A Brief Update

Just surfacing briefly, with a promise of future more-detailed blog posts. I returned on Saturday from a week-long camping trip with Bird, Jess, Ouija, and Drea--a completely packed trip to South Dakota and Wyoming. It included Devils Tower, Wind Cave, Jewel Cave, Custer State Park, Minuteman Missile National Historic Site (ICBM silo), and several days in The Badlands. We had everything from 90 F/20% RH, down to snowing and 31 F--I pretty much wore everything I brought, at least once.


Yeah, that's me in the picture; you can click on it for an enlarged version.

However, my relaxation was short-lived after returning. First, I looked through the email pile that had built up over the weekend, and found out that I had been volunteered to go to Greensburg, KS on Wednesday. So after booking a flight on Sunday morning, I have a 5:45 AM trip scheduled for the day after tomorrow, coming back on Saturday morning. I'll rant more about this trip and project, but that will have to be later (not to mention f'locked).

Second, remember what I said about my thesis before I left? It still feels like there are an infinite number of things that can go wrong betweeen now and September 28th. However, since I'm heading out for a vacation for a week, there's nothing I'll be able to do about it. Well, that turned out to be quite prescient: my thesis submission was not accepted due to formatting reasons--the page numbers of the entire document are not in the right place. Even thought I generated my formatting using the Word template provided on UW's website. Grr. Unfortunately, when I changed the page number location, it screwed up pagination, so I had to verify locations of my inserted graphics (over 340 pages), change page start numbers for all chapters, and regenerate tables of contents, figures, and tables. Fuckers.

Oh yeah--remember the hard copy that I FedEx'd up to Canada for binding? Well, it's now $40 worth of recycling. So I spent this evening at the office (again), printing out three copies on acid-free 25% cotton content archival paper, to send to Canada.


I think it's in the can now, but I once again have a few days when I can't do anything about it. Due date is next Friday (not this Friday), so there's a bit of breathing room.