Sixpence Widget

Just FYI, Sixpence is cooking up a new album, so I thought I'd post their widget with some samples. They also have a Christmas album just out, called Dawn of Grace...

Done and Dusted

Ladybug here, masquerading as Pancho (as if you couldn't tell).

Well, I guess I can now say that the dissertation is done and dusted. The corrected bound copy, after much travail--well, after a lot of unnecessary faff, at least--has finally made its way to the hands of the internal examiner and thus to BoGs (the Board of Graduate Studies). I could go into a long and complicated story as to why exactly 1 page of simple corrections lingered on for two months and why I wasted 150 pounds binding 3 copies of a thesis that wasn't quite right, but it's frankly boring and involves a lot of obsessive compulsive perfectionism. Interestingly, once I screwed up that ridiculously, I found it very difficult to believe that I'd corrected everything. Suddenly the virtues of handwritten corrections became very obvious. You do them once, for example, and they're done. No worrying about whether this version of the document has all the corrections that you know you did to some version or other...

To commemorate this auspicious occasion, I decided to get a nasty stomach flu, miss two classes, and then in a haze of residual nausea lead a far-too-technical grammar discussion (+ tirade - that one's a bonus!) to class today.

Viva le PhD!

Jiggity Jig

We have landed home again and, while disoriented, starting to get back in the swing of things. I just finished shuffling things in a closet to under the bed to make room for our clothes while we camp parent-side for the next few weeks. Ladybug's Mom is a hoarder! But that does mean that when your friends come over with their 2 1/2 yr-old little boy, there's tons of things to play with, like (no joke) a pirate ship forecastle with cannons and a pirate hook, a train set with whistles and lots of Thomas paraphenalia, a tricycle...Mom says that they're her toys, and she just lets her grandson play with them now and then.

Avast ye closet! Prepare to be boarded!

Washington D.C. with family

What Finishing a PhD Looks Like

Brought to you courtesy of Ladybug's Dad, who gave us a new toy for Pancho to play with while whiling away the hours with me in the Faculty, even into the wee sma's of the morning.