(not) not my dissertation


Friday, February 28, 2003

ACTUAL QUOTES FROM THE LADY AT THE BRIDAL BOUTIQUE  

"Hello, Janice! So very nice to meet you today! My name is Sissy!"

"Thank you so much for sharing this very special time with me!"

"I only had boy children, so I never got to play dress up with them!"

"Oh, that's a little too risque, don't you think?"(!)

after hearing that the boy is studying theatrical design: "oh, well! isn't that interesting! who knows, maybe he'll be working for Aaron Spelling some day!"

after hearing that i'm studying audiology: "oh! so you want to work with children!"


posted by J at 9:17 PM

asking for it...  

because i think my sleep-deprived mental clarity might give me the perspective i've been missing, i'm going to go wedding dress shopping again today. i think big poofy white ballgowns are even funnier when you've stayed up all night working on the dumbest-paper-ever. full report to follow.

(by the way, dial up STILL sucks)


posted by J at 10:22 AM

Wednesday, February 26, 2003

i'm so healthy  

the boy was complaining about feeling fatigued lately and mentioned that he'd like to start eating more tomatoes, green leafy vegetables, and almonds (we can all guess that he found my completely unread/unloved "fitness" magazine in the bathroom?). so, to encourage this behavior. i bought the above items as well as salad, fruit, generally healthy items.

this things are IN MY FRIDGE, people.

What did i eat tonight?

An entire can of bean dip. Yep.


posted by J at 8:40 PM

dial up sucks  

my broadband connection is down. right when i need speedy speedy fast fast to keep in close contact with my people, i'm dealing with a trial version of AOL and a fax machine that won't let me receive incoming calls at home.

i'll live.


posted by J at 7:53 PM

Monday, February 24, 2003

 

I'm starting to feel like this site has become an exercise in documenting the downward spiral. As I read back through the last few weeks, I'm realizing it wouldn't even make a good after school special. It's just an overwhelmed girl, bitching. A lot.

I'll make the same promise here that I recently made to a few of my friends. I will be an amazing woman after this crap is over with. I will be friendly to all people, including small children. When the fog has lifted, I will seek to do good works, make people laugh, or at least make them really good mixed cds. I will eat all my vegetables and remember to take my medicine and have fewer french-fry-lunches. I will start wearing mascara again on mondays because there won't be the threat of the "weekly lunchtime breakdown" that comes directly after the "monday e-mail of Dooooooom" from my committee chair. I may even floss my teeth.


posted by J at 4:03 PM

it's confirmed  

this site is #2 on a google search for "i hate my dissertation".
(thank you site meter)

i am, of course, shooting for #1. a girl can dream.


posted by J at 12:11 AM

Sunday, February 23, 2003

 

I took advantage of the short respite that I get in between the time where I send off a version of my crap paper and the time where my committee chair emails me back saying, "yep, its still crap"....I went shopping for a wedding dress. This is a horrible experience. I'm far too thrifty to put myself in the bridal industry's mindset. You know, the one where its perfectly okay to charge $1500 for a big white polyester dress. I had one of these dresses on today that had "little bitty" flowers along the waistline that were awful. I had the saleslady look to see how easy it would be to have a seamstress take them off and, well, it wouldn't be hard. She pulled a little bit on one of them to see how it was stitched and it popped right off. THE FLOWERS WERE GLUED ON...NOT STITCHED. Incredible. I understand that if I go in for this kind of traditional big-dress from the big-dress-stores, that I'm going to be wearing the most expensive dress I'll ever wear, but I'll be damned if I'll buy a dress for over even $100 that involves any amount of hot glue. I can get better quality at TJ Maxx.

Hmmm. TJ Maxx.


posted by J at 8:18 PM

Friday, February 21, 2003

HEART ATTACK AVERTED  

(My, my, she's got a foul mouth when she feels defeated...)

The end to one of the bits of the story from yesterday is that I got a call from Ms. Stutterbutt this morning and she was VERY apologetic for her error and wants to give me flowers when she sees me next. She's from Seattle and promised special attention because of our shared city. Apparently, my contract went straight to bookkeeping, as it should have, but it didn't cross her desk first because the whole rentals office was being switched over to her from the other lady the same week I was finalizing everything. So, they'll honor the contract and I can bring in whichever caterer I want, although she was very helpful and gave me some names of affordable caterers that she's had good experiences with.

Also, to sweeten the pot a bit, she's offered the up the "shitty uninteresting room" upstairs again. When I described it that way, I was being, admittedly, a bit dramatic. Its actually one of the few conventionally elegant places in the museum. Its set up as an homage to all the beautiful old buildings that have been torn down and turned into parking lots (st louis has no sense of history whatsoever). So they've a lot of old gargoyles and edifices of buildings and a huge display of amazing glass and brass doorknobs. It's up on the third floor and is more private. She was really hyping it because: (1) they obviously really still would like to open the rest of the museum to the public that night, and (2) a few weeks after we visited in late December, they've completely expanded it and are trying to make it another viable party venue. Its more of a wide open space, which would be good in some ways, but there aren't any caves or slides and no place to hide up in the ceiling. However, she said the guests would be welcome to explore these areas whenever they wished.

Hmmm. Veeeery interestink.

This seems to be the best of both worlds, however, if my guests are anything like me, they'll spend a few minutes getting their food on and their drink on and then head down the two very large flights of stairs to the main level to play (this building is huge...an old shoe factory). It would be pretty scattered and, although I certainly wouldn't try to lock them all up for the night, one of the cool things about this party was supposed to be the SEEING of the people we love the most.

So. I said we'd still like the original space with the caves and the plants and the fishes. She said she won't rent out the upstairs room for that date, anyway, just in case. I don't actually believe this (she is still a flaky woman), but it won't even be available for rental till late april and it doesn't sound like a lot of people know about it as an option...so it might stay open long enough for us to see it early this summer and switch over if we choose.

Regardless, the wedding will be there. And all was right with the world (if you don't count all the other problems, which I'm too relieved to do...)



posted by J at 4:30 PM

Thursday, February 20, 2003

WHEN IT RAINS, IT POURS...AND I ALREADY LIVE IN SEATTLE, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.  

okay.

okay.

okay.

my committee chair gave me the scariest email yet yesterday. in it, she used phrases like "this paper is not ready to see the light of day" and "i'm not sure it will be ready by the time you want to defend". Nice, huh? It's actually not as bad as she made it out to be. I talked to her last night and all she really meant was you need to completely reorganize the paper...not you suck and this is shit and start over. so...it's bad, but not as dire as i thought it was yesterday at lunchtime. it WILL involve me pushing back the defense by one week and working my tush off non-stop till then...which i planned on doing anyway.

THEN, my beautiful beautiful engagement ring....you know, the symbolic unending circle of eternal love... well, i don't know what i was doing, but it broke. the circle is broken....completely severed. Still strong and not falling apart, but STILL. its not like i'm a professional finger wrestler or have been using it to dig ditches. this is also not so bad because the boy said he'd go to the jeweler and get it fixed tomorrow. i hope he's snooty to them. i hope it wasn't my fault.

THEN THEN THEN...tonight, after an hour long commute and a stop off to Office Max to buy a cheap fax machine because my committee chair can't edit on the computer and its not cool to use government work fax machines to receive 70+ page faxes....i came home and listened to the answering machine. there is a message from THE CITY MUSEUM, the venue for our wedding and reception, the ONLY thing we had planned so far, the place we've been daydreaming about since last July. It's from a woman who i've not dealt with yet, but whose name i recognize as my 'new point of contact' according to the last email from the lady i've been dealing with. It's a long rambling unorganized stuttering message. she said something like 'i'm calling to see if you are still interested in the October 25th date for the museum. we...um...are going to start opening the museum up to the public on Saturday nights so you can't have that space, but you can have the shitty uninteresting room upstairs for the same price AND good news, we've opened the catering up to SIX recommended really fucking expensive catering companies, rather than the THREE we had before. yeaaaaay!".

Okay. Okay. Okay.

WTF!!!??? am i "STILL" interested in the museum??!?!!? also, the lady i had been working with said, although they like their recommended caterers, i could bring in whoever i wanted.

I sent them my check for $2000 (a huge splurge that we allowed ourselves because it was the most important thing) and the signed contract a good while ago. I saved a copy for myself. I got an email saying both were received. I've copies of all the email exchanges I've had with the other lady. I was waiting for them to send me a copy of the contract with THEIR signature as well. They've not cashed my check (something i just realized early this week). I'm fucked, aren't I?

seriously fucked.


posted by J at 7:08 PM

Tuesday, February 18, 2003

MEMO  


Dear Colleagues,

When you come across a bunch of patient documentation, charts, orders, etc. from me that have 2/23/03 as the date, please note that I, um...I meant 2/18/03. Yes, yes, today....not next Sunday. Thank you.

Sincerely,


posted by J at 4:17 PM

Monday, February 17, 2003

life imitating art...or something.  

i LOVE that the simpsons has even seeped into the mudslinging between france and the US. "cheese eating surrender monkeys".

too funny.


posted by J at 10:22 PM

Saturday, February 15, 2003

 

it's 6pm and i'm still trying to recover from drinking like a 22 year old last night. we went for a drink after the movie and ended up closing the place down because we didn't want to stop talking. its funny, after nine years we still get into giddy excited conversations.

I got two more story people prints for valentine's gifts:


"for a long time, she flew only when she thought no one else was watching"


"you're the stranges person i ever met, she said & i said you too & we decided we'd know each other a long time".

i think the second one is what we are going to get framed with a large mat that we'll ask our wedding guests to sign.


posted by J at 6:14 PM

Thursday, February 13, 2003

not notmydissertation  

i realized this morning that this is turning into 'not notmydissertation' as all of my recent entries are about my dissertation. then i realized, once i finish my dissertation, the name of this site will be dumb. then i realized i was driving on the shoulder of the highway at 20 miles below the speed limit.


posted by J at 10:11 PM

Wednesday, February 12, 2003

whichwaydidhego?  

I just sealed up the envelope on my "Graduation Application". Yes, in addition to tuition and fees, I get to pay another $35 to have someone scrutinize all that I've done and make sure I didn't mess up my class schedule 3 years ago. I'm too weirded out by the whole concept to even mind the $35. I'm going to (maybe) be done with school (forever and ever?) in a few short months. What happened?


posted by J at 6:14 PM

Monday, February 10, 2003

wow. she's not complaining...  

for the first time in a while now, i feel like this whole finishing thing might actually happen. i had a good night. i gave myself permission to not freak out over analyzing and composing and did the brainless work of setting my references in order.

i have to say that my friend natalie is my current superstar hero. she lent me some software called EndNote. it sat unused on my desk for weeks and weeks until tonight. this thing is amazing. i've always hated the crazy-dumb rules of APA. this will pull all the necessary info right off of a PubMed search and deposit it into a perfect, error-free reference page. what would have easily taken me two or three nights of stress and frustration was reduced to a few hours with a glass (or two) of wine. my reference page, at this point, is at 78 articles and counting....

another happy thing is that the boy, who is currently working towards his Master of Fine Arts in lighting design for the theatre, has a show up right now. he used the new digital cameral for his portfolio shots and they turned out really well.

look. see how good he is?



(the picture is actually clearer than this, but the shrinky-ness made it a little wierd...you get the idea)


posted by J at 9:27 PM

Saturday, February 08, 2003

my dad kirby  

Here is a picture of my dad and his sister when they were little. I love this picture.



I love this picture even more now that the boy, whenever he sees it, laughs and says "it's kirby doody".

I think it's the freckles. And maybe the bow tie.


posted by J at 11:04 AM

Friday, February 07, 2003

i admit it.  

How does one tell their committee chair that they cannot, in fact, email more pages regarding auditory steady state potentials today because last night was filled with too much Michael Jackson and not enough writing? okay, none. no writing occurred.



posted by J at 10:46 AM

Wednesday, February 05, 2003

 

I was going to skip rehearsal tonight, but I think I need me a little improv time. If anyone in Seattle wants to come to our show, mention this site and I'll buy you a beer at our FULL BAR. If more than one person shows up, you'll likely have to share the beer.

The Spolin Players
Nothwest Actors Studio
Feb 22 @ 10pm (and for the following 5 Saturdays...whatever dates those are)

(still haven't given my director a bio for the spolin website...blah blah blah. i think i should hire a stranger to do it for me)


posted by J at 5:33 PM

Tuesday, February 04, 2003

 

do you think lack of organization could be part of the problem?



posted by J at 10:43 PM

discovery  

when you drink lots of tea to try to stay awake and motivated to write, you end up peeing more than writing. and since you're up anyway, you might as well have a snack and pet the cats and check your email and write dumb and uninspired blog entries.


posted by J at 10:03 PM

Monday, February 03, 2003

Exhibit A  

Jana,

Our order is from Biologic. We are getting the Master and not the Audera. I don't know when it will be delivered and set up. If I were you, I would not depend on our system for your presentation.

Jana, you need to get all of the cut off dates from the graduate school pertaining to graduation. The final date is not far away. Make sure that you have all of the requirements and deadlines.

Once your paper is complete, we can set a date on your presentation.

DN

Here, you can see why my dissertation chair's emails scare the poop out of me.

They are so....so....brief. And not nurturing. And well, they tell the truth, too, which sucks.

And, god, the way she uses my first name IN THE MIDDLE OF THE EMAIL. Its worse than finger shaking. I'd rather be slapped.



posted by J at 2:52 PM

Saturday, February 01, 2003

to remind me that there WILL be fun again, at some point...  



this is where we're having the wedding & reception. crazy, no?


posted by J at 8:42 PM


 

Powered by Blogger Pro™