Sorry I've been a little scarce 'round here these past few days. I always feel a little guilty when I look at StatCounter (as I am prone to do to the point of obsession on a regular basis -- Damn them and their sultry seductive statistics!) and I see that you have kindly visited this here weblog, only to find the same old post, day after day. Please don't hate me!
Hey -- I never said I wasn't neurotic. I think it's kind of a prerequisite for this blogging thing.
So I have been awake now for something like 40 hours straight. I have now pulled 3 all-nighters in the course of 5 days, with something like 5 or 6 hours sleep in between them. This can't be healthy. But it also isn't without end. After all, I defend in two months...
...and then go right on to the next degree. In the same department, the same office, the same lab, the same advisor...
(Kind of a non sequitor: Check out our local Starbucks. Something tells me this one ain't from Seattle.)
Moving on.
"Today" was ok, though. I feel I must use quotation marks because it is sometimes hard to tell when one day starts and another ends, and the cats are starting to talk to me. Or maybe I'm talking to them. Or it could be aliens. Or squirrels. Anyway, I worked frantically through the night, 24 hours into the "couple of hours-worth" of tweaking I had to do to one thesis chapter, before sending it off to my advisor.
Damn you, email! The I'll-just-stick-it-under-your-office-door-Friday-afternoon excuse doesn't fly anymore...
Of course, Tequila (the cat, that is) makes it a little hard to stay on deadline sometimes.
Where was I? Oh yeah. The rest of today's 40 hours. You see, the reason I was so frantic to send the chapter along to my advisor was that I knew I would have to spend ALL DAY in a van with him, and that he would unfailingly ask, "So, do I have something waiting in my email?...", which, for the record, he did. So I sent it off at 6:25 this morning, got dressed and made lunch by 6:35, and was out the door by 6:40, to meet him (and a few other people) for our departure at 7:00. Since it is normally a half-hour walk to campus from home, I had to do a rather interesting walk-run-trip-over-my-feet-amidst-the-delerium kind of thing to get there on time.
OK, I guess I totally forgot to tell you where we were going. You see, were were going to check out where I am going to be conducting my research for the next four years, a couple of hours south of here on the Missouri border. I must say, it is a hell of a lot better than suburban Des Moines, where I conducted my master's research. Check it out:
Rolling verdant hills, and not a cornfield in sight! Un-freaking-believable. And guess what we're gonna do...
BURN IT! BURN IT! BURN IT!
And cows. We're putting cows on it, too. Moo!
Ahem.
To put it more scientifically, we are studying "The Use of Cattle-Grazing and Fire as Management Tools to Maintain Biodiversity on Grassland Reserves in Southern Iowa".
Burn baby burn.
Wow, honey go get some sleep. I know what you did and still founf this entry a bit hard to comprehend. I think this rivals that paper I turned in after 72 hours awake.
Posted by: dear wife | 09 May 2006 at 09:38 PM
Wow. Um, yeah, did I write that?
Posted by: zygote daddy | 10 May 2006 at 10:30 AM
What's wrong with suburban DesMoines? It's got cute goslings.
Of course, you'd probably get in trouble for lighting them on fire. . .
And if you're working so hard that you and DW can only communicate through the blog--time to cut back on the studying a bit, perhaps?
Posted by: Papa Bradstein | 10 May 2006 at 11:49 AM
tell that diner owner to call me. We may be able to get a few billion for trademark infringement.
Posted by: dutch | 10 May 2006 at 02:30 PM