Despite Everything I Got Something Done

Hi y'all. Didja miss me? Well, lemme tell ya...since getting back from the band trip Saturday I've been busier'n a three-peckered billy goat. Saturday evening we had dinner with The Man's daughter at their new home around the corner from us along with several family members and close family friends. Sunday my mom came by to have me take some pictures of her for a new book she's having published. I've been trying to get the final exam ready to give the kids this morning and we had one of those killer Texas thunderstorms with 90-mile-an-hour straight line winds last night that downed a bunch of trees, including the one pictured above, which landed over my driveway, bent the pole fence out front and blocked the road. I drove The Man's demo out to the gate to take the picture and upon coming back down the driveway in reverse, I slid off the concrete and buried the truck up to its axle in the mud. I didn't take a picture of that. I think I muttered something under my breath that rhymed with truck...can't be sure. At any rate, The Man had to push me out of the mud with his big ol' tractor before he could use it to move the trees out of the road. You can imagine how happy he was with me. ;oD

During all this, our dinner (a really nice pot roast I'd had on the stove since 10:30 am, with smushed taters & brown mushroom gravy and steamed squash - all from fresh & from scratch -Slick would be proud..) was getting cold. Then, before we could even sit down to eat, our son-in-law brought the Grandtwins over for about an hour or so because the power was out at their house. They chattered throughout American Idol. Gr. It's the only show I watch and I was invested in Pinhead Chris' departure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the crayon pictures with all the hearts and flowers and shit are great, but shut up already - jeez.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, I was supposed to make up a mock dataset and run and write up a mock curvilinear regression analysis so my consulting faculty will be happy with the knowledge that I understand curvilinearity before she goes on vacation tomorrow so I can move ahead with my dissertation. I'd planned to get it to her early yesterday evening but that didn't work out because of all the other crap going on. Without that, I can't officially move on until she gets back May 29, which, naturally, will put me in a huge bind if I'm going to have the draft of the last 2 chapters in within the next couple of weeks so I can graduate in July. Because you know - I can't shit without the committee's permission or without giving them a fully detailed description of its color, texture, aromatic and flotation qualities, et cetera. Of course, the storm knocked out both my internet and cell service, so even if by some miracle I had gotten it finished according to plan, I couldn't have sent it to her anyway. So I stayed up after everyone else went to bed (that's actually when I do my best, least distracted work) until around 1:30am and got it done. Interestingly, the internet tower beamer thingy reset itself about 15 minutes before I was finished so I was able to send it to her last night instead of waiting until this morning to try to send it from school. That was good because the internet service there is dodgy most of the time anyway.

So. I get up around 5am and toddle out the door this morning at 7 for my last day as a college professor. There were 6 students who had to take the final. Unfortunately, I had to bake in extra security measures because one student was ratted out for cheating on the last exam (I gave the ratter a couple of points extra credit to make sure she passed the course with an A). At any rate they were finished within 30 minutes and while I was there and had the classroom all to myself for another hour and a half, I went ahead and graded them, filled out the grade report, and turned it in at the administration building. As of 10am Central Hell Time, I am no longer a college professor - yippee!

I'm still waiting for feedback about the mock analysis from the consulting faculty so I didn't know what to do with the rest of the day. After some thought, I took a book about sex and sexuality that I'd bought donate to The Girl's high school library to the librarian (more on that another day) then came home, took a nap and as soon asI woke up, I sat down to let y'all know I haven't forgotten about you. It's just been crazy around here - and believe me - I know crazy - in the biblical sense.

Oh yeah - and I have poison ivy. Again. More on that later, too.

tags technorati : bitching, statistics, teaching, Texas, dissertation, American Idol,