Sam's trip to Boise

Sam's trip to Boise has been way too long. First of all, I love him and miss him.

But second, my computer died on Thursday. Time sink eliminated. So I read a thick novel I bought several months ago. 950 pages took me until last night, so I'm glad that my computer was finished today. For almost $750, they replaced the logic board. I was considering simply buying a new computer altogether, for an extra $350, but I'd have to buy a lot of proprietary software that would have been lost in the shuffle from the old computer to the new. And the new ones don't come in black. (That's the definition of superficial, so let's not spend too much time thinking that one over.) I'm not sure how I feel about my decision. But it's done, and my security blanket is up and running again.

Now I have to grade papers and clean up the house.

update on the diss

Here's the deal. I'm writing my chapters out of order, purposely. Chapter 2 needs some revision work, but apparently, as Paul told me on Friday, Chapter 1 just needs a quick spin around the block to get some kinks worked out. Now I'm drafting Chapter 3. Well, not right now. It's due at the end of January, but I'm pretty sure I can bang it out by the end of this month.

He also thinks that this thing could be 150–200 pages (rather than the 250–300 pages he mentioned in the past), and he suggested that I address only works in the silent period. So we're looking at about a total of 6 chapters with an afterword to sum everything up. The goal now is for me to defend (i.e., to answer lots of hard questions during a 2-hour period, which I dread) in July and graduate in August. These are goals I can meet.