Hoop Jumping and Facebooking

Well, I've gone and done it. I created a Facebook account. I'm not sure what I think of it yet. It's still sinking in, I think. It's fun to catch up with people, but I'm still kind of absorbing the technology and what not. I'm worried I'm going to make some dumb Facebook mistake and look silly.

I also learned that you've got to be a little careful about the games you play. I almost signed up for some ringtone service (only $9.99/mo.) on accident because I was just clicking away happily.

In other news: I've been working on an article, pretty much straight for the last three days. Today, I learned how to spell-check in MS Word using a Canadian English Dictionary. Now all that's left is to track down the page number for one quotation and give the essay an additional proofread/touch up and it should be ready to send off for the final time (fingers crossed)...

I doubt it'll be the last time. I'm sure that there will be other things left to do on this essay. It seems like I've been working on it forever. And it has been years (off and on) since it was first submitted to the journal.

I gotta tell ya. This whole process has been a kind of rite of initiation for me -- more psychically painful than the ol' Frat paddle, it seems. But it's almost done. I'm just annoyed that it's taking so much time away from my other work, primarily the diss and a conference paper I need to write for April... The conference paper shouldn't take long. But I was hoping to draft another diss. chapter over spring break. That doesn't look like it's happening now.

Weekend Wanderings

Well, Jen and I hopped in our new car this weekend and drove to Cedar Falls, Iowa for the wedding of our friends Marcy and Ken. The trip started out with an exciting discovery: our car has a six-CD changer and MP3 player built in. We did some experimenting this weekend, but I'm looking forward to learning more about it.

The wedding was nice, though short -- I was following along in the program, and we were about halfway through in under 5 minutes -- short but beautiful, nonetheless.

It was great to see Marcea again, and finally meet Ken. We also got to see some other friends from ISU (Susan and Rachel and Devonna), and Jen and I got to meet Jackson for the first time too -- who is just as cute in person as advertised.

Your run-of-the-mill update

So, what's new?

Not much really. Jen and I finally bought a car. We got a 2008 Ford Taurus. It's purty. :) Jen said that she was impressed with my negotiation skills, but I stayed up the next couple of nights thinking about how I could've gotten a better deal. It's more insecurity than anything, I guess. We did get a pretty good deal on it.

Hit the driving range again last weekend. And also went to the Chicago Golf Show. I can't believe that I actually paid money to have people try to sell me things. You walk up and down these aisles and all sorts of people want to put you on their mailing lists or buy their outrageously expensive golf packages. There were a few fun things that you could do, though, like try out new clubs and get a complimentary lesson. Though, again, you could try out clubs and lessons with the idea that you might want to actually buy these things. But anyway...

So the people I go to the driving range with all have their Ph.D.s. Two of them teach at area colleges. And so I get asked about how my dissertation is going, whenever I see them. They keep telling me that the best dissertation is a finished dissertation. And I know that's true and that they're right.

I work on it whenever I can scrape together four or five hours, like yesterday and then again today. But it's not as far along as I'd like it to be. Today, I should finish up recoding my student data. Everything will be laid out in an Excel Spreadsheet, and my next task will be to wade through all of those snippets of writing count them up and analyze their connections and relationships. I wish I knew more about Excel to make that job a little easier. I'm thinking of asking my little bro. to help out with that task. This is the little bro. who showed me up and bought a Cadillac on the same day Jen and I bought our Taurus. So I figures he owes me. ;) I should've become an engineer. *sigh*

It's been interesting to see how my understanding of this topic has become more complex over time. What I'm doing now is miles ahead of what I was doing about a year ago. I understand my topic in completely new and more complex ways. The problem is that I'm in pretty much the same spot in terms of the actual writing produced. Think of it as a volume/density type metaphor. My dissertation is a container that's just as full as it was a year ago, but now everything is packed in so much more tightly.