A Thai Tale

So, since I'm off this week, I'm spending the time at the apt. trying to get a lot of things done before we head to Iowa for the holidays. Have I been productive? I guess it depends on who you ask. This weekend, I sent out all the IS edits to the authors for their review. To date, I've gotten 4/6 back and have actually finished 3 of them. I got one more today, but it is going to require a lot of thought and madness, so I left it alone. That leaves about 3 authors I've yet to hear from, but they have time. I always like the feeling of getting all of those edits done. My deadline isn't until January 10, so I think I'm doing ok so far.

The dissertation has been the main project. Today, I emailed first drafts of chapters 4 and 5 to my director. These are the results chapters, and it feels like I've been working on them all semester (ok, so I have been). They were originally one big chapter, but it was getting out of hand, so I split them up into two chapters of about 40 pages each. I have to say, I actually didn't hate writing chapter 5. It was much easier than chapter 4. I guess I am just more comfortable writing in a report-like matter with my own reflections mixed in. Of course, the Director hasn't commented on them yet, so they could be crap for all I know. I started on the Analysis chapter too, which as far as I can tell is going ok, but what do I know? I've never written one of those before. It's the Methodology chapter that's killing me. I've done 5 drafts so far and just can't seem to get it right. So that's what's been happening here.

Today, after writing for about 3 hours and actually going to the workout facility at the apt., I treated myself to lunch at this little Thai place down the street. I've been meaning to go, but I just never have done it. I thought the fact that I emailed 80 pages to the "Director" was cause enough to celebrate myself. I also started getting a little sad knowing that there are no such Thai places where we're moving in Iowa. Sigh. The place was quaint and quiet, and I enjoyed my Pad Thai until some loud business people came in. Correction - loud business MAN. A man and two women to be exact. For the next 20 minutes I was subjected to the man's (loud) soapbox lecture on how wonderful the South Beach diet is. The two young and naive women with him ate it up, practically jumping up and down and exclaiming how they were "definitely, like totally, going to try it." Now, having been one who tried the South Beah diet (to no avail - I'm a fan of bread, what can I say?), I know it's not as easy as this fellow was making it out to be. (Plus I caught him on a few things he got wrong about the program.) Long story short: the Thai food was ok, but the atmosphere get annoying really fast with this guy. I'm just glad I don't have to work with him.

Well, it's almost 6 p.m. and I'm waiting for Ken to come home from work so we can find something for dinner. Last night, we ate a little something at home and then wandered over to the apt. clubhouse where they were hosting a holiday celebration for the renters. It was quite lovely. They had a fire going in the fireplace, music, and some tasty little treats. We didn't stick around too long though as there were several children running around and by the time I'd had a cracker or two, I'd reached my limit on dodging children for the evening.

I was proud of myself for one thing yesterday. At Ken's work, they had a holiday potluck and he needed to bring something. Since I'm home this week, I told him I'd make something. I made fudge, which I haven't made since Dad was alive, and, for the first time, little smokies in sweet sauce. I wasn't too pleased with the smokies and didn't think they tasted that great, but when Ken brought home my mini-crock pot, it was empty, so I guess they couldn't have been too bad. And the fudge was gone too! A minor accomplishment on my part, I'd say.

Happy Holidays

Ah...the week before Christmas. Finally, I am done with working for the semester. Of course, this does not mean I am done doing work. But at least I am not driving anywhere next week and can stay home and work. It finally feels a little bit like break. And, of course, we had a bit of a snow storm last night to make it feel like the holidays. We didn't get the 9-12 inches they said we might, but we did see probably 2 or so.

Ken and I braved the storm last night to go out for dinner. I've been craving Mexican food lately, and Ken has been a sport and gone with me. For those of you who don't know - Ken's idea of Mexican food includes only tacos: shell, meat, the tiniest bit of cheese, and ketchup. Yes, ketchup. He doesn't eat beans and is so-so on the rice. That doesn't sound very Mexican to me. Needless to say, going out for good Mexican food is kind of wasted on him. But he indulged me and we ate at a Tex-Mex place in Bolingbrook where I had a chicken chimichanga and he had a hamburger.

We've been bad in terms of eating out this weekend. Friday night neither one of us felt like cooking, so we tried this place we'd heard about called White Fence Farms. It boasts of having the world's greatest chicken, and apparently it's been around for over 50 years. Now, we are particular fans of the Del Rhea Chicken basket here in Illlinois. We love it - the atmosphere is great: a huge fireplace with lots of chicken decor. They have really good soup and rolls and Ken speaks highly of the chicken itself. It's one of those old Route 66 stops and has been around since the 1940s. But on Friday we decided to branch out and try White Fence Farms. We both gave it about a 3/10. Ken had the chicken and I had whitefish (so we could try something different). The fish was ok, but had far too much breading. I thought the chicken was fine--nothing to write home about, but ok. Ken said Del Rhea's was far superior. They didn't have rolls or anything and the place was so big that we felt a little lost. They did have a lot of nice decorations, antiques and whatnot, but it wasn't something we'd try again. Plus, Ken was very distracted the whole time by a woman eating there who was wearing a lightup holiday necklace. The thing kept flashing throughout dinner and it was driving him nuts.

Otherwise, the weekend's been pretty quiet. I spent most of the day working on editing and got a lot accomplished. Ken did various organizing projects. We took a couple of breaks in between working and managed to watch the whole movie Rudy, which we found at a thrift store for $1. I also spent time cleaning the apt. which has suffered from us being very busy. It now looks and feels a lot better.

We've had our Xmas decorations up for a while and so here are a few pictures. We don't have a fireplace, so we improvised on the stockings, hanging them on our big TV cabinet (normally, the doors are open and the stockings hang on the inside). When we move back to Iowa, I believe we'll be renting Ken's sister Kathy's house which has a fireplace, so next year, we may actually hang these correctly. The cats, of course, have their own stockings. We had to get one for Artimus, which he really got into as you can see from the picture. Tucker appears to be interested things other than his stocking. We also got the cats a few toys last weekend for the holidays. Ken picked out squeeky mouse and I picked out a catnip mouse. Tuck loved the squeeky one while Arty was mildly interested in both.

End of Finals Week (almost)

Here it is the end of "finals week" for the university. I haven't felt the real pang of that since I'm not teaching, but people around me keep mentioning it so I feel somewhat in the mix. Work is very busy these days as we make any and all preparations for the Teaching & Learning Symposium before January. My big project has been working on the program and gathering headshots of the presenters. It's amazing how slow professors can be. Give them a month to get a picture to you, and they all wait until the last day (hour even) to do so.

I'm looking forward to next week. I'm staying home (in Romeoville) and working, yes working. I have a lot of work to do -- editing to finish and two diss chapters to prepare for "the Director." I also need to start my analysis chapter so that I can enjoy my break as much as possible. I said I'd get a draft of that to him shortly after break. I do feel good that I finally got my Illinois English Bulletin article off to Jan. I've had that sitting on my desk since mid-October. I also need to revise a ReadWriteThink lesson that I finally got feedback on. It'd be nice to have that money before the end of the year, but I don't think that I'll quite make that (self-imposed) deadline with everything else that's going on. Maybe I'll get to it in January.

I'm also looking forward to another visit from Suzie and Rachel who will be stopping by on their way down south for the holidays. It will be nice to see them and Baby Jackson before we head back to Iowa.

Ken got his official start date for Deere: Feb 18. Thank goodness! I was so worried it'd be early January as the original offer letter stated. Now we at least have some extra time to prepare. With the Symposium, dissertating, looking for a job, and planning to move, January should be interesting, to say the least.

December 8

Real original title, eh? I've got nothing to offer by way of a creative title this morning. So far, I've spent the morning working on IS editing. Believe it or not, it took me 5-some hours to get through 1 article. Yes, 1 article. The author did a horrible job with formatting, which just served to make me angrier and angrier as I read. I even had to email the journal's editor and complain about this one person! Let this be a lesson to all of you remotely interested in publishing: don't p** off the copyeditor! Read the journal's formatting guidelines and follow them or risk the wrath of an overworked, underpaid copyeditor!

Okay, enough of my rant. This weekend will find Ken and me traveling to Cedar Rapids today for a short military thing. I'm going along for the sake of getting out of the apt and staying in a hotel even though I have oodles of work to do. While he's at his conference "board" thing in the morning, I'll be working away on projects in the hotel. I'm excited about staying at a hotel (for free!) and hopefully to relaxing in a hot tub if the hotel has one.

By Monday, we should have a good indication of when Ken will start his new job and when we'll have to deal with moving again. (Oy!) Thankfully, however, Deere pays moving costs and we're going to enjoy it for sure....that's right...we're letting the movers do the packing and the hauling! Praise be for those corporate jobs. Now I won't feel like a burden on my friends and family who helped us move to Romeoville only 5 short months ago. (Note here, thank goodness Deere also pays relocation costs associated with breaking apt. leases. What a mess that would be.)

I still have to do some organizing and pack the things I don't want the movers to deal with (read here: "break"), but I can handle that I think. I'll also need to figure out what I'm taking to B-N with me for the duration of my final (fingers crossed) spring semester. I'm waiting on final confirmation from my B-N residence facilitator (i.e., the person/people I plan to stay with), but I think things are all a-go. I have to say how wonderful the people in B-N have been, my CTLT crew and Heartland tutoring friends. When I first mentioned the new situation, several people offered to "shelter" me. Their outpouring of support has really taken me aback. I was so worried about what I was going to do, but all I had to do was mention the new situation and people like Jan, Claire, and Lisa all welcomed me. It's meant more to me than I can express. I will really miss the wonderful people and the friends I've made in Illinois.

Okay - have to go pack for what the weather channel's calling "wintery-mix" Cedar Rapids. Ah, the midwest. Isn't she lovely?

Deadline Woes

Just when I was starting to feel good about some dissertation progress I was making, I had a realization that time is indeed running out. In other words, in order for me to finish and graduate in May, I have a lot that has to happen NOW.

As many of you know, I've been having trouble with my dissertation director, who seems to be taking an inordinate amount of time to read and respond to drafts. So after chatting with Jan (my second reader), I decided to talk to the Grad Director. Roberta, grad director, was wonderful, although I wasn't pleased that she said it's perfectly normal for faculty to take anywhere up to 6 weeks to respond to a draft. She had good insight about my director's tendencies, and so we created a timeline for my completion which I shared with him.

One thing I did not know about was that in order to finish and graduate by May (according to the Grad Handbook), I will need to have a full draft of my diss to my committee members 2 months before the grad college's final format check date! This means I need to have drafts of everything to them by Feb 21. This was a little earlier than I'd planned, but certainly do-able. The only thing I'm now worried about is getting my director to read, respond, and allow me time to revise AND get them to the committee members for their review BEFORE that deadline. You see, the deal is that they need to have seen drafts of chapters before that Feb 21 deadline at which time they see the whole thing.

Now, my director doesn't seem to like to allow me to send drafts to my committee members until he's 100% satisfied with them, which means upwards around 5-7 drafts of each chapter. That, coupled with his slow 2-7 week turnaround time to me, makes it nearly impossible for me to revise and have things to him in a timely manner, let alone sending drafts to others before Feb 21. I'm trying not to worry about this now (hard to do when one has OCD), and right now my only comfort is that I have the Grad Director informed and on my side in case he slows things too much. But the reality of it all is starting to sink in. As if writing the darn thing wasn't hard enough, why does one have to worry about deadline crap like this? Oy.

Add to this the new stress of thinking about Ken moving, me moving back to B-N, editing projects that are terrible this issue, Christmas present-buying stress, and I'm one distressed cookie.

Iowa, Here We Come

I guess it's more official now, so I can share. Ken and I are moving back to Iowa. Yes, this is the big news. He has been offered a job at John Deere in Waterloo with plans to accept it. As of right now, our plans aren't completely set, but it looks as though he'll move back to Waterloo in January or February without me, and I'll move back to Bloomington-Normal for the spring semester to finish. I'll move back to Waterloo in May after I graduate.

I'm not sure what I'll do for a job yet as the options are a bit more limited in Waterloo than in the Chicago area, but I'm hopeful that the right job will present itself when the time is right. Overall, we're happy about the change (though it does mean moving again so soon). Now we'll both be closer to our families and will be able to participate in more family/friend gatherings and events. I'll keep you posted on other changes as they come.

December Snow, wait...Sleet...wait...Rain? Blegh.

December is here and with it comes what was supposed to be our first winter storm of the season. Ken picked me up from the train station Friday night and we decided we better get some groceries before the "big storm" hit. We got home by 9 p.m. and were feeling pretty good about ourselves about being so prepared. I was excited for the storm because I love those times when you know a storm is going to hit and so you know you're going to be able to hunker down inside and just enjoy the fact that you don't have to go anywhere.

Saturday morning comes along and it starts snowing lightly, then a little heavier, and then stops. Stops? Where was my storm? Then came the freezing rain which lasted most of the day. That was kind of interesting to watch, but I wanted to see snow, piles of snow. Still, we stayed inside most of the day and even put up our Christmas decorations so the place looks cozy. Today, however, the temperature is up and it's just cold and rainy. On the plus side, all the ice that was on our cars has melted thanks to the "warmer" rain. I still would have liked to have my snow storm.

As this is our first weekend home together in a long time, we are enjoying getting projects done. We've been going through our stuff gathering things to get rid of (give to Goodwill or something) and things to take home and leave there. I spent some time editing yesterday and today will work on the diss again. Ken's in the dining room working on who-knows-what. He just came in here and asked for a calculator, so there must be math involved.

All that said, I guess I should stop putting off working on my diss chapter.