PEDTM post dump (TL;DR)
Okay, I fell down on the PEDTM plan. I will sum up.
Let's see. Friday I ended up driving 90 miles so we could help my BIL get some errands done (he has RP like the SB, so he doesn't drive). Ever since my FIL passed last spring, the SB has been making a bit more of an effort to connect with the family he has left. The four brothers are all a little weird (and maybe even a little autistic)(and I'm not just throwing that word out there), but basically pretty nice and I love them all, so this is not really a hardship, just sometimes a lot of driving! Ended up going to Home Depot and picking out some faucets for the BIL's house, then realized that the faucets had weird drain closers, so we went to a furniture store so he could shop for a couch (didn't find one), went to eat at our favorite Mexican restaurant, (chiles toreados, yum!!) picked up some flooring samples at a carpet place, went to Lowe's and got some more flooring samples and some different, hopefully better, faucets, took the first faucets back to HD, then dropped him off and drove ninety miles home and were only slightly late to get the youngest from school.
This was all fine and dandy, except that I really needed to be working on my thesis proposal so I was stressing about that and also about getting it scheduled in time because if I waited much longer, I wouldn't have time to actually do the defense this semester and I was having trouble getting the profs coordinated, so I was stressing about that and between the stress and the driving and the going to Home Depot *and* Lowe's (I don't know what it is about those places, but if I'm in one for more than about five minutes, I just get bizarrely tired. It's like there's a tingler-energy sapper in those places.) so by the time I finally got home I was *wiped*.
Okay, Saturday, deliver youngest to high school so she can go on a band competition, then pick up a U-Haul and go back to the BIL's town and pick up our brand new, incredibly expensive but pretty fabulous Stickley dresser that only weighs half a ton and drive it to its new home on the lake. The SB has been mooning over this dresser for at least 15 years and we finally got it, thanks to a really amazing sale. Now we will actually have a place to put all our clothes. If it don't fit in there, we don't need it!
Get home just before dark and managed to unload the thing in time for the neighbors to invite us to their Supermoon party on the beach. They'd built an enormous (like entire trees enormous) bonfire and were supplying hot dogs and s'mores and even margaritas! I don't really eat hot dogs, but I do eat s'mores, so I had a couple of those (which were tricky to make because the fire was so hot, we had to use what were basically rake handles with kabob skewers attached to be able to roast them and they practically burst into flames the second you got them close to the fire) and then, after I discovered their availability, I had a margarita. We stood around in the incredibly bright moonlight and I worked on my moontan and chatted with neighbors I'd never even met before and just generally had a lovely time, but I did not work on my proposal. And still hadn't managed to schedule it.
Sunday, got up and was just really, really tired from the day (maybe even the two days) before, but I made bacon using the Benjamin method and I had bought raisin nut bread from Braum's when I picked up the bacon, so we had a fabulous breakfast of eggs and black beans and bacon and coffee and raisin toast with butter and it was cool and lovely and I pretty much just wanted to sit there all day. Instead, after a short nap, I actually did work on my proposal. Go me!! Then I made us a nice salad for lunch and worked on the prop some more. Then I heated up some leftover fajitas we'd picked up on the way in the day before and worked on the prop some more. And *then* we went down to the lovely moonlit beach with the neighbors again and watched most of the amazing Supermoon eclipse. We chatted and watched and took terrible pictures with our cell phones and watched and oohed and aahed and then, as the brightness started to come back to the left side and I realized that it wouldn't officially be over until nearly two in the morning, we packed it in!
Okay, Monday. I may not have mentioned this, but one of the main reasons for not posting Saturday or Sunday, aside from serious tiredness and very full schedule, was the serious lack of internet. We had grown weary of competing for bandwidth on our old service, switched to a new one that claimed to be fabulous and actually was for about a week and then turned out to be the same old bandwidth squeeze and then turned out to be apparently out of business, so then we had none. Went back to the old provider which was now a new provider because they had been bought out by someone willing to invest in some newer, better equipment and they were coming out to set us up. Which they did. And man, oh man, it works!! We get a whopping 7-9 megs! This may not sound like much to some, but believe me, out in the sticks, it's unbelievable. We watched Netflix that night and it didn't buffer once!! ::Does Happy Dance of Reasonably Fast Internet Access:: (What? It's a very specific dance!)
Also, got to play my cello for a minute! Then went back to working on proposal and attempting to corral three different profs into agreement on a meeting time by email. Fun times.
Tuesday, drove back to school. It was so hard to leave--the weather was perfect and beautiful and the back porch was calling. But so was duty, so managed to wrench ourselves away and drive and drive and drive back and again get there just a little late to pick up the youngest (she stayed with fellow guard member and best buddy while we were gone) and, huzzah, to find an email from the profs agreeing on a time! Yay! For Friday morning! Yay! and Augh! and OMG, this is getting real.
Guess what I did Wednesday? If you said worked on my proposal presentation, you would be right!
Guess what I did Thursday? Mmhmm.
Thursday night, I was so nervous that I kept waking up every hour or so, thinking it was time to get up, until suddenly it was time to get up, so I did. Got up and threw together some apricot oatmeal squares, took the youngest to school, went to office, printed out color copies of proposal, did another run through with advisor prof and SB, set up snacks and coffee and juice and tried not to have a heart attack. Second prof comes in, we chat a bit about, which helps me relax a smidgen, the advisor prof is already there, we wait on third prof. Advisor prof snags a passing student to come in and observe, then goes to see what's keeping third guy. Finally, we're all there. eek.
So very glad my advisor prof let me do a couple of dry runs with him or it would not have gone nearly as well, but it actually went fairly smoothly, though I got a little flustered during the "other works" section. I got a bit crossed up at one point and then everything I was planning to say went out of my head and I had to kind of stumble around and come up with something else. Somehow I got back on track and made it to the end and then the profs sent us all out, had a little discussion, called me back in and said, okay, we'll sign off on this, do it.
Yay! Very cool. Shook hands all around, gathered up what was left of the snacks (roped in student put a healthy dent in them, so at least he got some calories out of the deal--he looked like he could use them!)(actually, the squares were a pretty big hit with everybody. Yay!) Advisor prof took the SB and me out to lunch (the vaunted minestrone soup of glory, yay!!) and then I went home and took a glorious nap. And now I only have to get the rest of the work done in a couple of months and I can finish this semester!! Piece of cake.
Let's see. Friday I ended up driving 90 miles so we could help my BIL get some errands done (he has RP like the SB, so he doesn't drive). Ever since my FIL passed last spring, the SB has been making a bit more of an effort to connect with the family he has left. The four brothers are all a little weird (and maybe even a little autistic)(and I'm not just throwing that word out there), but basically pretty nice and I love them all, so this is not really a hardship, just sometimes a lot of driving! Ended up going to Home Depot and picking out some faucets for the BIL's house, then realized that the faucets had weird drain closers, so we went to a furniture store so he could shop for a couch (didn't find one), went to eat at our favorite Mexican restaurant, (chiles toreados, yum!!) picked up some flooring samples at a carpet place, went to Lowe's and got some more flooring samples and some different, hopefully better, faucets, took the first faucets back to HD, then dropped him off and drove ninety miles home and were only slightly late to get the youngest from school.
This was all fine and dandy, except that I really needed to be working on my thesis proposal so I was stressing about that and also about getting it scheduled in time because if I waited much longer, I wouldn't have time to actually do the defense this semester and I was having trouble getting the profs coordinated, so I was stressing about that and between the stress and the driving and the going to Home Depot *and* Lowe's (I don't know what it is about those places, but if I'm in one for more than about five minutes, I just get bizarrely tired. It's like there's a tingler-energy sapper in those places.) so by the time I finally got home I was *wiped*.
Okay, Saturday, deliver youngest to high school so she can go on a band competition, then pick up a U-Haul and go back to the BIL's town and pick up our brand new, incredibly expensive but pretty fabulous Stickley dresser that only weighs half a ton and drive it to its new home on the lake. The SB has been mooning over this dresser for at least 15 years and we finally got it, thanks to a really amazing sale. Now we will actually have a place to put all our clothes. If it don't fit in there, we don't need it!
Get home just before dark and managed to unload the thing in time for the neighbors to invite us to their Supermoon party on the beach. They'd built an enormous (like entire trees enormous) bonfire and were supplying hot dogs and s'mores and even margaritas! I don't really eat hot dogs, but I do eat s'mores, so I had a couple of those (which were tricky to make because the fire was so hot, we had to use what were basically rake handles with kabob skewers attached to be able to roast them and they practically burst into flames the second you got them close to the fire) and then, after I discovered their availability, I had a margarita. We stood around in the incredibly bright moonlight and I worked on my moontan and chatted with neighbors I'd never even met before and just generally had a lovely time, but I did not work on my proposal. And still hadn't managed to schedule it.
Sunday, got up and was just really, really tired from the day (maybe even the two days) before, but I made bacon using the Benjamin method and I had bought raisin nut bread from Braum's when I picked up the bacon, so we had a fabulous breakfast of eggs and black beans and bacon and coffee and raisin toast with butter and it was cool and lovely and I pretty much just wanted to sit there all day. Instead, after a short nap, I actually did work on my proposal. Go me!! Then I made us a nice salad for lunch and worked on the prop some more. Then I heated up some leftover fajitas we'd picked up on the way in the day before and worked on the prop some more. And *then* we went down to the lovely moonlit beach with the neighbors again and watched most of the amazing Supermoon eclipse. We chatted and watched and took terrible pictures with our cell phones and watched and oohed and aahed and then, as the brightness started to come back to the left side and I realized that it wouldn't officially be over until nearly two in the morning, we packed it in!
Okay, Monday. I may not have mentioned this, but one of the main reasons for not posting Saturday or Sunday, aside from serious tiredness and very full schedule, was the serious lack of internet. We had grown weary of competing for bandwidth on our old service, switched to a new one that claimed to be fabulous and actually was for about a week and then turned out to be the same old bandwidth squeeze and then turned out to be apparently out of business, so then we had none. Went back to the old provider which was now a new provider because they had been bought out by someone willing to invest in some newer, better equipment and they were coming out to set us up. Which they did. And man, oh man, it works!! We get a whopping 7-9 megs! This may not sound like much to some, but believe me, out in the sticks, it's unbelievable. We watched Netflix that night and it didn't buffer once!! ::Does Happy Dance of Reasonably Fast Internet Access:: (What? It's a very specific dance!)
Also, got to play my cello for a minute! Then went back to working on proposal and attempting to corral three different profs into agreement on a meeting time by email. Fun times.
Tuesday, drove back to school. It was so hard to leave--the weather was perfect and beautiful and the back porch was calling. But so was duty, so managed to wrench ourselves away and drive and drive and drive back and again get there just a little late to pick up the youngest (she stayed with fellow guard member and best buddy while we were gone) and, huzzah, to find an email from the profs agreeing on a time! Yay! For Friday morning! Yay! and Augh! and OMG, this is getting real.
Guess what I did Wednesday? If you said worked on my proposal presentation, you would be right!
Guess what I did Thursday? Mmhmm.
Thursday night, I was so nervous that I kept waking up every hour or so, thinking it was time to get up, until suddenly it was time to get up, so I did. Got up and threw together some apricot oatmeal squares, took the youngest to school, went to office, printed out color copies of proposal, did another run through with advisor prof and SB, set up snacks and coffee and juice and tried not to have a heart attack. Second prof comes in, we chat a bit about, which helps me relax a smidgen, the advisor prof is already there, we wait on third prof. Advisor prof snags a passing student to come in and observe, then goes to see what's keeping third guy. Finally, we're all there. eek.
So very glad my advisor prof let me do a couple of dry runs with him or it would not have gone nearly as well, but it actually went fairly smoothly, though I got a little flustered during the "other works" section. I got a bit crossed up at one point and then everything I was planning to say went out of my head and I had to kind of stumble around and come up with something else. Somehow I got back on track and made it to the end and then the profs sent us all out, had a little discussion, called me back in and said, okay, we'll sign off on this, do it.
Yay! Very cool. Shook hands all around, gathered up what was left of the snacks (roped in student put a healthy dent in them, so at least he got some calories out of the deal--he looked like he could use them!)(actually, the squares were a pretty big hit with everybody. Yay!) Advisor prof took the SB and me out to lunch (the vaunted minestrone soup of glory, yay!!) and then I went home and took a glorious nap. And now I only have to get the rest of the work done in a couple of months and I can finish this semester!! Piece of cake.