Ah-la-la-la-la-le-lu-ah and the phone story

Two weekends now I went to Oregon/Washington for Kim's wedding. It was a good time. I got to stay in a hotel and got a good amount of work done on my thesis. I think this is a useful thing for me to know- I get a lot of writing done in a hotel room. Expensive way to get writing done, but I will store that knowledge for later. I also got to see Amanda and her boyfriend, Scott, while there and that was good as well. What I did not do, and will pay for a while for, is call another friend I have who lives in Seattle- only a two hour drive away. He is not very happy with me as a result of my failure to call. This is because he (like me, actually) is the kind of person who will drive two hours to and from a place to meet someone and hang out for 15 minutes. I did feel bad about not making the call as I had previously mentioned him possibly coming to the wedding with me. But as it turned out I flew in Friday night and out Sunday morning and I had a thesis that needed to be done by the next Tuesday. Knowing if I called he would certainly come down and that I would feel bad cutting the visit short I didn't call. Unfortunately this did not go undetected as Amanda then went up to Seattle and visited with him and there was no hiding that I had been in the region. I got a phone call the next Sunday while I was at Kilties that totally called me out. I apologized but I don't think I am back in the good. Meanwhile, when I got back I had to deal with Ryan who was not at all happy to drive down to get me from O'Hare. Pretty sure my friend from Seattle would have picked me up from O'Hare if he could.

I guess I can say this: my thesis defense is scheduled for Tuesday. I would like to say that my thesis is done, but I don't know if this is the case as it is likely to see revision before it is signed and submitted to the department. My committee has a copy of the monster but I have made some changes since that copy. I am looking at family structure and I defined it as single parent, two biological parent, or other. In my initial analysis I used other as the comparison category but that doesn't actually tell us much. It didn't occur to me until I was talking to Eric two Thursdays ago while folding clothes that I could use single or two parent families as the comparison category and be able to say something. But this change meant a bit of work to revise the table and the text of my paper so I did that yesterday and will have to present revisions to my committee at my defense. I don't know if such a thing is typical, but it is what my adviser suggested and at this point my adviser is God of the situation- what he says goes. So it seems that this is good. I have been taking on an attitude of "don't count the eggs before they are hatched" in all things related to my thesis. I am fully aware that my committee could decide I am not done and give me a list of things that must be done which will delay my official completion. This could mean I don't actually graduate.... they are collectively God of that (hmmm.... how polytheistic of me). But I got my graduation regalia yesterday in the mail and the parents are coming to town for graduation so it appears that I am walking if nothing else.

The job search is sucking. I am frustrated by the bad application formatting and the repetition in the process. It is so hard to put effort into the applications when my experience is that few of them will even be considered. Eric applied for a job in Madison and a few days later received an email from a staffing company in Philadelphia saying that while he was qualified for the job they decided not to forward his application. Not an encouraging message to get. But of course we have no choice but to press on.

Amanda came to visit Wisconsin this week. I picked her up from the airport on Monday night. We went to lunch at Ryan's shop on Tuesday then to the Milwaukee Art Museum- I really like that place. Then her friends came and picked her up and took her to town in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin that I will not name. I guess it was not quite to her liking so she escaped and came back to Milwaukee last evening and Eric joined us for a trip to Lakefront Brewery for the tour and fish fry complete with Polka music. It was great! My second time on the tour, this one was more entertaining, and my first time at the fish fry which was yummy and fun. Will have to see about going in the summer to see the crowds. Today we got up, I made breakfast, Eric finally showed up, Amanda packed up, we went to the Public Market for a quick lap, and took Amanda to Amtrak and off she went to Chicago to meet Scott at his aunt's house in Evanston.

Aha! The phone story. This is a funny one, I think. So I have been sick this week: coughing, sneezing, nose stuffy. Went to see the doctor on Monday- no Swine Flu for me, but I was on anti-biotics that did not improve my health as quickly as they usually do. Point is I had not been sleeping as well as I might due to waking up for various reasons chief among them coughing. Well Wednesday night I settled in for some better, cough-less sleep and kept sleeping through my alarm. I didn't wake until 8:30 and needed to be in class by 9:00. I quick got up and dressed, it wasn't until I was putting on my shoes that I realized that it was raining outside. Well, at this point my only hope of making it to class on time was to ride my bike so I did that and ended up with soaked jeans by the time I arrived at school. So, being sick, I was unhappy with this (unavoidable, given my mode of transportation) outcome and I was locking up my bike which of course did not want to cooperate and I ruched to class. Well after class I was meeting with my advisor to discuss the above issue with my thesis. I returned to my office to hear that one of the department secretaries had called for me. That is odd since she would normally just walk down the hall instead of calling. So I headed back down the hall to see what she wanted and here she came down the hall. "The police called, they have your cell phone," she said. Hmmm. That's interesting I had not noticed that it was gone. So I head back into the office and call the police department as instructed. So I get on the phone with the officer who has my phone and he tells me he called my mom!!! In California!!! Immediately I am calculating what time it must have been in CA and contemplating the fact that I got tattled on. "She didn't want to talk to me at first," the officer tells me. "But when I told her who I was, who I work for, she was more willing." I bet! As it turned out it wasn't until about 10:30 Milwaukee time, 8:30 CA time that this all took place so my mom was at a school and was not happy to be on the phone because that doesn't look good. So the police officer on the phone asks me a bunch of questions: my address, office phone, office number, so forth. Then I hang up, tell my office mates the deal and resume what I was doing on the computer. The office phone rings, I answer, and it is my father!! Letting me know that the police have my phone. "Thanks, Dad," I say and hang up. My office mates are laughing, "Was that really your Dad?!" Yes, yes it was. So I got my phone back and all is back to normal-ish.... I mean as normal as my life gets.