fabulous

I recently took a fabulous graduation trip to NYC with my fabulous sister. Here are some of the fabulous pictures I took with my fabulous new digital camera.

Here are some random scenic shots in Central Park.

Here is our new best friend from the Central Park Zoo.

This is the Strawberry Fields memorial, also in Central Park.

I took these on a boat tour of the harbor:

On the left, the Staten Island Ferry, on the right, La Estatua de Libertad.

More of the Statue:

Ellis Island:

The Brooklyn Bridge:

After the trip we took the train home. On the way we saw a lovely rainbow.

yes

Yes, I had my defense today.

Yes, I passed.

It was not as bad as I had expected. They only made me wait in the hall for a few minutes before they came out and shook my hand. Then there were cookies and brownies and fruit platters, and people started calling me "Master Sarah," which just sounds wrong in so many ways, or "Sarah _M.S." which sounds slightly better, but still odd.

And yes, I am now totally exhausted, and slightly in shock, and totally unable to believe that I don't have to go back to school tomorrow.

Yes.

mmmm, chocolate

The good news: they just opened a Coldstone Creamery a few blocks from my apartment.

The bad news: they just opened a Coldstone Creamery a few blocks from my apartment.

It may be tricky to not spend all my summer earnings on chocolate devotions. :)

background music

Well, earlier this week I shipped off the final draft of my thesis for approval by my thesis committee. Meep!!! In final form, all double-spaced and full of graphs and appendices, it hit a shocking total of 81 pages. I was blown away by this. I was expecting 50, maybe 60 at the most. All my drafts were 1.5-spaced (instead of double), and the appendices and figures added a good 15 pages to the count. When I pasted it all together my jaw just dropped: 81, sweet mercy!

My music-listening habits have always been a little strange, but have reached new levels of weirdness in the last few weeks as I have found it impossible to work on my thesis unless listening to just the right music. During the entire revision process and the writing of the last little bits, I only listened to the Red Hot Chili Peppers album "Stadium Arcadium." Non stop. Ad nauseum. (And I'm still not tired of it.) Whenever I tried to put something else on, it just didn't work. I couldn't write without it.

Throughout all the editing, formatting, assembling of figures, and preparation of powerpoint slides (for my defense), I have listened to all my movie soundtracks on shuffle-repeat. It's remarkable how smoothly they flow into each other, Star Wars and LOTR, Jurassic Park and Spiderman, Back to the Future, and even The Italian Job. Just a smooth blur in the background, and amazingly effective at focusing my attention on the finer points of grammar and graphing.

I wonder if, when I hear this music years from now, it will still remind me of this crazy, crazy time, the intensity of this whole writing process, and the sheer insanity of those 81 terrible, horrible, wonderful pages?

Entry 32: In Which We Cease To Vacuum

Just a note to say I am unlikely to be posting much, if at all, over the next few weeks. I'm feverishly wrapping up the final revisions on my thesis (now weighing in at 45 pages and still growing), developing my presentation for my thesis defense (taking place on May 23), and grading the end-of semester onslaught of lab reports, short assignments, and exams. After that there are vacations, celebrations, and hopefully large quantities of sleep.

In early July I will be settling into my new routine for the summer, and at that point I will either start blogging more regularly or decide it's all silly and give up on the whole idea. Feel free to leave comments if you think I should go one way or the other.

This is not to say that I will definitely not post at all between now and July. I might. I might not. It's like a mystery. Ooooh.