b00gnish

This will unfortunately very likely have to wait a while. I’m guessing I’m going to have to wait the better part of a decade before I get to leave the Continental US’s. No worries though. There are many other goals to put into the immediate column. But the reason, as I’m proud to say, is that I’ve met the girl of my dreams and married her. That wasn’t on the list… But I think maybe it would be worth putting on there just to mark as done and extremely worth doing. First I’m going to get my wife and her family their citizenship. By then maybe I’ll have learned enough Chinese to go back to her country for a while. Still this one’s cooking on the back burner. I’m going to come back to this goal later on :)

it didn’t get accepted.

This is now an impossibility. Oh well.

I wrote the script, and with the help of the video department at work, produced the movie within a week. I’m exhausted. It was just a little fifteen minute instructional video, but that’s a start right? I think I had bigger and better intentions for this goal though… I might do this again.

I just got a job out here in L.A. Only problem is I’d need some time off from work. That’ll happen soon enough. Then I’ll need a big white Cadillac. Haven’t figured out how I’m going to solve that one. I might substitute my little red Toyota.

ouch.

the bats!

How satisfying!

They all signed the thesis. The rest is academic, pardon the pun. A few work obligations here at the university to finish… Then that’s it. I’m no longer entirely dedicated to the noble pursuit of education. Instead I’m a bumb with no job and very little savings. Loving it :) I’m excited about my inevitable and ignoble pursuit of wealth.

Decided not to celebrate. Instead I took a nap. I have to work tomorrow morning. Bummer. But a celebration is coming.

soon :)

11:30am rain or shine

I’m taking care of some last minute details right now. For example, I’m deciding which pub will recieve my patronage post-defense. That’s an important decision.

I’m trying hard not to micromanage this though. So I’m going to wait until tomorrow night to decide what I’ll be drinking.

As for the defense, well, that’ll take care of itself one way or the other. I figure, either way, I’ll be drinking. So that’s the most important thing to worry about at the moment…

I’ve got a few T’s to dot and I’s to cross, but I feel like this thing is already over. I’m not nervous. Funny, I thought I’d be feeling the weight of impending doom by now. I have only one committee member who I feel questionable about and my mission tomorrow is to track him down, see what he thinks about the most recent version of the document. I think he hasn’t read it. I’m considering making him a book on tape so he can listen to it in his car.

Now we’ll see if they like it. If they do, then I need to scrounge some serious money for a plane ticket. I’ll wear a wrinkle-free suit and pack my luggage full of canned food. I’ll get a can opener when I get there. I think that might be on the list of things you can’t pack anymore. But all this planning is premature. There will be no summer trip to Belgium unless it gets accepted. It’s a longshot, and I’m trying not to get my hopes too high. But after all that work, daydreaming about my first trip to Europe is the only payoff for now I guess. It’s going to be a few weeks at least before I know anything.

I just finished a cover letter for a job application in the Netherlands. Evidently, my area of expertise is somehow in demand there (from what I’ve recently read). Would have been the last place I thought I’d work… It’d still be a cool jumping off point for vacations. There are several places I’d like to go in Europe and northern Africa.

I’m revising it now, as I suspected I would. The whole thing needs rewritten. I think, in two days, there will be nothing left in the way of me finishing my master’s degree but a single document, an oral examination, and perhaps a ball peen hammer.

I’ve quit before. It lasted two years. Then I started again after a night of drunken revelry. How can it be that I quit when I’m still smoking? I might need to change my goal to “take a break from smoking”. Perhaps I’ll “give my lung a rest”. It’s hard for me to take this idea seriously anymore. I’ve failed at quitting far too many times.

They’ve all got my document. Now the question: Do they have enough hoops for me to jump through that they can delay me beyond Maymester?

So that means I go through five more days of torture before I can rest and only work on my thesis…

I got in touch with an old friend recently who’s also a die hard boxing fan. He’s seen a lot of live matches. He says he’ll keep me informed of anything going on over the summer before I ship out of this place, off to wherever’s next.

...It gets submitted tomorrow. I have until tomorrow morning to make that paper shine, and then we roll the dice. I wonder what Hasselt, Belgium is like in mid June?

My chair said he liked the draft. (I revised heavily since I first wrote it.) He said he wanted to recommend me for the PhD program. Think I’ll pass on that one. I just want to get on with my life at this point. But hey, it looks like I’m going to get this done this semester after all! Just have to keep working.