Sleep? What's that?

My fight to finish my thesis and grad school continues.....albeit more slowly than I would like.....

Last week was exceptionally busy, I don't think I got back to my apt before 11 all week. Monday morning I got an email from Brad with some revisions for my thesis intro. He thought it was good overall, I just needed to make a few changes. Then I got another email Monday evening after Brad read the entire thesis draft, and I realized just how much more work I need to do on it. I focused on little things and never stepped back and looked at the big picture, and so I didn't really answer the questions I needed to. It's like a talked about these different pieces but didn't combine the pieces to get the overall effect. And while Brad is entirely right, and this will make for a better thesis, it was still incredibly frustrating and disappointing to hear that, after spending so much time on that first draft. But Monday got better because I went over to Amy's so we could bitch about grad school, URI and life. And I discovered that Amy has very similar musical taste with Whitney, so she actually knows some of the random indie groups that Whit introduces me to, so that was a fun discovery. I also convinced Amy to come with me Friday night to see some bands in New Hamphshire. The rest of the week was very stressful with lots of grading (60 lab reports....ugh) and lots of random things popping up and taking up all my time, like a grad lunch, lab and freezer cleanup, and covering 2 extra labs at the last minute for people who were sick. I assume Amy's week was also stressful, since she asked me at 10:00 on Friday morning if we could just leave for NH then.

So, Friday night. Amy and I needed to get the hell out of RI for a while, and I had read online that Nicole's college friends' band, The Whitest Light, was opening for Josh Kelly and Collective Soul in NH. It was only 2 1/2 hours away, so Amy jumped in my car and we got there around 5:30 to discover that the concert was sold out. It never occurred to us to get tickets beforehand online.....yeah, I know, sometimes my commonsense just doesn't kick in. So we grab some food at a local place and try to figure out what to do, since we drove all the way out here. We were determined to have a good time, and hey, it was already a good time because we weren't in RI (we cheered as we passed the Massachusetts and NH state lines). Just as we're about to leave the diner, Amy overhears these people talking about how their friends couldn't make it, so they have 2 extra tickets. They sold them to us for regular price, which was incredibly nice of them, so then Amy and I had about an hour and a half to kill until the concert. While waiting for The Whitest Light to start, a random guy walks up to us and asks if we know anything about the opening bands (we were probably the only people in the room who did). Turns out the guy is a software engineer, and his friend who came up a few minutes later, was a physicist. Yeah, we found the other two biggest science geeks in a large room full of people. Ah, the randomness of life...

All of the bands at the concert were great, and it was fun to see The Whitest Light again, now that I actually knew some of their songs. Amy bought their new CD and we talked to 2 of the band members, Little and Mickey, for a while. Little hung out with us for most of the night, when he wasn't doing band stuff like signing CDs and talking to fans. He's a nice guy, so that was fun. Plus, whenever he went to do band stuff, we'd run into the two science guys, so we always had someone to talk to. Before we left Mickey mentioned that they might be playing in Connecticut this week, but he wasn't sure, it might be just Collective Soul. It was a really fun night, although we didn't get back til 4 in the morning. And I still woke up at 7 :30 AM, although I refused to get out of bed and eventually fell back asleep.

Saturday I went to Providence with Laura to see Nicole and Michele and grab some food, but I was too tired to go out Saturday night. Sunday night we saw a fantastic movie, called Once. If you haven't seen it, you really need to. The two stars aren't actors, they're musicians who just decided to make a movie. So the music is fantastic. Nicole burned me a copy of the soundtrack and I've listened to it the last day or two. Geez, every song is so good, and the muscians put so much emotion and just vulnerability into their voices as they sing. Everyone should definately check out both the movie and soundtrack.

Sigh. And now I'm back at work. I managed to finish up Bio 101 crap yesterday, but now that's done and I can't put off my thesis revisions anymore. I've been sneaking looks at my piles of papers out of the corners of my eyes, but I really don't want to tackle my thesis again. Revisions are one thing, but I essentially have to start over for 2 of my 3 discussion sections. I know once I get started that I will get into it, but it's so hard to get started. Hence why I'm updating this and not thesising as I should be.

The Post-Thesis Slump

I emailed the rough draft of my thesis to Brad last Monday night at like 9:00 after editing off (read playing on the internet and talking to lab-mates) and on all day. I still have some kinks to work out, and I really thought I'd get them taken care of last week. Instead, I somehow managed to be constantly busy without actually being productive. I mean, I did some Bio 101 stuff, but I haven't actually worked on my thesis since last Monday, which is crazy. I swear, I need to find a happy medium. I either push myself to work 10 and 12 hour days, or I slack off so much that I get about 1 or 2 hours of work done a day. I feel like I should aim for some middle number, like maybe 8 hours a day, the standard for people with normal jobs?

Speaking of jobs, after a LOT of thought about what the hell I'm doing this summer, I think I've figured out my short term plan. Defend in May or early June at the latest, and then throw all my shit into storage and drive down to Huntsville. Then, I hope to get a job at a temp agency so I can pay my bills until I get a real science job. It'll kinda suck being in Huntsville since none of my friends are there anymore, but I don't see a better solution. There wouldn't be any jobs if I was crashing in Cooperstown, and at least in Huntsville there will be actual stuff to do (actual movie theaters, music festivals, etc.). And Ames will be in Birmingham, which is only 1 1/2 hours away, so I may visit her a bit too.

The big glich in my plan is getting from Rhode Island to Huntsville. I don't mind driving 20-odd hours, I've grown up with it, as long as I have music to sing along to, I can drive forever, and I'm pretty sure I can avoid hotels by crashing at my godmother's in Virginia and Mike's in North Carolina (I haven't run this plan by Mike yet, I'm just assuming I can crash on his couch or floor). But I'm worried that I won't physically be able to drive the whole way solo. I've had to do physical therapy twice in the last two years for problems that have recently developed. And working 12 hour days for the last couple of months has probably not helped my back problems. I've driven to Cooperstown half a dozen times, and that's about 5 hours, and my back is usually pretty stiff when I get there. It's just because I can't change position when I'm driving. If I could switch off with somebody, I could do it, but I'm really worried that driving it solo would be incredibly painful and stupid. Unfortunately, most of my friends live in the real world and don't have summers off, so they can't drive back with me, even if they wanted to. I told Ames she should fly up and drive back with me so we could have plenty of sister bonding time, and she's thinking about it, but I don't know if she'll be able to. She might have a summer job working at a day care or nursery, and I don't know if she could afford to fly up anyways.

So that's my dilemma. I can't think of anybody who would want to drive back with me, and who would actually have a schedule open enough to do it. If anybody's got any suggestions, let me know.

Hmm...nothing else to really update on. Oh, I went to Boston Saturday night to help celebrate Lloyd's 30th birthday at a dueling piano bar. I always think of Mags and Spencer's wedding when I think of piano bars. Anyways, it was fun, but it was definately a different crowd than the last time I went to the piano bar. There were at least 5 bachelorette parties there, 3 or 4 30th birthdays and a few other birthdays, plus there was some college sports team that was there. It was weird, I felt like I was at a college bar because everyone's goals were to get drunk, get laid, and make girls dance with each other on the stage. And for some reason we attracted the sketchy guys on the dance floor. I mean, we all still had a good time, and it's always nice to get out of Rhode Island, it was just very different from the night we went for Michele's birthday. On the plus side, Amy and I listened to The Wedding Singer soundtrack and a Queen mix on the way back from Boston, and I've had "Somebody to Love" stuck in my head since Saturday night.