Done, Done-Done Done!

I just put my dissertation copies in the trust of the USPS.
I am officially Done!

Gloria: "About time you are done!"  (Reminding me a great deal of Georgia...)

While my distractions over the past few months have been many, I have continued to plug away, and successfully defended my dissertation on December 10th.    I arrived back in Humboldt on the 12th, and I adopted Gloria from the shelter on the 13th. I took a needed break for two weeks, which became four weeks.    

And then I worked on the revisions and additions requested by my committee for final approval.  This included submitting a revision for Scott's approval, then preparing the document for format review for the university.  I had another week of work after the format review was completed, fixing tiny things like a missed date here and a misplace period there.   While doing my final reading before printing, I kept finding words and sentences I wanted to alter, proving once again that a good piece of writing is never "finished" it is just abandoned.  :)

The reason most of Gloria's pictures are of her on my bed?  Because I took so many pictures while I was working on my dissertation...

A friend helped me find a good source of 25% cotton paper, saving about $10 per ream over local price. When purchasing 4 reams, that adds up to quite a savings!  Then came printing. I first went to a local printer, thinking I should stay local instead of going with a chain.   Oops.  The first printer put black marks throughout the first half of seven copies, and the entire 8th copy. Never mind that I only wanted 7 copies, and never mind that they didn't let me approve the test copy before proceeding.    When I stopped by to look at the test copy, she'd already printed the first half of 7 more!  Once I saw the marks, I tried to stay calm, but tears filled my eyes.  The copy person said it was my paper, and she would not charge me for what was printed. Oh, and she said, "Sorry about that." What?   Sorry?  Yeah, the age of customer service is long gone.

So glad Gloria got me out every day.   I'd be in much worse shape without her insistent motivation. She's like a personal trainer. 

At that point, I'm worried I don't have enough paper left.   I get my zip drive and leave, not sure what to do.  I re-grouped, and went to Kinko's. They only had 100% cotton paper, not the 25% I had, so if they did the second half on that paper, my dissertations would look like hybrid creatures.    Plus it would be $300 for them to run the whole thing over, or $95 plus tax to print the whole thing on my paper.

While working, my Christmas Cacti bloomed.

The only house plants left from my once enormous collection.

They bloomed and bloomed.

I went home.  Sorted through what I had (did I tell you it wasn't collated, either?  7 copies of page 1.  7 copies of page 2....).  Decided I could live with my copies and my professors' copies having blemishes (sorry about that, Scott, Sara, and Bill), but I needed the University copies to be as clean as possible. So I ran 3 new copies of every blemished page on my printer. It looked like I had enough of my fancy paper to do the rest, so I decided to format a copy of my dissertation that was just the second half, correctly paginated, to take in to Staples.

But when I put my zip drive in my computer, a red virus warning popped up.  What?  I've never had a virus on my zip drive.    Antivirus quarantined it.  I deleted the files on my zip, and ran a virus scan of just the zip.  Got another red virus warning, but for a different virus.  So I picked up two viruses at the copy place?  Wow.

Another distraction. Care taking a herd of 24 chickens.

18 eggs a day, on average. And some of them were extremely above average size. No, there were no geese disguised as chickens. But the big ones were usually double yolks.

Headed into Staples.  The guy behind the copy counter turned out to be one of my former Blue Heron students, so that was a nice happenstance.   He started to run a test copy, and quickly learned that the laser copier turns cotton paper into curled crisp things.  Luckily he only ran 20 pages. But I started to panic about my dwindling paper! Their other Staples printer, the one that wouldn't curl paper, is not working.  Augh!  I head to the Kinko's in Eureka. The lady behind the counter assured me I had enough paper, and she would take care of it.    And she did.

Rare photo of Giovanna and me getting to work. This was the infamous day of the great Cow scare.  Here she is after almost an hour of in-hand work to bring her back to earth. Phew.  

So now my dissertations look quite interesting.  Three different copiers used, so three different levels of ink.  Not to mention the first half had to be hand sorted, so the pages aren't all crisply organized!  Oh well.  It's the words that count, right?  And the binders probably have a machine that tamps the paper into a neat block before binding.  I can hope!

Personal trainer Gloria, at work.

Lesson in this?   Not sure yet.   All I know is I really am done.    Trying not to panic about not having a job (or even a career!), not knowing what is next.  Doing odd jobs to get by, like fixing plumbing, babysitting, cleaning houses, and teaching an OLLI class on writing and doing pro-bono work helping kids with learning disabilities.  All greatly enjoyable.   Also working on getting organized after moving so many times, sorting through the stuff I had in storage at my McK house, and trying to remember what life is like without a huge goal sitting in front of me.  Lots of philosophical thinking lately about the meaning of life and all that. 

Luckily Gloria is a daily (hourly?) reminder of what life is about: Live in the moment, and take one day at a time. Enjoy what you are doing, for you never know what's around the next turn.  Whatever you do, get outside every day for a walk or four.

We are out of here!