increase in the diversity of types of voices taught to sing by Wife, numerous fun parties and other gatherings, great discussions with a gaggle of good friends, and now landing this job and preparing to move on is indeed another high point that we've experienced while living here. It's hard to leave a place where you've grown so much personally and watched your child transform from "plasma" into a real, live, very active, boy.

The house itself has changed quite a bit these last five years, and the changes are all part of the mark we're leaving on this place. New roof, great gardens (thanks to us, I must say!), new interior and exterior paint jobs, some new kitchen cabinets and such, new dishwasher, different curtains, etc. Wife and I enjoy 'keeping house' together, and I think we've come to be pretty good at it. And we always make sure we can afford it first, which is key. Being house-poor is useless. Big tax refunds are awfully helpful.

When we moved here, we didn't think we'd stay here forever. We figured we'd be here four years, and now we've been here five. There are things we've put up with here that we're hoping to not have to deal with in our new place. We have no separate dining room, and yet we enjoy having friends and family over for sit-down dinners. There are a couple of "warts" in the yard in the way it slopes toward in the house in back. Some other choices in the construction materials (cheap-ass vinyl siding, for example) would not have been our choice were we to actually build a house.

Our new location is a much larger city, and fortunately it's not very far from SCT so we've visited the past several weekends to go house hunting. Lots of options up there. Lots of crap, too. Some expensive, and some not-so. Every time we come home to SCT, it hits us both how much we love this house. It's "home." This is the longest we've ever lived in one place together...heck, it's the longest either of us have ever lived anywhere except for the places we grew up. The thought of moving and starting over with our gardens, painting, etc. gets rather exhausting. And then the emotional side kicks in for me. Will the new owners of this place continue to take care of the yard, or will it all weed over? Will they repaint the "roasted red pepper" accent wall I painted in the kitchen as a surprise for Wife? Do they realize that the best son in the entire world learned how to walk, talk, eat and do most things he knows how to do under this roof? I need to get over these emotions toward this building, I realize. And I will. After all, the "home" is just going to move to a different house. Home is in the people, not the walls.

Tomorrow (OK, technically later today) is hopefully our last day for house-hunting, as our time is getting more limited. The hunting process is getting tiresome now...nothing seems to compare to our current house just yet. A couple of great places have had major, unchangeable things that will not work, like it's in the wrong school district or located on a busy road. The scary thing is, we're supposed to be out of our current house on June 26...ACK! Really hope the hunt goes well tomorrow.

It's tough to leave a place where you've done a lot of living...good and bad times mixed together. At least the family itself will stay together, and together we'll find a new container in which to house Chesterley. It's just sort of scary that in a very short time, life is going to change so much. No complaints though...just a little healthy fear here & there.

Two Important Meetings

IMPORTANT MEETING 1: Dissertation Proposal Defense.
I passed.

You know, it was actually an enjoyable experience. I felt like I had a highly-informed cheering squad instead of a group of adversaries. They treated me like a colleague. DC started off the meeting by saying, "We all want this study to work for you, and we're here now to help you improve it before you start." Can't ask for more support than that.

The end result was a pretty major change to the semi-structured interview protocol. This didn't surprise me at all: Honestly, I really didn't like the first one I had written. The feedback during the defense discussion was invaluable, and DC agreed. After we were finished and I watched them sign all the paperwork, DC invited me back to her office and we spent the next 45 minutes crashing through the edits of the protocol. SHE actually did the typing while I did the talking. Gosh she's cool. After that we decided to add a brief demographic survey that I'll have the participants complete prior to coming to my office for their interviews. I pulled together an Amendment for the Committee on the Protection of Human Subjects and submitted these new things to that office later in the afternoon. All wrapped up in a nice bow. Not really, it was wrapped up in an inter-campus envelope, but I'm just being figurative.

As I was driving home, I had a sudden urge to start packing up my house, in preparation for our move. Wait a minute, I need to do these minor things like SCHEDULE THE INTERVIEWS NOW!!! Oh yeah. :-)

IMPORTANT MEETING 2: Moose's Individual Education Plan for 2007-2008.
This is the meeting where the SCT teachers, therapists, preschool coordinator all come together with us to set goals and objectives for his schooling next year. He will start kindergarten. We're technically a year late, but that's really not a big deal. It was good of these folks to spend the time with us, especially since we're writing this for the new school district in the new city. We didn't finish today, so we'll finish things up next week.

OK, I'm off to officially invite participants to join my dissertation study (at long last) and then it's bedtime. G'night.

Newsworthy Tidbits

Two newsworthy tidbits to share here:

1. My dissertation proposal defense is set for Wednesday, April 25 at 10:00 AM. Please think happy thoughts.
   
2. I will start a full-time job July 1.

I don't write about the details of work here, as this blog focuses mostly on my dissertation process and a little bit on Moose. However, the new job is worth mentioning because we're going to move away from Small College Town this summer as a result.

We’re excited for the move, though it’s bittersweet. We have many, many wonderful friends here, and many of the resources for raising a child with special needs are wonderful. We enjoy the small-town charm, too. Those features will be hard to leave. However, we’re moving to a much larger city, and that will open up different opportunities for Moose’s schooling and for Wife’s career as a classical vocalist.

Basically, it’s a job in institutional assessment situated in a division of student life. This is just the sort of thing I was hoping to find upon graduation. I’m feeling lucky to have found it several months before finishing the dissertation!

The new shop will support my dissertation completion efforts by allowing me some time away in the summer and fall. My goal is still to finish up in December, that is, assuming the dissertation proposal defense process goes OK next week.

It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks. Our house went on the market just over a week ago, and by the end of last week we already received an offer! Now we need to haul ass and find a house in our new location. We went school hunting this morning, and that went very well, so now house-hunting can follow. Fun and pretty darn scary all at once. But we’re really, really happy.

A Basic Question

Last July I officially started my current job, which was essentially a promotion from a 50% FTE graduate assistantship to a 75% FTE graduate assistantship with supervisory responsibilities. The money was "good," and as a result I had no need to take out another student loan. The money was not "great," but for 30 hours per week, I had no complaints.

However, I am still on the student health insurance plan. The alternative, had I been hired as a true 75% staff member, was no insurance coverage at all. So, I was thankful to have been hired on as a grad-student at the salary I'm receiving, and I thought the student insurance plan was OK. Not great, but OK.

Moose wasn't on this plan last year. He was on a state-funded plan for which we qualified because our income was so low. This was a wonderful insurance plan, especially for a child with special needs, as it covered just about everything with no premiums or copay. Don't get me wrong: I'd rather not qualify for the plan due to high income, but I do miss this plan. We took him off the plan January 1.

Today we learned that the speech and occupational therapy (OT) he receives every week has not been covered since the start of the new year. Earlier in the year when we were deciding to switch him to this "student" plan, however, Wife called the insurance company to verify coverage, and they said "autism is covered." However, what was not clear was that they only cover "medical" expenses for autism, and not speech and OT. Speech and OT are only covered expenses if they are restorative. So, if I had been in an accident and needed to relearn how to use a fork, that OT would be covered.

Moose has never been able to speak. OT has taught him how to do things that other kids just learn, like using a fork, for example. My basic question: how is it that therapies provided by a hospital, and prescribed by a doctor, are not medical expenses realted to autism?

We are appealing, and we hope this turns out OK. But, what if it does not? Do we cancel therapies till we hear? The appeals process takes 30 days.

These insurance plans are designed for students, who typically are healthy and normally-functioning individuals. I mean, they got into college, after all. The plan covers prescriptions, doctor's visits, etc. That's all well and good, but when you realize your child has a mental disorder during a five-year stint as a graduate student, it'd be nice to at least be told what questions to ask in this regard. We would have found another plan or found another way to get the therapies had we known...

I may not have taken this job had I realized these essential things for Moose's care were not covered. On the other hand, this job has probably helped lead toward some bigger and better things (more later on those). I'm torn. Am not sure the money was worth it.

Proposing and Recruiting

Hi. I didn't post a follow-up over the weekend.

I did indeed finish up the proposal, and I turned it into the committee. It ain't perfect, but it's done...for now. As I delivered a hard copy to the home of one committee member, I reminded him that I'm a musician by trade. I said, "Just keep in mind: the first time an orchestra plays together, it usually doesn't sound all that good. This proposal may be similar." He graciously said, "Oh c'mon, it'll be fine, Rob," so perhaps that's a good sign that they're not seeking perfection, just completion. We shall see.

Meanwhile, I started my "snowball sampling procedure." This means I've asked about 14 faculty and staff members that I know here at LMU about helping me recruit people eligible to participate in my interviews. I've asked them things like, "Do you know of students who fit these criteria?" and "Feel free to pass this along to others." The hope is that the snowball, or the sample of participants, gets larger and larger the farther it rolls, or in this case the more it's shared. I'm seeking about 8-15 people total, and already I have contact information for 10! Amazing how fast this occurs after getting over the proposal-writing hurdle.

K bye.

Study # 07- 11947

Some quick updates, all of which are good.

First, I received Approval from the human subjects committee at LMU earlier this week, so I am now able officially to start recruiting participants for my study. Approval is good. From now on, I shall refer to the diss as # 07- 11947, the number assigned to my study by the Human Subjects Committee at LMU. Note the required space between the hyphen and the number 1. I am not kidding.

Next, DC came back from a series of conferences, and she gave me a bunch of feedback on the proposal. Feedback is good.

Third, DC thinks the propsoal is just about ready to go to my dissertation Committee. She informed the Committee as such, and now suddenly they all want the completed proposal by...TODAY. Committee interest is good. DC has asked them a big favor by accelerating my time line so I can collect data very soon. She rocks! I'm very lucky to have her.

Thanks to her feedback, and that of a couple of other Trusted Colleagues (TCs), I'm swiftly synthesizing a bunch of edits together into one coherent (God I hope so) document. Later this afternoon, I'll deliver copies to the Committee and then it's outa my hands till the defense date, which will happen hopefully within the next 10 days or so. We shall see.

A little bit stressed, but none of this is "bad" stress. It's all good.

Undercity Weekend

I had a nice undercity weekend here at home. Oh, "undercity" means "suburban." I'm just funny that way. I'm not sure how my neighborhood can be suburban where there's nothing truly urban anywhere nearby. I think I've identified a paradox: How can a suburban neighborhood be truly suburban with no nearby urban area? Discuss!

Anyway, I think this was one of the only weekends since I have been a homeowner (when we established Chesterley in 2002) that I did not feel any school work hanging over my head. Remarkable. We cleaned up the yard and put down mulch on most of the flower beds. So far we've put down 13 of those 2 cubic feet bags of the hardwood mulch. I think we need about three or four more for this one area along a fence line, but we need to wait for the hostas and bleeding hearts to come up first. We're trying a new weed-reducing method (just in a few spots) of laying newspaper down on the beds where we know plants are not growing and then covering them with the mulch (aren't we the little weekend warriors?) (so damn undercity of us). I hate weeding, but I hate how weeds look even worse. So, all of the beds except for one are done...and that one should be done next weekend when the plants start to come up. Feels like we're doing all we can to foster good healthy spring & summer gardens. I like gardening. I especially like it when I don't feel like I REALLY should be doing something else. Wife and I enjoy gardening together. Much fun. We like seeing the results of our work, and hopefully we'll reap some rewards for this work in a month or two when the growing season really kicks off.

This year I'm not going to use regular fertilizer on our lawn. I need to research organic lawn treatments, since Moose may be sensitive to toxins and stuff. It'll be different, but I always felt a little bit strange about pouring chemicals into our lawn and then later rolling around in the lawn with Moose and Chester. Should be a fun adventure, and perhaps less expensive than the fertilizers we'd buy at Large Home Improvement Store Out at the State Highway.

For dissertation work this week, I will edit hither & yon and await IRB and DC approval patiently. I've sent the proposal draft out to a few colleagues and relatives for their edits. Sort of fun to hear what they have to say. I realize this activity of sharing the work is part of my extraversion: I get energy from other people. Even with writing, I need to make it a social process. Otherwise, I'd seriously lose my mind and would probably lay mulch and newspaper over it by accident.

Two Milestones, No Libraries

I'm happy to report this is the first Saturday in a couple of months (not counting weekends out of town) where I will not go into my campus office for the day. The reason: last Wednesday about at 3:30 AM, I turned in a draft of my dissertation proposal to DC, "in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Large Midwest University." DC is leaving tomorrow for two weeks, and she won't have time to read it till she's traveling back to town. That's OK: I need a little break here. Hopefully it'll be just about ready to go, and I can set up a defense within the couple of weeks or so after her return.

In addition, yesterday I turned in my documentation for the Protection of Human Subjects (Institutional Review Board, or IRB) approval process. This is to prove I'm not planning on injecting my interview participants with air and then sitting around to see what happens. I got DC's signature on those forms just before she jetted out of here, so I'm glad to have that ball rolling. It's good I have the two-week buffer till DC can read the proposal, because it may take that long to get the IRB approval completed.

So, the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter. Heck, the tunnel itself is getting shorter. I CAN'T WAIT to start interviewing my participants and actually collecting data to see where this grounded theory study is gonna go.

Today Wife and I are pondering what we'll do together will all this Time. We're taking a vacation in May for our tenth wedding anniversary. She asked me to go with her TO THE LIBRARY today to check out some books to plan the trip. The LIBRARY? Nooo.....no more books! Maybe we'll go get some mulch for the flower beds, or paint the kitchen, or something....but not the library!!!

Happy Birthday, Chester!

I almost completely forgot that today is Chester's birthday! He's 8. EIGHT?? And to think, he used to fit in the palm of my hand. Literally.

I don't have a more recent picture of Chester than this one, taken last fall with me and Moose. This was just a spontaneous shot...both boys hopped in my lap at once.

Anyhow, woofa woof woof woof (translation: Happy Birthday, Chester!).

Deadline is looming

I’m working on my dissertation from home today. This came after cancelling a trip to visit relatives. I hate cancelling trips. I hate the fact I couldn’t get to my “real” job today. But, if I do not finish the proposal here soon, I will need to wait a year to collect data, and that would negatively impact all fronts: job life, home life, school life. So, no stress. None whatsoever. Ha. I value the rich life I lead outside of my professional career, but for the moment I’m needing to be a hermit. Lovely Wife is allowing me the space to do so, and the relatives we were going to visit aren’t too upset, I don’t think. But man I could use another week alone to get this done. Instead I have two days and the usual juggling of my life’s components. That’s OK…I realize I’m lucky to have components to my life. I just wish a few of them could give me a break for a couple of days…

Anyhow, I’m here in my peaceful home office/prison. I’ve been locked in here since about 8:30 AM, actually. Since the weather’s nice today (76 degrees right now), and since it’s spring break for the local schools, many of the neighborhood parents are taking time off to be with their kids…and I think they are all outside playing right now. One neighbor has a very loud motorcycle, and he is driving it up and down our street, back & forth, each time practically blasting me out of my seat. With the coffee surging through my blood right now and the constant motorcycle engine scaring the shit out of me, lemme tell ya I’m writing wicked FAST right about now.

Looks like it’s gonna rain soon. I hope it pours so I can have some quiet. I’m grumpy!

I am very close to finishing up the one major hole in chapter 2. I have about two more pages to write on chapter 3. Then I need to finish a pretty major overhaul of chapter 1, but I think I’m almost done there too. If this were due tomorrow, then I could stay up much of the night and finish. I’m actually that close.

Perhaps I’ll just stay up all night…hmm.

The motorcycle just drove by again. Pardon me while I peel myself off the ceiling.

Forecast is not as stormy

While the "to be or not to be" schedule isn't panning out as quickly and efficiently as I'd like, my perception of the urgent nature of the proposal defense date wasn't quite right either. My delay does not bring all bad news: I can take the extra week or so I need to get the proposal up to snuff, and then I should still have time to collect data. It may require taking a week off of work in April to do nothing but complete the interviews, but then the data collection will be completed and I'll be on no one else's schedule but my own.

DC gave me edits on chapter 1 over the weekend. This was waaaaay cool. She actually had me come to her house Saturday so she could explain where she wanted me to go with this. I tried to stay up all night on Sunday night to finish up edits to chapter 1. That was a dumb idea. I dragged my ass yesterday at work and didn't get nearly as far as I had hoped. Got 8 hours of sleep last night, and this morning I'm much more bright-eyed. Time to get through these edits before the work day starts at my 3/4-time job.

Details of Moose's Diet

Take a look over at Wife's blog for a very well-written post that describes the new dietary things we're dealing with for Moose. It's been exhausting on many different levels, but now we're gaining energy by seeing him "come back to us" with his personality, after about two months of sort of being away. I guess I just haven't wanted to talk about it much on this blog.

I honestly don't know what I'd do without my wife. I think she's the most patient person I've ever met.

No More Additional Articles or Books!

I hereby place myself on a moratorium on article- and book-obtaining activities. Unless a member of my committee requests I read something different for the proposal, I am no longer allowing myself to obtain any new reading materials.

I went to the library this morning to get one additional article, and of course I came back to my office with THREE in hand. I've read the one I sought in the first place, and now I must finish up chapter three, which is now a day late.

OK, one more time:

NO NEW ARTICLES OR BOOKS!

Thank you, I needed that.

No Colon

This post has nothing to do with my, or anyone else’s, excretory system.

During these last three or four years, I’ve assumed my dissertation’s title would have a colon in it. Something like, “Rob’s Dissertation: An Exploration into the Mind of a Mad Man.” Just kidding. Well, here I am with a decent title in hand, and there’s no colon. I’ll admit, I’m a little bit stunned!

"To Be or Not To Be" Schedule

I am now officially on a tight time schedule, but I think this is doable as long as I don’t lose focus. It’s pretty simple: if I don’t finish this on time, then the dissertation gets delayed for at least a semester, if not a year, since I need to interview seniors in their last semester of college for my study. Yep, either it’s gonna happen, or it’s gonna not. I’m shooting for the former.

Revised versions of chapters 1 and 2 went to DC at our meeting yesterday morning, and she seemed pleased. There is still a small hole in chapter 2, but I know exactly what I need to do, and I have the literature sources to do as such. Now I just need to “do.”

I need to turn a draft of chapter 3 into DC by tomorrow. I thought I had said draft in my hand at yesterday’s meeting. However, I must have dreamed making edits to that. I’m not kidding. I was surprised that the draft I had in my hand during our meeting still related to the old mixed-method study. I couldn’t believe it: rather embarrassing. Fortunately DC just had a good laugh about it stating that she’s been there before. It’s good to not be alone! So I’m madly making revisions to that this morning and cutting out anything related to the old study. It’s rather freeing, I must admit. Hopefully in the next couple of hours I’ll have a decent draft which I can edit later today after I work this afternoon.

DC will read everything over the weekend and give me feedback Monday. I will incorporate her feedback early next week, and I’ll fill in the hole in chapter 2 then as well. By the end of next week, March 9, I must deliver the completed proposal to my committee. This gives them two weeks to read it. I'm supposed to defend the proposal sometime after spring break and before DC leaves for big conference she’s running at the end of the month. This should leave me just enough time to do the interviews I need to do before the end of classes this semester.

The Mozart CD is on repeat and I’ve been cranking away since 8AM here at the home office-prison. It’s either going to be late nights or early mornings from here on out. But at least it’s the home stretch for the proposal, at long last. Nothing like the end-of-the-line push to get the work done (I hope!).

It just takes a little Mozart...

...for me to find focus. One of the first CDs I ever bought was a recording of the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 26 in D-Major performed by Murray Perahia. This is the CD I'd put in whenever I was in crunch paper-writing time in college, graduate school the first time, and now graduate school the second time (TEN years later...ugh, age, where are my cane and vitamins?). Why I don't remember to put this CD in every morning, I'll never know. I always focus and get a lot of work done when I hear this piece. It's benign enough that I don't just space out and listen to the music. It helps me filter out the rest of the world and do nothing but write. There are three movements: faster, slower, and fast (my translation of the Italian). During the fast movements I write, and during the slow movement I read and proof. I don't mean to do it that way, but that's just the rhythm I've established. I think it's subconscious. Many times I just put the CD on repeat mode and so I can crank through a big paper.

Guess I'm going to have this tune running perpetually here in my office for the next couple of weeks. I've just burned the CD to my office computer.

Chester is Flatulent

Get out of my office, smelly dog!

The poor thing. I wonder what he ate.

Elusyve letter y

Y am seryously thynkyng of removyng all ynstances of the letter “i” from my dyssertatyon and replacyng them wyth the more elusyve and less-frequently used letter “y”. Wouldn’t that be nyce?

OK, Y realyze that’s probably not the best ydea. But yt would be pretty funny nevertheless. You can tell Y’m goyng styr crazy wyth dyssertatyon-wrytyng these days. Perhaps the upcomyng snow storm wyll bryng me back to a mode where Y can be more productyve? Y hope so.

Friday Haiku

My friend & colleague, Jon , and I wrote this today after a meeting at work.

Our meeting is done
The decisions have been made
Let’s go home and drink

Dude, that's a Haiku.

Chemistry Experiment

We took Moose to a specialist yesterday because we have him on a gluten-free casein-free diet (GFCF). For those of us not in the know, that's basically wheat-free and dairy-free food. Apparently, many autistic kids have a high sensitivity to these foods. There's gluten in a whole bunch of things, more than you'd suspect. We're thankful for a good organic food section at Chain Grocery Store Near Our House (CGSNOH), along with a natural food store elsewhere in town. Autistic kids' food sensitivities manifest themselves on two ends of a spectrum (this is my own lay-person's representation of the problems [I need visuals], so it may be incorrect):

physical gut problems <----------------> aloofness or spaciness

Moose falls, of course, on the "aloofness or spaciness" side of things. The specialist would argue that he's essentially getting high on drugs from consuming gluten and casein products.

For a long while, Wife and I balked at this entire notion because Moose didn't have any of the gut issues, which is the more-common problem. He eats a variety of foods, and his digestive system was always just fine. He sleeps through the night consistently. We were skeptical of anyone trying to say that a diet will "cure" autism.

But we decided to try the diet anyhow because we just didn't want to leave a stone unturned in this journey. This specialist agrees there is no cure for autism. However, her Asperger's-syndrome daughter has had a great deal of success on this diet, and the doc has been working in this area for more than a decade. "Success on the diet" is defined as a reduction of autistic-like repetitive behaviors and an increase in communication skills (in addition to getting rid of any physical problems, that Moose doesn't have, fortunately).

The visit to the doc yesterday was very interesting. After reading Moose's history (Wife has had to write out the details of her pregnancy and Thomas's entire life at least 15 different times, by hand, no exaggeration), the doc told us WE'VE BEEN DOING EVERYTHING RIGHT. I think this is one of the first people we've met who believe in the "the environment is out to get us" sort of stuff who has said that to us. Wife needed to hear that. Along the way others have questioned us about vaccinations, rho gam shots, flu shots during pregnancy, and other stuff...all of which were things our doctors told us to do. This is one of the first people "in the know" who told us we hadn't done anything wrong. Very refreshing.

Next, she immediately saw a few things in Moose and pinpointed the likely cause. "He grinds his teeth a lot," she observed. "Yes, he's done that ever since he grew teeth," I replied. "Well, it's probably due to an overdose of yeast in his system, I've seen that a lot." Who knew? So now he'll be on some drugs to help clear the yeast out of his system. OK, we'll see how that goes.

There was an iodine test. That's the yellow liquid stuff that stains your skin for up to 12 hours. The test was that if it absorbed into his skin in less than 12 hours, then his body is craving the stuff that's in iodine. (side note: his skin was back to his normal color in less than four hours, so I guess he's deficient in that area, ya think?)

And then they drew blood. Six vials, for all sorts of chemical tests. Apparently he's a walking chemistry set. After I had to gently, yet firmly, say to the nurse, "He won't understand you when you tell him to hold his arm still," we worked out a system where Wife held Moose down underneath her, I held his free arm, and two nurses helped to draw the blood. We had him in a sing-a-long/scream-a-long, and I think it helped to calm him down, a little. They had to stick him in TWO separate places in the same arm, but they eventually got almost as much blood as they needed (god I hope it's enough). A few hundred dollars later (I suppose he's worth it, haha), we were driving back to SCT peacefully, Moose was sucking down juice and GFCF pretzels, back to his normal self. Wife and I, while shaking, were at least relieved that we feel we've found a specialist who really understands all this stuff. Moose is really a trooper, truly. A very brave kid.

I feel like we're at the bottom of a very steep hill and are learning how to get the car into first gear without rolling backward. But I think it's the right hill, and we've been searching for the this hill for a while. We shall see. We'll try anything that has no potential of hurting him. I just hope he doesn't have to have another blood test anytime soon.

Dissertation? What dissertation?

Good stuff

The last post was a bit gloomy. There are a few good things that have happened in the last day or so that bode well for successful dissertation profection:

1. The weather is finally behaving by being cold! I shoveled the driveway yesterday along with a few of my neighbors. It felt very homey and neighborly. I actually enjoy shoveling snow.
2. A good friend from my master's program is expecting a baby after driving a particularly difficult road to get there. I'm VERY happy for you!!!
3. I want both Super Bowl teams to win the game (though deep down I'll probably cheer for my Bears at my home turf).

Focused, motion toward completion, getting the darn thing done...

Re-shifting

It's been a while since I've done a real post here. Let me start this off by saying that I'm just about done with my dissertation proposal. I have about another 4-5 pages to write in chapter 3, and I just received a good amount of feedback from DC on chapters 1 and 2. I'm working on a big revision of things right now, and I'm on track to defend the fucker in the next few weeks (that is, if I can get my committee finalized by then. I'll save that for another post).

But there's been a fairly significant re-shifting of my dissertation this past week. I am a big-picture thinker. In many situations I consider this one of my greatest strengths. However, when writing a dissertation, it goes only so far. One must focus a dissertation topic and go with it. At the same time, one must gain the approval of others in order for the topic to gain the support and "Miracle Grow" it needs to come to fruition. Finding a topic is not entirely an independent process.

I've mentioned here that I've had multiple dissertation topics throughout my time at LMU. If I weren't a big-picture thinker, I probably would have focused long ago. I may have been further (farther? I have no idea) along in the march toward completion than I am now, though I really can't say that for certain. Still, I hold true to the fact that I like my present topic a great deal, and I'm glad I felt free to switch topics along the way. I've identified a significant gap in the literature, and there is a group of researchers 'out there' that is now starting to work toward filling in the gap. This is a good time for me to be working on this particular topic.

I thought I had a solid plan for collecting data. I was going to administer a survey to a group of students, and out of the respondents I would choose a handful of them for in-person interviews to help provide data for a theory I'm developing.

After a long meeting with DC this past week (almost 3 hours...I have a good DC!), I decided to drop the survey portion and find participants in another way. Instead of running a mixed-method study, it will now have a straight qualitative methodology.

Compared to my initial idea, the overall design is more streamlined. The survey portion of the study was getting too large, and DC said it could have stood on its own as a quantitative study. My intent with even administering a survey in the first place was to find students to participate in a qualitative interview process. Clearly, my big-picture thinking was running away from me again. Streamlining and sticking with one methodology is the better way to proceed.

So why, then, do I feel like a failure for quitting the mixed-method study? Perhaps the better question is: Why did I feel a need, in the first place, to do one of the the toughest dissertation methods on the planet when this could be relatively simple? Don't get me wrong, there's nothing simple about any dissertation method, but mixed-method studies are essentially two different dissertations merged together. All the advice I received going into this doctoral program was similar: "pick a topic you like and is simple so you can finish the dissertation quickly." I didn't listen. Why isn't something relatively simple good enough? I dunno.

At least I'm not starting over, and I'm grateful that I didn't get too far into this thing before realizing I had created a monster and that I'd spend the rest of my thirties as a graduate student. I should be happy about a simpler methodology, but it's not yet sitting well with me. I'll get there eventually.

Yang

Most of these words describe me, except for Summer. I don't like that much heat.

I Am More Yang

Masculine Creative Angry Spring Summer Morning Sun Space Active Wood Chocolate

Are You More Yin or Yang?

Update on The Tree

I have an update on the recent post where I discussed our Christmas tree. I feel a little embarrassed I'm even spending more time on this topic, but I'm beaming with pride for my wife right about now. You'll see why if you keep reading.

We were heartbroken and felt guilty when we disposed of said tree. I mean, we killed A TREE so we could hang a few ornaments and lights on it for about 7 days. I still can't believe it. We paid money to have someone chop it down for us, exposing its innards and taking an oxygen source away from the world, specifically for this purpose. Wow. So when we were disposing of said tree at the recycling center (the proper, environmental thing to do, of course) (oh my God), we pretty much decided then and there that we'll never do that again.

Wife said she often has heard of major after-Christmas sales on the nice fake trees that come with lights already strung on them. They tend to cost in the $100 range, but she wanted to wait for a sale. Sales are good.

Last week Wife was at Chain Grocery Store Near Our House (CGSNOH), and she saw those trees on sale for $25. Not too bad. They weren't quite the fullest-looking trees, and it was pretty easy to see the trunk. Still, it's JUST a plastic Christmas tree, and with ornaments and other crap covering it, it should look OK. At least it was pre-lit, and at least it was only $25. But neither of us thought about it again, and we forgot about it till today.

Today, the trees were on sale, marked down again. They were only $10. We now own said tree. Loving the wife's financial savvy and patience. I feel like we beat the Christmas machine at its own game. Too bad we had to commit a cardinal sin against the Earth before we learned our lesson, but that's OK. Someday I'll stop feeling guilty about it. Maybe.

Horoscope

I hardly EVER read my horoscope, and I don't know what prompted me to do so today. However, I found it helpful and frighteningly close to being relevant for me right now, so figured I'd put it here.

Taurus (April 20-May 20) - Conditions looks exceptionally good concerning a project that has suffered a loss of progress lately. If you get back to it now and are tenacious, you can make up for lost time.

Last week was not my best week in terms of dissertation progress, so this was relevant. So, I took its advice and buckled down today in my campus office.

I finalized two sets of questions. First, I decided upon the ones I'll use for my questionnaire. I've reduced a rather long extant questionnaire to something more manageable. What took me a while was developing my "theoretically-sound rationale" for choosing these particular questions. Second, I wrote the 14-or-so questions I'll use in my semi-structured interview protocol (Patton, 2002), when I interview a handful of the higher-scoring respondents to my questionnaire.

Now I just have to write chapter 3. I got page 1 done today...that's hopefully the hardest part. Yeah, uh keep dreaming Rob.

Sometimes I feel like this is actually going really well. And then for some reason, that gets so overwhelming that I literately need to leave the room for a couple of minutes. I used to think that was a really silly way to react until I realized I'm not the only one who feels this way. I have a colleague who understands these feelings, only her reaction is that she thinks she thinks she's going to throw up. Last week, I said to her, "I think this is finally coming together." Her response: "That's great. Do you feel like you're going to throw up?" "No," I said, "but I had to leave the room and put this latest draft in the freezer." "Oh, OK," she replied, as if this was all just normal behavior. Well, if more than one person understands these feelings, then in my book it IS normal behavior!

My Window is Open

It's January 5, I'm in the Midwest, and I just opened my office's window because it's 63 degrees. What the f#$%???

Zoo in December

I completely forgot to post our pictures from a mid-December trip to the zoo. Click the pic below to see the rest of the online album. A few really good pictures of Moose and Wife in there (a few of yours truly as well).

zoo

That day we traveled up to Large City to the North to hang out with a friend who was in from out of town. Then we got Moose's hair cut and went to the zoo. Good trip!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

We had a fun time with some friends over here at Chesterley last night. Laughed and ate and laughed and ate till we kicked everyone out at 12:15 AM since Moose has been waking us up extra early lately. A good time was had by all.

Check out Wife's latest post for a good description of our trip out for lunch with the same group of friends. I no longer really care all that much about others' reactions to Moose when we're out and about. I'm proud of him and I'm not afraid to show him off, odd noises and funny hand motions and all. I'm also thankful for the good friends who understand all this stuff and a few accepting people we happen to meet when we're out & about.

The tree

We're taking down our Christmas tree sometime tomorrow. Figured I'd post this short album of tree decorating pictures up before then.

A funny thing happened: I was crawling around on the floor trying to water the tree the other day, and I pulled on the base or something a little too hard. Next thing I know, I hear my mother-in-law shouting "Tree! Tree!" I'm not aware that the darn thing is falling over on top of me till needles and ornaments start coming down like a hailstorm. Fortunately, Wife was only a couple of steps away and was able to save the thing from going completely horizontal. That's a first for our family! After we up-righted the tree and re-decorated it, it never really quite looked as good as it does in this album. It has a pretty good lean to the left. Oh well.

Anyhow, here's the album.

christmastree06

Mappy Chrismakuh/Herry Hannumas

When I was younger, my bi-religional (bi-religional?) family would use these phrases to ring in the winter holiday season. Herry Hannumas was my personal fave.

Speaking of which, I completely missed Hannukah this year. This is unfortunate because for me Hannukah is more of a celebration of God than Christmas is, even though Hannukah isn't all that "important" in the Jewish faith. Don't get me wrong, I think the American Christmas is a whole bunch of fun, but the part one celebrates at home is essentially a big birthday party. Doesn't do much for me in the god department, but that's just me. The home festivities themselves are fun, I love the music, and my wife does a wonderful job of decorating our home with festive things. So, I'm thankful for the season and the various tidbits therein, but I'm kicking myself for not at least taking out the menorah and lighting a candle or two. My own darn fault on that one. Bah humbug. At least we'll hit church tomorrow (twice, I think?), so there will be some religion in the season tomorrow. This is good. I don't mind a little liberal religion one bit.

I've not written here in the blog most of the month. But the dissertation is going well, believe it or not. Chapter 1 is revised already, chapter 2 is into DC (the ball is in her court to give me feedback), and I've created much of the interview protocol that I'll write about in chapter 3. That chapter should go smoothly as soon as I find time to write it. Finding the proper balance among dissertation work, family work, and work-work continues to be a challenge, but overall I've no complaints.

Wife's family arrived here last night and will stay through Christmas. Then wife & I head to see my family in Chicago for a few days while parents of wife stay here with Moose (a VERY nice Christmas present!).

We actually got a "real" Christmas tree this year that was chopped down yesteday. It just went up in the livingroom/dining room/music room, so I need to run and help decorate. Bye.

Happy Christmas, too!

Moose hung out with Santa

I completely forgot to post this last week. The day after Thanksgiving, Wife and my mother took Moose shopping around SCT (not at any of the big-box stores at 5:00 AM, mind you).

They had a chance to stop & see Santa. If they hadn't taken these pictures, I never would have believed that Moose actually interacted with this strange man in the fake beard. He's making a ton of progress lately - very exciting to see.

santa2006

Writing and Holiday Preparation

I cranked yesterday, thank God. Got lots of writing done, and am attempting to do the same this afternoon. In the past hour or so I've only written another paragraph and done a bit more moving around of other paragraphs. I guess this is part of the whole deal. It may never end, but if it does I've certainly come much closer to it in the past couple of days.

I also have the warm fuzzies I usually experience preparing for the winter holidays with Wife. We decorate the house a bit, play some of our holiday music that we only take out in December, that sort of thing. We sang "O Come O Come Emmanuel" at church this morning, which reminds me of college and fun times singing in the Christmas Carols & Scripture concert each year. No doubt about it, it's Advent out. I do enjoy this time of year.

It's funny: I now associate these Advent weekends with the time when I hunker down and write final papers till my wrists hurt. For some reason, today's afternoon solitude in my home office/prison is actually adding to the warm fuzzies. Well that's sort of messed up, isn't it?! But, this is my fifth December in a row doing this sort of thing, so it's becoming sort of a tradition, I suppose. And I actually don't mind it this year - it's that "do or die" time of year with my academics. Not that anything academic could really ever KILL me, but, well you know what I mean. Life's pretty simple right now: I just have a SHITLOAD of work to do in the next two weeks.

Guess I should get back to it, then. Just had to share these weird thoughts & feelings of "comfort & joy" along with fervish writing. I am SUCH a nerd.

Behind, yet thankful

We had a thankful holiday weekend here at Chesterley. My mom came in from Chicago and we all a lovely time. My mom is a very good photographer, and she attempted to snap several shots in an effort to help us get find a greeting card photo. See the album linked here if you're interested. Only a couple turned out OK, but of course either my eyes are closed too much, open too much, or Moose is looking the other way. C'est la vie, I suppose. Wife looks fantastic in all of the pictures, of course!

SCT has a neat tradition of lighting up the courthouse square for the holidays on the night after Thanksgiving. We went for the official lighting event for the first time this year. Pictures of that are also in the album linked here. Really is quite beautiful.

I got a little bit more done on the diss, but not as much as I had hoped. So, I'm feeling behind, but I suppose it's understandable. I'm thankful for many, many things, and this weekend was a time to celebrate those. Sure the damn diss is still hanging over my head, but I'm not really stressed about it today. However, my sense of awareness is heightened that time for the completion of the proposal is running out quickly if I indeed want to collect data next semester. So, I guess I have a mixture of emotions today, but remarkably none of those involve stress. Guess we all needed the holiday.

Thanx2006

Any thoughts on which picture(s) to use for the holiday photo? Speak up!

Geeky part: Also, am still deciding whether or not to keep using the Google Picasa feature for posting these, or if I should fork over the $25 for a Flickr "pro" account to share pictures more widely. Hmm...

Feedback Received on Draft 1

...and it was good! And now I know I need to kick my @ss into gear, FAST, if I want a chance in hell of collecting data by the end of the year.

Tasks:

1. Tweak chapter 1 (glad I'm in the tweaking stage now)
2. Finish chapter 2 (she told me I don't have to do as much as I thought...but I do still have a bit left to do)
3. Draft chapter 3 (this won't be nearly as tough as chapter 2)
4. Get a committee together (oh yeah, THAT)

If I can get a draft of all of this by November 27 (um, that would be 10 days from now), I'll feel MUCH better.

The light at the tunnel has gotten a bit brighter. Can I really pull this together between now and the end of the year? Well, I've had more end-of-semester work to do in the past, so if I can kick up the work gear just a bit for this final push, I should be good to go.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Thanksgiving is Next Week?

I shudder to think that we're already nearing the time when seeing holiday decorations is appropriate and not too early.

I was out of town at the end of last week and into the weekend. It was a stellar experience, truly one of the highlights of my doc student career. I attended a conference, well more of a workshop, that explored creating a new research domain around the notion of creativity. The focus was on participation in the arts when in college: right up my alley. And I'm making a pretty major connection between creativity and some other concepts in my dissertation, so this was a WAY COOL experience. I have much more to say about it, but I'm not yet ready to share those thoughts here.

Now I need to synthesize all this information and get the damn lit review done. I think I'm almost there, and I meet with DC on Friday to get my first round of feedback on the first 20 pages I gave her a few weeks ago. Since then I've written another 15 pages or so, and hopefully that will increase by a few more pages between now and Friday as well. Gotta get these thoughts out of my head and get the literature cited.

The looming Thanksgiving date is a bit daunting. If I don't finish the proposal by the end of the year and start collecting data next semester, then I'll either need to change my entire topic or wait an entire year to collect data: I'm attempting to research seniors in their last semester of college: um, that sorta starts in two months. I don't want to wait a year.

I suppose things could be worse. As far as I know, I'm not dying anytime soon from some unknown disease (except maybe Wife may wring my neck if I don't get this done soon). But I am so sick of having this hanging over my head. Just want it done.

I'm glad the weather has finally turned cold. Makes me want to hit a pub and drink several thick beers with friends and wife. There's no time for this, I realize, but it's what I like to do on rainy cold grey Midwestern days like today.

Wait, it's only 10AM and I'm thinking about beer? This is bad!

Elekshun Dae

I haven't really ever posted anything political on this blog. I guess expostulating on the state of world affairs isn't my strength, so I don't attempt to do it very often. However, I vote in every election and feel very strongly about doing so. I come from a line of relatives who were highly involved with various civic responsibilities, though thankfully (my opinion) none of them ever really ran for an actual political office. My parents and grandparents always seemed to be volunteering their time for the betterment of society in some way shape or form. My grandmother, especially, continued this sort of work until just before her death at age 98, earlier this year. I have yet to meet another with the same sort of "do it to improve society" determination that she had.

Growing up in this "engaged" family (ack, did I just say engaged?), I always thought it was normal for people to get involved in a cause, even if it meant working with those who held different political or religious beliefs (hell, my family had, at minimum, two very different religions within itself). Disagreement was just a part of a good conversation. Not only was it acceptable, in fact it was expected. Discussing where people differed in their views was a crucial part of my childhood education. Don't get me wrong: this wasn't always easy, and sometimes it really sucked, but this sort of thing taught me a great deal.

I realized something sort of funny a few weeks ago while hanging out with a buddy who was the best man in our wedding. If I based my friendships on agreement in political affiliation, I literally would have had NO groomsmen! These are four of my very closest friends, two from high school and two from college. I don't think it occurred to any of the five of us that our friendship was somehow impacted by my "different" political views. I guess we're all able to see a little bit of both sides of political arguments, and we don't let it get in the way. I can pick right up with any of these guys at a moment's notice, no matter the time, place or situation. In spite of their unfortunate thoughts on certain issues (and they're all WRONG! haha), I can't imagine not having these four guys as good friends.

And yet it seems this country is completely torn apart by politics. Why? Is it turning into a civil war of sorts? I'm not sure. What I do know is that I think our society needs to learn how to have a good, healthy argument without completely losing its cool. We all need to be more comfortable disagreeing with each other. Where's the joy in a good discussion unless there's disagreement leading toward growth? I don't think I'm being too idealistic when I ask this last question.

Well, the election coverage on the network television station I tend to watch started about 50 minutes ago, so I should go see what's going on. I hate this part of the night, but I'm looking forward to the end of the political advertisements and telephone calls.

The Deadline Loomethed and Passethed

Earlier today I turned in a draft to CPA Kim, the one who works across the hall from me and is helping me find the extrinsic motivation to kick ass on the proposal. She gave me an "incomplete," which was appropriate, but I was grateful for the deadline to actually make myself progress. Being accountable to someone else (funny word choice in "accountable," since she's a CPA) (I digress) is what made all the difference.

She moved the deadline back to next Wednesday, the day before I go out of town to confer at a conference. I now have only two sections left of Chapter 2 to write before going back and trying to make better connections between the sections. The goal is to have the two sections written before the end of the morning on Wednesday. Shouldn't be nearly as tough as the first portion I've already completed, because these last two sections deal with areas I've already read about. The first two sections involved exploring some new territory. I anticipate doing some editing on the plane to & from the conference and in the late evenings at the hotel.

"It" is getting easier. Finding the inner energy to get this done and not take it so damn seriously is how I'm defining the "it" in this case. The light at the tunnel's end is getting brighter each day, and I think that's my main motivation at this point. I can practically taste what life will be like when I'm done. That sort of sounds pathetic, because it seems these last four plus years are culminating into an attitude of "just get it done!" Not sure I like that too much. On the other hand, it's a hell of a lot better than sitting around and basking in academic masturbation, i.e. having great thoughts but making no progress whatsoever. Tee hee.

"It's Friday out," and I need to finish up a project at work before going home to mow the lawn/rake the leaves. Just thought I'd get this thought out of my head before the day's end. K, bye.

National Novel Writing Month

Well shit. I mean, isn't a dissertation nothing more than a really really organized novel? Perhaps I should join this group on the National Novel Writing Month. I could be done with the proposal before December hits.

What's ironic is that I clicked on the web site for the organization (www.nanowrimo.org) and the page isn't working. How am I supposed write my dissertation in a month if the site is down?? It's almost the end of November 1 - I only have 29 more days!!! ACK!

OK people, gimme a fuckin' break and let's get real. I mean, are we expected to quit our jobs and do nothing but write a book? Are we living in fantasy land? Oh yeah...oh SHIT. I quit my job over four years ago to start this degree. Forgot about that detail.

[Rob goes to crawl into a hole now and ponder this fantasy land life he's been living much too long...]

Looming Deadline

With the exception of the post from last Tuesday that just went up, I realize I haven't written in a while. So, hi.

A work colleague, who has already finished her higher education profection, is wonderful about checking in on me just about each day to help me be accountable that I'm actually getting things done on the diss. I'd say it's working. I turned in about 20 pages of the diss to DC on Monday. It's a large portion of chapter 1 and a medium-sized portion of chapter 2. Sounds like I'm ordering fries: I'd like a large please! Oops - digression. Anyhow, that experience was sort of scary in some ways, but cathartic in others. At long last, the feedback loop has been opened. I won't hear from DC for a while, but knowing she has a good chunk of the first two chapters is making me more comfortable with the possibility of sharing it with other colleagues I trust. Feedback would be a welcome change.

Anyhow, said work colleague from the preceding paragraph has set a firm deadline for me and another doc student for a draft of the entire proposal, or dissertation chapters 1-3, on her desk at this time one week from today. This is a good thing: I need the extrinsic motivation (even though it's "weaker") to fuel the stronger, more crucial intrinsic motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1985). Will I ever again be able to write something without citing it (Harvey & Katz, 1985)?

Guess I'll be focused this weekend in my on-campus office. Oh joy. But it'll be worth it if I can actually get something done by next week. Perhaps I should start chapter 3? YIKES!!!

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. New York: Plenum Press.

Harvey, J. C., & Katz, C. (1985). If I'm so successful, why do I feel like a fake? The impostor phenomenon. New York: St. Martin's Press.