Yesterday just got better and better. After I posted my complaints I got a call from my parents who wanted to tell me (hint, hint) about their new-found enthusiasm with the South Beach diet and thought I might be interested. Now, in fairness, my parents are not the type to call and imply that I�m overweight. They are great people who I know have my best interests at heart. There is, after all, a history of diabetes in my family and I know my mom, in particular, worries about it. But still, given the frame of mind I was in yesterday, this wasn�t exactly what I wanted hear.

Shortly after I got off the phone with them, I finally got an e-mail from my advisor sending his condolences for the rejected proposal. However, he STILL didn�t give me any commentary on my dissertation or even mention that he�d received my previous requests for assistance. This would make me extremely paranoid if I didn�t know all of his advisees seem to have dealt with this at one point or another and most eventually manage to graduate. He has, by and large, been absolutely fantastic. He bent over backwards to keep me in the Ph.D. program after I hightailed it out of there for a few years. Most of the other faculty members would have been far less welcoming to the Prodigal Daughter. If it weren�t for my advisor, I�m sure I would not still (or again) be in this line of work. He is just extremely over-committed. He�s the most popular advisor in our department because he really supports his students. When you are meeting with him, you always feel like you are his most important student � a real rarity in academia, where most people seem to be very up front about their other commitments. He also has a real gift for making suggestions for your work in such a way that you always feel like they were your own ideas. He has helped me get speaking engagements, publications, and teaching positions, even when I was just a student in his classes, not an official advisee. And then there are his numerous publications, editorships, and all the other stuff that he needs time for. The fellowship he�s on now is supposed to be giving him a break from the daily grind in order to write. I totally understand if he can�t or doesn�t want to deal with my stuff right now, but he�s the one who asked me to send it to him and who wants me to have a draft of the whole project done by March. If he would just tell me that he�s not going to have time to deal with it until he got back, I�d be totally fine with that. For one thing, it would make it easier to ask someone else to help. But all of this does not help me get my dissertation finished. I guess I just need to suck it up and keep going and wait until I can actually camp out in front of his door to see him in person.

That was more of a rant than I was intending. I�m actually feeling much better about things today. The weather is probably partly responsible to that � sunny and crisp and cold enough to hear the boards pop when you step across the deck. Also AJ woke up in a much better mood today, so I didn�t have to play bad cop all morning. That particular hat is getting very old.

And now back to writing, tea, and listening to the odd mix of Astor Piazolla and the Pixies that is today�s playlist.

0 people said it like they meant it