Draft 3

Wow...I would like to say words can't describe what I've gone through over the last 4 days, but that's not true. Words can describe it. It has been quite a rough adventure of the dissertation and moving variety.

- This weekend I had the hormone thing making my fears intensified as I was trying to work on school and prepare to move out of the apartment.

- The last 2 days I've been moving. And I mean MOVINGGGG. On Monday at 7:00 AM I got up and started packing things in boxes in preparation for picking up the U-Haul truck at 9:00 AM. I didn't stop until 10:30 PM. I was almost to the point of collapse. We packed a truck full of stuff and drove it to the new place at 1:00. By that point I was just very "tired" and my muscles were starting to feel it a little. From that point on I kept having to take breaks and carry the boxes for short distances before stopping. I have never worked my body that much. Part of the issue was that I'm not in shape so I was sweating and my arms weren't strong as they would be if I'd worked out, so I wasn't as effective.

- Yesterday I went back to my old place to do one more carload and clean. That took about 3 hours of hard work and I didn't even do a very good cleaning job!

- I went to bed around 5 PM last night and got up today at 2 AM. Now I've been "trying" to finish draft #3 so that I can send it to advisor this morning. I'm feeling pretty sleepy and lazy (the kind of lazy where you are tempted to check out the very detailed news stories on what's happening with the Syria intervention and then you might end up looking up nutrition facts or planning your travel budget for the next 3 years -- that kind of lazy). However, I've been able to mostly keep on track so far, I'm just not going as fast as I'd like. My mental capacity is decent but not good, but at least I've been sleeping

- I can barely walk because my calves are so sore...they've never hurt this much. They are so tight that I am hobbling around...haha, I'm sure it looks pretty funny. I decided that that was the last self move that I will ever do. I will hire movers next time. I am done with moving myself. I've moved way too much and it's just too much work, even with a helper or two.

- I treated myself to a pumpkin spice latte, spinach, feta, egg wrap, and a mini pumpkin cream cheese loaf this morning to motivate myself to finish this draft soon. I have more to do after I finish this (such as make some calls to check on the funding available to me for prizes to those who participated in my dissertation), notifying the proper sources of my defense date, doing some errands, and getting groceries. Currently the only things in my refrigerator are:

• Lingonberry jam
• 2 lbs of carrots
• Tabbouleh
• 4 oz organic cheddar cheese
• Dave's Killer Bread (my favorite)

Apart from the Tabbouleh, that selection sounds like I'm living in a farmhouse in Skyrim. Those people always seem to have loads of cheese, carrots, tomatoes, cabbage, and bread lying around. I really want to finish that game!! I also want to work on my novel some more. I came up with a couple delirious ideas when I was falling asleep in the middle of the night. Luckily I seem to have a knack for remembering my thoughts during delirium, so I wrote a couple of them down to incorporate them into my book. One of them was really cool! But I won't share it here -- I want everything in my book to be a surprise. I plan on sharing it with people I know once I'm finished. It's just a fun thing to do.

Here is the view from my neighborhood. I miss the sweet smell of the forest from my old place, but I really like the view here. It's much brighter and you can see all the way to the Olympics and to the end of the inlet.

Took this over the weekend

Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. The sunrise a few minutes ago (now it's raining but the weather on the horizon still looks like this) 

I love the way the sun hits clouds. I have missed the ever-changing clouds of this region. The puffy clouds play with the sun and create neon and brilliant rays of light. Sometimes the clouds look outlined in neon orange (like right now). It's a whole different feeling than a sunrise with just a clear blue sky (nothing wrong with that, though).

Anyway, just trying to write a bit on here so that I can motivate myself to finish my draft. It's difficult to feel like the drafts are ever ready because there are seemingly endless things to revise and update, but I need to forget that. I just need to show forward progress. And my next draft needs to be my pretty final draft. I plan to get feedback from advisor by end of this week and send him draft #4 next Monday. I think I can fit in one more draft before I have to send my final one to my committee, so I will have gone through five drafts. I had a dream (nightmare) on Monday night in which I asked a bunch of graduate students how many drafts they went through before their meeting. One of them said "24 drafts". I freaked out because I will probably only get to do five drafts, plus the changes I'll make to my final draft before sending it to the committee -- which means I will send my committee the 6th draft. Is that enough iterations? I don't have a clue. I think I went through about 9-10 iterations before my Master's meeting.

Bottom line, I'm glad to be done moving. I still have half a carload of stuff sitting unpacked in my car, but other than that all I have to do is organize my apartment. One of my goals for after I finish this school thing is to sift through all my belongings and donate them, repack them efficiently, or sell them. I want to minimize the amount of things I have. I have too much stuff. I have a house's worth of stuff that I have acquired over the past 10 years and I need to cull my belongings. I have a whole lot of things I'm looking forward to doing after I send this draft:

• Organize my new place
• Replace 2 lights on my car
• Grocery shopping
• Sleeping
• Writing my novel
• Watching some TV
• Working out in the gym
• Cruise this weekend (really excited about this one)
• Brunch with grandma
• Starting to plan for my job/living situation in November
• Trips for this winter and next year
• Planning to get dog (no earlier than November)
• Growing some herbs (specifically, basil)