Quilt Squares

I just realized that I haven't mentioned my quilt-square metaphor up here, and yet I referred to it in my last post. Briefly: I have no experience with quilting other than that I can see how they are constructed. One builds each quilt square first, then they are arranged in a pattern that makes sense, and then finally they are somehow all sewn together.

I view the creation of my results/findings chapter as similar to constructing a quilt. The codes that I developed from the data analysis are essentially the small squares. Some of them can be grouped together to make a larger square. First I must develop all of the small and larger squares (I've completed four . Once those are complete (perhaps by tomorrow or Monday), then I can start the process of arranging them in a logical order and finally "sewing" things together with text that connects the whole thing into one big-ass quilt.

I've already realized that I'll have a six-square quilt. Each of those squares can be broken down into three or four smaller squares. I have completed the basics for four of the six squares, and I started on the fifth one this afternoon. I hope to finish up that one tonight and possibly get through the sixth one tomorrow (that's probably too ambitious, but one must set goals).

Arranging: I honestly have already arranged them in my head. I'll play with some of the small-level details just a bit, but I think I have the arrangement of the six squares ready to go.

Sewing: I tend to make connections and write connective text pretty quickly. Heck, I write pretty quickly in general, when i set my mind to it. I started this post at 8:39 PM, and it's now 8:46 PM...

So, if I can finish making squares this weekend, I can probably give myself Monday-Wednesday to get the arranging and sewing done. Thursday can be editing day, and then I can deliver the quilt to DC on Friday.

Again, it may be too ambitious, but it's a plan. And it's 8:47 PM now.

Graduation Application is In

I turned in my application to walk at graduation in the middle of last week. It's funny that I did that, because I really didn't make much progress on the dissertation last week. However, I know deep down that regardless of WHEN the deadline for completion is set, I will finish SOMETHING. So, now there will be a tough push starting today through the end of next week to get the results chapter finished, but it'll happen. I may not sleep very much, but it'll happen. It's gotta happen.

I'm back in SCT this morning writing with a friend. I finally finished up the biggest, most important quilt square of them all, which is a big relief. Two more biggies to try and conquer this weekend....then I can weave the whole quilt together this week before turning it all in to DC. It's gonna suck, but it'll be done.

Home Stretch with this Results Chapter Thing

I had a great meeting with DC last Friday (I was in SCT for the day). She was just as excited as I am about the various things I'm finding with my study. More important, she encouraged me to start expressing my own views in terms of, um, "my" theory. Yep, it's mine. All mine. That was a little weird at first, but then again, the point of all of this is to create a theory, so I just need to get over the weirdness.

In the next five days I'll solidify whether or not I'll walk in graduation. I suspect I will, but I do need to make significant progress this week or else I will not make the 3/5 deadline to give DC the first draft of the fifth chapter. What's cool is that I'll start drafting the sixth (and LAST!) chapter after that deadline. Wow, that's pretty swell.

My perfectionist tendencies seem to be kept at bay for now. I'm even to the point where I'm writing paragraph after paragraph, and if I think they suck I literally write [THIS SUCKS] as a marker to go back and edit. A good friend heard an expression saying something like, "I'm just a decent writer, but I'm an excellent editor." I like that mantra.

I think that's similar to my attitude toward being "ready" to graduate. I figure I'm never really going to feel ready till I'm completely finished. But will I ever finish unless I feel I'm ready?? ACK- that's a mad cycle! Instead, I'm just plugging forward, setting hard deadlines and trying to stick to them.

I pay my auto insurance every six months, and I just paid us up through August of this year. What's funny is that the next time I replace those little insurance cards in August, it's very likely I will already have participated in graduation and will have my final defense date set. It's going to be a pretty wild six months. However, the six months prior to the end of both my BA and my MA were exactly like this, so this seems like the perfect time to finish.

Deadlines

I'm all for using extrinsic motivators as a short-term fix for getting something accomplished, quickly. The application to graduate is coming up very soon. I think I'm on track to make it in time, which is great. It's also a bit weird. Participating in commencement doesn't feel quite right since I'm not yet being finished. However, if this goes the same way as all of the other papers I've written, I suspect the end of this project will come more quickly than I anticipate. But then there's the "everything always takes longer" phenomenon, which I've encountered time and time again throughout this process. Bottom line: who the hell knows?

I think that if I keep up this pace, I'll at least have a decent draft of the rest of the study done before I would walk in May. Then I'd feel comfortable about walking. Maybe I'd have my defense date scheduled by that time as well. That'd be cool.

I've not yet decided if I'll participate in Commencement just yet, but at least I'm continuing to make decent progress. I still have another week to make good progress and make my final decision. Fortunately, DC is supportive my decision either way.

Things that Go Bump in the Night

At about 2:45 AM today (yes, I was still awake!), the strangest thing happened. As a car drove by the house, I heard the engine roar, and then I heard a "Bump-Bumpity-Bump THUD." I scrambled to the window, and I saw that a car had stopped in front of our house. I had to stare at it for a few seconds and wrap my brain around what I saw: The two rear break lights were vertical...one on top of the other. Yep, the car had flipped onto its side, right in front of our house.

Chesterley, our home, is in a suburban-like subdivision (even though we're within the LSC city limits), and we're on the one through through street in the entire neighborhood, just about a mile long. There are no stop signs, and the road has numerous twists and turns. Tonight the road was extremely icy, as the private company that takes care of the roads in the winter apparently has yet to invest in salt and/or sand. Normally the speed limit is 30 MPH, but typically in the winter I keep it around 20 to prevent from sliding into one of my neighbor's mailboxes on all the ice.

I immediately wondered if the person inside was injured or dead. The Wife was awakened by the "Bump-Bumpity-Bump THUD" sound. She asked, "What was that?" My mind and heart were racing. All I could say was, "Car on side. Car on its side." Wife said, "Our car is on its side?" I finally took a deep breath and said, "A car has flipped over onto its side in front of our house." I hear a "holy SHIT," so I know she's then comprehended what I said.

I called 9-1-1:

"9-1-1 may I help you?" said a tired yet friendly, female voice who had probably been at work for a while on a busy Saturday night.

"Hi," I said, making my voice stay calm. "There is a car that has flipped onto its side in front of my house." I really couldn't believe what I was saying. I mean this kind of thing could happen on an Interstate during a snowstorm, but on our little windy street??

"What's your address?!" said her then excited voice, almost with the appearance of saying, Ooh...this'll be a fun one!

Wife and I both threw on heavier clothing, and I ventured outside toward the car. The neighborhood was completely quiet. I think we were the only ones who heard the crash. I walked toward the car, which I then realized was a little red Jeep Wrangler, and I tried to see if there was any movement. The weirdest thing was that there was no movement, and no sound at all, except for a bent windshield wiper that was slowly wiping the air, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth...

Way too eerie. Way too quiet. Way too little movement from the driver. I hoped she wasn't dead. I hope she hadn't just died right there in front of us. I hope the car wasn't going to explode in front of my house. Man it was cold. Ran inside.

By the time I shut the front door, two police cars had already pulled up from the north. Then another pulled up from the south. So Wife and I both went outside this time to watch, even though it was under 15 degrees. We heard the officers saying to the person inside, "OK honey, we're working on getting you out." and "Can you reach up and crank open the window?" They had to repeat the question several times. It was as if she didn't understand that the passenger seat was actually above her now instead of next to her, because she didn't appear to quite get that the car was flipped on its side. Maybe she was drunk, intoxicated, pissed, hosed, and wasted.

Once Wife and I realized the driver wasn't dead, and once a police officer thought she may have been drunk, intoxicated, pissed, hosed or wasted, we decided to go inside the house. My sympathy for the driver waned at this point, I will admit. At least she wasn't dead. At least she hadn't killed anyone else. We watched the whole extraction and towing experience from our living room window. Around 3:00 AM. A total of FIVE firetrucks proceeded to the scene, flashing lights and all, at least one ambulance, along with like three more police cars. Seemed like a bit much, but hey I'll admit it was good to see the quick reaction .

Bottom line: they sawed her out of the car through the passenger side (the side up in the air), and took her away in a stretcher. We watched a tow-truck driver upright the car and get it on his tow-truck. He even swept up the broken glass from the street. In just under one hour, the entire scene was cleaned up, and Chesterley is back to its regular state of quiet and not the eerie quiet.

A police officer called me a few minutes later to follow up with a couple of questions. He informed me the driver was "extremely intoxicated." And, she took out my neighbor's mailbox in the process.

No. Sympathy. Relieved no one died. Don't drink and drive.

Moving along

I'm wearing my trendy new bifocals and am sitting back in the library trying to get more work done on the friggin results chapter. I may be a pound heavier, too. Oh well. It's been a long week. Am happy for the serenity of the library for a while.

More later.

Weight Battle

If you'd rather not know about my weight gain and loss story, then simply don't read this post, Mom. :-)

I am a member of the online version of WeightWatchers (WW for short). In the fall of 2001 I lost 30 pounds. This was weight I gained during the time when Wife was pregnant with Moose. He was born in July, and in September (soon after 9/11, but with no strong connection), I hopped on the WW bandwagon. By the holidays of that year, I had dropped about 30 pounds, and I kept 25 of those 30 off the remainder of the academic year, until we moved to Indiana. So, I was 202 lbs when we moved to SCT in '02, down from 227 just a year earlier. I stand at 5'8", and according to WW I should be at 158 at the most.

I changed my lifestyle when we moved to Indiana (staying up late studying, sleeping later, etc.), and I went off of my weight maintenance routines. But I still do track my weight on Weightwatchers.com as much as I remember to do so. When life gets really busy or stressed, I tend not to check into the site, deal with depression shit, eat more/exercise less, and what a shocker I gain weight. Then a few months pass and I get my life back in order. I get more organized, less stress, less depression, and I stop eating like an idiot and I lose weight. I know exactly a) what causes it and b) how to get it under control. It's not easy for me, but I do know what it takes. It's just that sometimes I don't give a rat's ass, and other times I do.

A year ago I was getting into a decent exercise routine. I didn't really change my eating patterns, but since I was exercising I was at least fitting into my clothing well. The summer hit and I took off a chunk of time to work on TFD. It paid off: I got a lot done, but I stopped exercising and started eating. Then I hurt my shoulder on our vacation and I didn't go back to the gym for a while till that healed. October, November and December flew by with only one trip to the gym.

As a result, I'm now officially 11.5 pounds heavier than I was one year ago. Yesterday morning I was 224.5...almost up to the evil 227 of 2001. Now, I'm proud of the fact that I've never crept up to the 227 in about eight years, but this is getting too close for my comfort.

So, it's back on WW again, drinking lots of water, limiting sugar, keeping things in moderation. The last time I did this in full force, I was applying to doctoral programs. That worked well: I lost the 30 pounds and I got into everywhere I applied with assistantship offers at more than one location. Maybe getting back on WW again will help me keep the rest of my life organized to keep plugging away on TFD.

Ten Pages to PR1

Earlier this afternoon, I sent off about 10 pages from the results chapter to PR1. That's the local peer reviewer friend (see the case of characters in the column to the right).

That felt a little weird, because that was among the pages that were really easy to pull together earlier in the week. I'm interested to hear her thoughts on how this went. If she thinks I'm remotely on the right track, then it'll be some smooth sailing ahead. If not, well, then perhaps I'll have a better idea of what track to hop on in order finish up this puppy.

Another round of glasses

Age catches up with me. I ordered new these glasses this evening. Bifocals. My friend Rachel would call them "bifuckols," and I'd completely agree. I do think these frames look pretty darn cool, however, in spite of them giving me great age and wisdom. In addition, I admit every time I try the bifocals, the reduced strain on my eyes when reading things up close is really very nice. At least I shall age in up-t0-date, rather stylish, frames. They arrive in a week or so.

LMUU has a sweet supplemental vision benefit package that gives us nice discounts on eyeglasses, so I decided to replace my prescription sunglasses as well.

I'm excited about these puppies. My current sunglasses are several years old, as is the prescription in them. I guess I have become accustomed to driving in the sunlight and having things a tad blurry. Probably not the greatest idea. Hmm. These will be ready tomorrow, so if I decide to venture back to the big-ass mall, then I could pick them up at that time.

An unfortunate thing happened while we were there. It was about 8:00 PM, and a group of about five or six young adults...not sure how old...late teens/early 20s?...came in and spread around the store, looking at frames. Personally, going glasses shopping is not something I did on a Friday night with my friends before we had Moose; we only went tonight because it was convenient. The person helping me got visibly disturbed by their presence. I wasn't sure why at first, but I understood what was really happening a little too late. By the time the young adults left, they didn't purchase any glasses. Instead, they stole three frames. At least!

C'mon people: grow up. What are you gonna do with those frames anyhow? And what about the loss to the store? And what about others who may have wanted to purchase those legitimately?Finally, what did you just teach my son about your behavior? You should set a better example instead of working to bust up a decent society. Geez.

This seems too easy

I'm in the throes of my results chapter now, officially. I'm simply writing up the facts as I saw them in the study. It's a bit refreshing not to be attributing every other sentence to somebody else. I'm slowly getting accustomed to writing sentences starting with, "I found..." or "I viewed..." or "I heard...". Me me me, all about me. Guess I'm finally finding my own voice in this process.

So why did I feel like I was going to throw up yesterday when I got together with my writing group? I sounded like the worried Rose (Olympia Dukakis) in Moonstruck. I sat writing in the cafe, wringing my hands, groaning with worry, wondering what I'm missing. This seems too easy. I'm cranking out text, telling the story in my own words, placing quotes where appropriate, and it's easy? The chapter I thought was going to kick my ass for the past six months or more is easy? Are you fucking kidding me?

On second thought, it better be easy. I mean, I've been looking at the interviews, spinning my wheels about all this for YEARS at this point. I practically have these 14 interviews memorized. It shouldn't be a surprise that it's easy.

But it still makes me want to throw up.

So. I guess it's going well.

Results Chapter Structure

I am pleased to report that I've worked between 15 and 90 minutes on the TFD each day this week. It's progress. Yesterday wasn't great. I attempted several random queries of the database to see if I could get a good baseline of quotes to use when writing the sections. This didn't really work. It felt like I was pulling back a bow string ready to shoot an arrow right at a target, but I couldn't find the right arrow. It's like shooting blanks and expecting a target to get hit. It was useless. Pointless. Dumb. Horrible. I couldn't sleep last night as a result. That was fun.

Tonight was a different deal: I remembered that I did get quite a bit of writing done on this chapter last summer. Something during that process was the catalyst to put the writing aside for a while and work on recoding the phuquing interviews. So, I thought, why not go back into what I had actually written, refresh my memory of where things stood early in the fall, and then start to fill in the gaps with quotes and such from the data. Brilliant!

I wrote about 36 pages last summer. Thirteen of those comprise the chapter with participant descriptions. The other 23 were actual text for this beast of a results chapter. Wow...23? Didn't realize that. And fortunately, these are brief descriptions of the six major themes I found in the data...

...so I think I have my structure for how I'll finish the writeup. Cool! Light-bulb moment! Each of the six themes is comprised of about 3-4 codes. For now, I have a separate Word document for each code that I've summarized, and now I'm explaining its significance to the study and using quotes to support each idea. I think what I need to do first is to finish writing up the individual codes while adding quotes as evidence. Then, I need to weave together each code per its parent theme. Finally, I'll pull together all of the themes, somehow...hmm...not sure how. But I'll leap that hurdle when I get there.

Now I just need to plug away and write it all out of my head. This is supposed to be the toughest chapter, and I can certainly see why. But I think I've figured out, finally, where the hell I'm going with this. Maybe I'll sleep tonight.

Welcome to 2010

The mandatory week off last week went relatively well. I finished all but just one-half of the last fucking interview, which I intend to finish tonight.

I'm determined to work no less than one hour per day on this sucker for the indefinite future. Seven hours per week is better than what I achieved last semester, so we'll see.

It's going to be a late night, though, seeing it's 9:30 PM and I'm just getting started. This is typical, though, after a late dinner and Moose's bedtime routine. Oh well: sleep is an under-rated waste of time anyhow. :-) Glad I have a glass of fruit-of-the-vine in hand.

It's not really a new year's resolution, but I'm seriously considering pursuing better living through drugs. Not illegal ones, silly. Rather, the "get rid of the dissertation blues" kind. Or, as my buddy Jason puts it so well: happy pills. I'm generally not a big fan of using stuff that alters my body (beyond caffeine and alcohol in moderate amounts), but I figure these may be worth a shot at this point. I'm discussing all this with Jason on Friday and Gibsyn via e-mail when I can, and I'm certain both will offer good insights in their own ways.

Off to finish the last blasted interview.

Mandatory Week Off

And to think some people complain about a mandated week off with pay. I mean yes, we are forced to save four vacation days for this week. However, we do get a ton of vacation time at LMUU, so it's not that difficult. Also, I have no complaints about not making an excuse to my colleagues, or to myself, for taking off time this week.

So now I have time to write. Insert evil, sinister laugh here.

Oh yeah, I've added a Twitter feed back into this blog. There have been several times when I have a thought about the dissertation that I won't put up on Facebook, but I could certainly add it to my dissertation blog via Twitter.

Off to finish up another interview tag map. Bye.

Two-and-a-half months

Today is the last day of fall-semester finals at LMU. I had planned on being finished by this time. Hell, I had planned on being finished by this time a year ago, but that's another story that I really don't want to discuss.

I had a good discussion with DC today, via e-mail. I informed her of my (lack of) progress. I told her where I am with the writing at this point, and I did mention my struggle to achieve a balance among work, family and the dissertation. Her response (at 1:00 PM) was her usual supportive self:

I know the feeling - work is getting in the way of research! I have 13 more papers to grade before 5:00 today!

I am fortunate to have a realistic chair who is not a pompous ass. I think I need to pin a note on my bulletin board reading, "DC is not a pompous ass," just to keep that in mind on a more regular basis.

She also reminded me to check on the dates for applying for (gulp) graduation. It's March 1, 2010. I suppose there is a chance I could have a good draft of at least the results chapter finished by then. It's two-and-a-half months from now. I may actually feel comfortable submitting said application for graduation if that were the case.

So, I think that's the new deadline. Too bad February is a short month, though. Sigh. Anyhow, I'm glad it's winter. Time to hibernate and get this fucker done.

Coffee Shop

Finally found/made time to get back to TFD here in a coffee shop. Am hoping to crank it out this morning before an afternoon of meetings on campus.

The 20th reunion experience represented a whole bunch of different emotions all at the same time. All in all, a good time was had by all, though it was hardy worth the face value of the tickets (god that was expensive). I did get to catch up with a few friends I had not seen since high school, a few I saw on & off from time to time, and also my very first friend, ever. The first friend and I had completely lost touch earlier in our lives, though we did end up at the same high school after spending elementary school in different locations. Once we were in high school, we had grown apart. Seeing each other there, though, was really cool. We had a good long chat and caught up on each other's lives. Crazy.

OK, focusing on TFD now.

UPDATE at 2:18 PM: the morning TFD work went so well this morning that I almost forgot to go to my actual job at 11:00 AM. Sigh. If only...

20-Year High School Reunion

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

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

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

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

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

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

Writing the music in my head

I've had a tune pounding through my head these last couple of weeks. I actually wrote this tune a while ago...I think it was around the time Moose was born. That was a year before I started my doctoral coursework, about eight years ago.

I have no clue why the tune just popped back into my head again. I don't think I've even played this piece in like 4-5 years. I was pleased the tune came back to me again, but it happened during a very busy week where I had no time to sit at the piano.

If I'm right about when I wrote it, it was during a very content, positive time in my life. But I actually had hit a brick wall with this piece, as I couldn't finish out the first phrase. I had a good introduction, but after the first few bars it just sort of fizzled. Even so, I liked this piece a lot, so I guess I just didn't forget it. I certainly had put it on hold for a while, though.

I had yet another crazy day at work today. In the middle of a meeting, the way to resolve the phrase pounded through my head like a drill. I considered driving home immediately to get to the piano and write it down, but that wasn't realistic. I ended up not getting to the piano till after dinner, but I'm glad I remembered the song. It's funny: I first had to re-learn the piece (weird to have to re-learn a piece that I wrote!), and THEN I could play the part that was pounding through my head. I quickly grabbed my pad of blank staff paper (can't BELIEVE I actually still had some in the piano bench!) and wrote it all down.

I honestly don't know how I do it...I don't know how I write music in my head. I can't explain it. Writing music is a strange process for me...I can hardly even write about that process here. It feels like my language skills tonight seem to be all chopped up by the music in my head.

My Eyes

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

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

Honestly. Bifocals at age 38?

Where was I?

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

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

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

Back to it, then.

Halloween 2009

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