I had bought one of those boxed dinners (Homestyle bakes? something like that), it was chicken and dumplings.

Well, the dumpling bag was cut before I opened the box. I don’t trust them that much that I’d mix up some dumplings from something that had been sitting in my cupboard for a couple months.

So, I whipped up some dumpling batter of my own and used that.

I trace my mad cooking skillz back to the fact that both mom and dad cooked when we were kids…this has direct relation to the fact that I’m not really afraid of any recipe and am not bound by any notions of “cooking is for women” or any sexist garbage like that. I’m pretty pleased with how the dumplings turned out too. Mmmm.

Still though, I gots to marry me someone who can cook. Or who is rich. If I’m lucky? I’ll get one who can cook and who is rich!

The investigator said “”I don’t know why nobody survived,” he said. “I don’t know the intensity of the impact. Perhaps we will find out from the autopsies. Perhaps we will never know.”"

Maybe because the plane CRASHED into the OCEAN straight down VERY VERY FAST!?

Statistically speaking, the amount of people who don’t survive such a crash are at about 100%.

That time when I have completed a major event in my life…time for travel.

After I decided to leave behind computer science as a major and closed up all things to do with the video game shop, I traveled over to Europe.

After I finished up my undergrad schoolin’, I greyhounded about the US visiting friends and relatives (read the beginning here).

When I finished up my MA at BSU, I roadtripped out to pacifica and back, visiting relatives and peeps (chronicled here),

And now that I’m pretty much done with the dissertation (or will be as of July 21 or 22), I’ve decided it’s roadtrip time again: me, my car, and a wide open highway.

I want to meander on over to FL to see my nephew, move it on up to MN to help my grandmother put up wood for the winter, and then mosey on over back to California, all relaxed and such and ready for school with a clean slate.

I’m thinking about three weeks is what this will take. Good times.

playing video games.

it was a pretty good flick for $3. Not doing much with myself lately, just laying low playing vidja games.

Taking care of diss/job apps/occasional web work as it arises.

So there MAY be an issue with the scheduling of the dissertation defense. namely, in order to schedule it, the final approval forms must be in and a minimum of three weeks is necessary to schedule the defense.

The problem is that once the forms are put in, you are technically out of school.

The financial aid requires, to receive the full enchilada of the last quarter, that the forms don’t get in until August 1st.

That SCREWS ME OVER for defending the first or second week of august.

There are no exceptions to the three week rule per the dissertation administration. But the scheduling is all taken care of by my chair so I’ve let him know what I’ve chatted about with the financial aid folks and the diss admin folks, and it’s out of my hands now.

The financial aid folks seem willing to work with the issue, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed there. Still though, without that last payment (which I need to pay bills in August and to pay the last part that I owe pacifica), I’m relying on credit cards to pay the bill. This pleases me not at all. It’s doable, it’s just very distasteful.

The other option is to put it off until my chair is out this way again, which is October. That puts my schedule back TWO MONTHS. That’s pretty inexcusable.

and distasteful is far preferable to inexcusable.

Second draft of the dissertation is done, and being sent off to my two readers tomorrow morning, bright and early. Kinko’s closes at 8pm on sundays, but opens at 6. I am going to run over there and send it off.

Then I’m going to settle in for a very long day of guilt-free diablo 2 playing.

editing the damned thing now. I’ll be done with all of those this afternoon, will go print it out tomorrow and send it out, and get on to the next step. It’s seriously cutting into my vidjagaming time.

to report recently, I do have an announcement, but that’ll have to wait. I don’t feel like blogging about it yet. It’s not big.

Just doing some spring cleaning on the computers in my household. I took apart the desktop yesterday to airblast it out, and reinstalled an ancient cd-rw drive in it (something like 8×8x4)…my external one that I had had for 6 or 7 years finally bit the dust. Sure this one is slow, but it reads discs a lot better than the dvd drive…or at least, discs that have a few odd scratches on them so no complaints.

I cleaned some files on my win98 laptop as well yesterday, and today I”ve got my winxp laptop hooked up to the external monitor and am cleaning a bunch of programs off of it that I don’t use any longer and which are just taking up space. Since it is relegated to backup, a lot of them have to do with the web design that I no longer do so that stuff is getting deleted.

Other than that, a nice easy week in the vida del froydo…just taking care of stuff that I haven’t gotten around to in a while.

Apparently the authorities have found him now.

how do you MISPLACE someone like that? I mean, just look at uhaul rentals in the last couple days in the city, I suppose…you could track them down.

My favorite part of this entire story is when they quoted the arrest warrant as saying “The defendant has avoided the custody proceeding and has concealed the child”…
“Ma’am, what’s the gigantic 555lb hump behind the couch?”
“umm…old national geographics…”
“Very well…when we find him, you’re in trouble.”

tonight I’ll scan through it, and tomorrow…EDIT!

is officially done, and grades have been entered…heeeelllloooooo job search!

so far, I have talked to 3 different techs, one more, MAYBE THEN I’ll have an account number and the amount that we owe for the bill.

There had better not be a late charge.

Make that 5.

Nope 6 people.

Make that 8 now.

Finally got someone who knew what was going on, successfully paid the bill.

has given me nothin’ but troubles. The monitor has officially hit the crapper. Doesn’t turn on, no glow, no nothing.

I’ve ordered a cap kit for about $5 and with about 3 hours of soldering, hope to have the board in tip top shape.

If it doesn’t work, then the next step is a new monitor for the price of about $300 with shipping.

I’m hoping that it doesn’t come to that, but we’ll see. If it does, then it’s pretty useless until I gets me a job. (*hint hint* if anyone needs a mythology teacher/professor/researcher/tutor who can also teach composition, just let me know)

I’m done going over what I could have done differently at the interview. I think I’ve realized exactly why no part timer has been hired the last three years: we’ve become too comfortable here. Instead of having that edge, and talking about the things that we COULD do for the students, for the department, for the college, we only talked about what has been done for those three.

There was no “hey, I’m thinking into the future here…this is what I could do” for each of the questions, rather it was “hey, thanks for asking the question, here’s what I have done”…unfortunately, that lacks the same energy and the same type of answer that the new people are giving. I don’t blame the committee at all for going with someone who offered quite a bit of possibility. Why not hire someone who has that as opposed to someone who has said “I’m already doing that here…”

No brainer, folks. Why hire someone who’s already doing that for the department, as opposed to someone who can bring in new ideas?

I only wish I’d thought of that before the interview, but that’s ok. Now I’m doubly prepared for the next interview, wherever it may be.