It’s over.

Well, I’m done. I mailed out my thesis to my committee on Friday. It was 240 pages, 12 chapters plus a prologue and an epilogue. And four pages of endnotes.
I wrote a book.
Somehow I expected to feel differently (more excited, more celebratory?) about writing my first book, but I’m mostly just tired. I spent the [...]

Can re-writing be harmful?

Last night I began tackling a chapter that has been a problem for a long time. I first wrote a version of it over a year ago, and another version was workshopped in January. It got mixed reviews in class, and my professor/thesis advisor, who is normally mild in his criticism (sometimes too mild!) was [...]

An exceedingly boring post

I’ve been remiss in posting, yeah, yeah, I know. I’d like to say that I have been working so, so hard on my thesis that I just haven’t had time to post on the blog, but that would be stretching the truth. In fact, with just three days left to tweak and rewrite, I am [...]

I’m being stalked…

by my neighbor’s cat. The little guy started coming to my office window the other day, and I foolishly started letting him in. Anyone who knows me will know that I am dying to have a pet, and so other people’s are always welcome. Well, almost always. It started as a nice little routine: I’d [...]

The end is near, but oh so far.

Days left until I must mail in a final version of my thesis: 8.
Caffeine levels: High.
Page count: 243.
Hours I have spent editing and rewriting the last 50 pages since Monday: About 19. I have reordered chapters, cut whole sections and reworded countless paragraphs. I am to the point that I can no longer see what [...]

The homework is worth it

I seem to be on a California theme recently, and Election Day is an excellent time to continue that. I like to think of elections in CA as more evidence that I am living someplace…a little different.
When it’s time to vote, there’s really no place like California. It’s literally power to the people. (Though sometimes [...]

Begging for retirement

The end is nigh for my faithful little iBook. I guess the thesis is getting to it, too, because it has begun showing its 4 years. In the form of corrupted documents.
Now is so not the time. Yesterday I finally made some progress on rejiggering the last couple of chapters. I put the computer to [...]

Hello, reality? It’s California.

In an effort to write about something other than the torturous process of completing my thesis, a subject about which you  are probably quite sick of (I sure am! But alas, it is about the only thing going on in my life currently.), I offer the following evidence of another plane of existence.
I’m talking about [...]