Casey...interfacing with Joel.

Things are looking better here than they were at the beginning of the week. I was at Sal's until way too late last night. He taught me about the hip videogames that everyone is playing but that I haven't even seen. Before that, Bobhari, Ruth, Sal, and I watched Capote. It was depressing on many many levels, but it was worthwhile to watch (and done decently well).

We just got back from "Youth Sunday" at church. I cannot wait to get into some more youth stuff. There are many neat youth who are not connected with the large group night / small group studies, but instead are just Sunday school people. It makes me excited to be where we are--there is a ton of potential.

Oh yeah, I actually got to work on the car yesterday! It took me hours (stupid snapped bolt), but my exhaust is hooked on without leaks now!

Jannelle teaching Joel how to sing (at least I think that is what this picture is all about).

Ok, I will get it out.
I had the dissertation defense on Monday, and I did not pass it. I am feeling a bit down about it...but I think that I will be good with re-presenting it once I do a lot of extra review...Not that the main concern was knowing the literature.
I was asked a few simple questions that I interpreted to be much more complex than they were. Then I fumbled and said that I could not adequately answer the question because it involved a complex analysis that could not be answered from the manuscript copies that we all had at hand. Though the complex questions could not be answered, the simple questions they actually asked were answered right in the text.

I can see what happened and I don't feel cheated or anything like that...I just need to be able to interpret questions better. That can be a hard thing to practice, but I need to do it.
The good news is that they liked the manuscript and did not ask for a rewrite.

Anyways, I will be doing an annotated bibliography of the articles that I haven't annotationally bibliographicized yet. Mainly, I will be documenting ideas and questions and I will provide them to friends and family who will listen to me present/will question me.

In other news, Joel is growing up. He got jealous when Anne paid attention to another baby today. It was a "that's MY mom" moment. He was great this morning--he was talking to me the whole time I was making breakfast.

I went to a really exciting Three Meadows Association meeting tonight. It consisted of people asking the same questions over and over. Then we voted to raise the fee from cheap to pretty cheap. I really want to make the place a bit better on my own--like walking around and cleaning up the neighborhood. I have done this a few times already and I think it will be a habit. Man, I am ready for summer.

I also went to the funeral home for Lisa Nycz' visitation. Mike (her brother) and I grew up together (like playing together everyday) from when we were 5 until maybe 11. It was sad (as one would expect when a 23 year old dies) but I guess I had never appreciated how cool that whole Nycz family is--they were just Mikey's parents, after all. I have seen his dad several times in church-related stuff since, and I can see why they have so many people who really truly care about them. The place had a line that was probably 2 hours long...Mike said it had been like that all day. Mike and I caught up for about 20 minutes, so that was nice. I really liked being a kid in that old neighborhood with those old friends. Those were good times.

From when Casey, Jannelle, Randy, Ruth, and Saranga were over last weekend. Next up are pictures of Casey and Jannelle looking sweet with Joel.

I am up because my stomach hurts. I had a suspect corned beef and cabbage lunch at a VFW (someone at work convinced a group of us to go there). I had not had food prepared by someone who was smoking a cigarette while cooking since eating at the Corner Grill in BG in the pre-smoking ban days. Not that the cigarette smoke likely had an effect. I am not sure what did. Regardless, so the stomach was a little achey...then Anne and I went to the St. Rose fish fry and I ate like a dozen pieces of fried fish.

Sometimes I can be super-stupid. Most of the time it involves the phrase "all-you-can eat."

Anne's parents are coming into town this weekend to visit. I am doing dissertation defense preparation (yes, it is still scheduled for this upcoming monday), but I (with Anne, but not Joel) plan to be at Sal's for movie night!

Not that we have been tired lately, but I discovered yesterday that I can make it down the driveway, through two turns, one stop sign, and a total of about a quarter mile before a mug of coffee falls off the roof of my Civic.
In an unrelated act of sleepiness, I can also get halfway down the parking garage at GM with the mug up there before someone notices and clues me in. Anyone else do this regularly?

Ok, the stomach feels better...time to go back to sleep.

Long-lost PDA pictures

Today's theme is: pictures I took with my Clie PDA camera and then forgot about.

Before that, I saw Casey and Jannelle last night. They were in town trying to plan their wedding stuff (June 17th) . We went to Sal's and got a sweet slideshow of his time in India. It rocked. It was also really nice to see Bob (AKA Jonathan) (who has a sweet beard now) and Johari (who does not have a beard), and I hope we can hang out with more. I also got an email from Kathryn Metz--she said that she is thinking of visiting in June! This summer is generally looking to be really nice.

Anyway, back to the picture theme:
These were generally pictures I was not expecting to take pictures of (and thus had to make due with the only camera I had on me).

Soccer game in the churchyard we were staying at in Juarez, Mexico last year.

I liked how the security thingy was EXACTLY the same size as the drive, so they put it right over the drive so you couldn't see what you were buying.

Spied: Stealth Dodge Nitro passing me on the expressway.


This was our lame-o golfhole from the Maritz "spend a day playing putt-putt at work" day. I thought ours was fun to make (K-nex), but the other groups absolutely stomped ours for being sweet.


2 for 1 each! Wow. I don't think we learned about that one in statistics.


Actual hand from someone at work. I was going through the pictures I took on my PDA (with its mediocre (at best) VGA camera).

Hand distortion #2.


Ok, that cleaned out the files of most things that are pretty interesting.

As promised...Sal looks good with a baby, huh? Come over tomorrow night around 7ish to see Joel, Sal, Casey, Jannelle, Anne, Neil, and whoever else feels like showing up (at least I think that is an accurate list).

Bad news: My advisor's father died. I feel really bad for Rich...but I am not really sure what I should do. I have gotten to know Rich decently well as his grad student for 7 years and one year of undergraduate class with him. I hope to continue the relationship past graduation too. Anyway, I had to reschedule from Monday until Thursday next week. Honestly, I was surprised that he could meet even that soon--but Rich is quite nice. I would not be surprised to get a call that says that he may need it rescheduled again, but for graduation deadline reasons I hope it doesn't happen (the hard deadline for the defense is the 20th).

I had an odd moment while driving to Detroit today. I was alongside 2 "pre-production" Dodge Nitros (this model is scheduled to be out next year) that were also on I-75. I felt like an Autoweek photographer because the vehicles were covered in the black mesh and were intentionally unornamented. I saw one of them right next to a Liberty...they are the same with the exception of the fact that Dodge seems to feel the need to raise the "beltline" on their vehicles so they have slits instead of windows. I think it looks somewhat stylish, but I would hate to own one. Coincidentally, it also drove next to a Durango...thank goodness that the Nitro bore little resemblance to it.

Ok, back to practicing the presentation.

So many pictures, so little time.

A lot has been going on. The most significant things are: The dissertation is to the committee and the defense is scheduled for Monday the 13th! It is now a matter of throwing everything I have behind getting the presentation ready and getting rereading the relevant stuff.

Joel is doing really well. No one told me that babies become 1000% more person-like at 6 weeks. He is freakin' sweet now. Not that he wasn't before. It is just now he is freakin' sweeter.

Sal came over and it was sweet. I cannot wait for friends to come over once this dissertation is done. What a lifted burden that will be! It sounds like Randy's Mustang is all ready for me to start having a life again.

\Well, tomorrow is a Detroit day so I had better hit the sheets. Stay tuned for a cute picture of Sal and Joel.