Hurricane Dissertation

Now that I've finally gotten my dissertation written and formatted, my thesis committee nailed down, and have my defense date set (July 7th, 1:30pm, CMG auditorium), it's time for one thing and one thing only: Hurricane Dissertation recovery.

Let's just say the house has, well, taken a back seat to writing. I have baskets of clothes, washed and folded by my wonderful husband, that have not been put away. I haven't vacuumed or washed the living room floor in weeks. I noticed that just about every surface has a nice film of dust on it. And the shower ... well, I'll just say "iew" and leave it at that. This weekend couldn't come at a better time - another week, and we might as well have just left this house to the jungle (poor Naski is so used to me ignoring him while he sits patiently outside of the office doorway all day, I think he's ready to go feral anyway).

My mission for today is to reorganize the office, otherwise known as The Minefield (of papers and binders). I felt it necessary to capture this disaster zone for posterity, as I hope no room in my house will EVER look like this again:

By Monday, I should start hearing back from my committee about edits or any additions they want to see in my written dissertation. I expected the stress of writing to dissipate once I put out a draft to my committee, but all I can do is think about all of those little pieces of data from dead-end projects that are sitting, unused and unloved, in any number of binders at work and here at home. I keep thinking "well, I could write it into that chapter" which would require an additional 3-4 pages of lit review, additional section in the results, the discussion, etc. So the anticipated post-writing good nights of sleep that I expected are not exactly forthcoming. But this weekend I intend to not think about it (as much as you can forcibly push something from your mind, anyway), enjoy being home, watch some TV, play with the cats, and clean like a MerryMaid. I can worry about the rest of it next week. =)