A Little More Order, A Little Less Chaos

So after months of not knowing what the hell I'm doing with my life after grad school, I finally have some tentative plans.

First off, I have my thesis defense date set, which is exciting and terrifying and good because I've learned that when I don't have deadlines I get really lazy and procrastinate way too much. So, my defense date is set for June 13th, and yes, it's Friday the 13th. Screw it, pretty much everything I've done for the past 3 years has failed, I may as well embrace my bad luck. That means I need to get a defendable copy into the grad school by May 23, which seems far away, but I know it will sneak up on me much sooner than I want it to. I'm working on my second thesis draft now, and hope to email it to Brad by Saturday at the latest. So, May and June will pretty much consist of me working on my thesis and defense, and possibly applying for more jobs. I also have a wedding to go to June 20-21 in Mobile, so that'll be fun, another unofficial college reunion.

July will pretty much be me running around visiting people. My family usually meets up in Cooperstown around July 4th, so I'll be driving over there after I finish my last thesis revisions and officially turn in my thesis to the grad school. So I'll probably be there about a week. I mean, I haven't seen any of the fam since Christmas, and I'm hoping to meet Mike's new girlfriend, you know, the girl he met and then moved to New York for 3 months later. Clearly this girl is something special. Then mid-July I need to have all my crap out of my apartment. So somewhere around July 10th-ish I will be embarking on my solo road trip from Rhode Island to Alabama. I'm still hoping to crash with family and friends on the way down so I don't have to pay for hotel rooms, we'll see if that actually works out. And then I'm hoping to visit Mags and Spencer in Milwaukee towards the end of July. I can't believe I haven't seen either one of them since their wedding a year and a half ago. Crazy.

I also need to visit Whitney in Florida, but I'm not sure when to squeeze that in...August? Somewhere in there I need to get a job, because life's expensive right now, and I think I get my last paycheck tomorrow, then I'm just living off my savings for the next two months. And then with all my traveling.....apparently my plan is to blow the rest of my savings while I'm unemployed, which is a terrible plan. Still, it will be good to see everybody. With my crappy New Years Eve, non-birthday, dead cell phone, dead car, dead laptop screen, tax screwups and thesis problems, I've got to say, so far I'm not impressed with 2008. It's pretty much been crappy and stressful for the most part, although there were many fun social occasions that helped balance out those bad days. Still, I'm hoping the second half of 2008 goes better. With finishing grad school and visiting college friends it has to be better. Now my life can actually move forward, and that's gotta be a positive thing.