I'm surfing since I'm on night 5 of 7 on the mountain and am taking exposures long enough to surf, but not long enough to have me working on thesis revisions. . .

What have I found but pretty expensive dresses. Dear god if I had a reason to wear this mermaid dress or this floaty number or this white and blue floaty number, I'd shoot my wad so ( Read more... )

So of course the next two weeks or so are a minefield of crazy with observing runs (both by myself and my advisor) and job applications due Nov 4th. . . . yet I'm still trying to get paper #3 of the dissertation ready to submit by the end of the month. Just one last bit of analysis, the conclusions and discussion to write and then some tweaking of ( Read more... )

Surgery on Friday went fine-ish. I did in fact have a reason for my "monthly friend" to be hellish and hopefully we got that all cut out. I only got two incisions- one in the belly button and one near my left hip. The gas was hell on Friday and made me hurt near screaming level (since it was laparoscopic and they pump you full of gas to bloat you ( Read more... )

so advisor says I just need to work on/finish the two papers I have in the works right now and I could be finito as a graduate student. That is to say I can be insufferable and demand everyone refer to me as Doctor Ryan ( Read more... )

I would hope that as a grad student I could be immune to the academic busy work that actually keeps you from getting shit done. Today I realized I have to finish a proposal by Friday, a postdoc application by next Monday and then a dissertation fellowship shortly after that. I find myself wishing I could get some actual work done or that the ( Read more... )

Um ( Read more... )

All systems are now go with my PhD committee with an anticipated defense approximately one year from now (I said Winter 2009/2010 in my email). Forms are going to be submitted this week with all the required signatures ( Read more... )

Just trying not to go insane with wedding insanity. The latest crisis? Oh great, white tablecloths in 90 inch round are on the Linens N Things website and are listed as in stock. Fabu, I'll order 10. Oh, what's this cute little message? I can't buy ten and you've revised the number to what you'd allow me to buy? 1? Are you seriously on crack? ( Read more... )

So about a month and a half ago I signed myself up to give a science talk here at the institute. I did it because I thought it'd be a good kick in the proverbial pants to get as much science done as possible. I figured I'd have my ultra snazzy code running in 2 weeks and I'd have most of my results at the end of last month. Funny how it never works ( Read more... )

So. . .the other week I talked about having a crisis of dissertation faith. I had it, it's over. It was a minor thing really- just the realization that my dissertation was going to be using in excess of a terrabytes worth of data if we continued on the path we were taking. Now the sheer volume of data scared me. I mean really, how many astronomers ( Read more... )