Well, I haven’t written in the journal for the past five days, but I have been writing. I completed my first complete dissertation draft yesterday. Now, as far as dissertations go, I’ve seen shorter and I’ve seen longer. My draft runs about 170 pages. I’m happy with the work, but I’m especially happy to put down the work. I didn’t work much on the paper Wednesday after dropping off M and the kids off at the airport. As I was leaving the airport the first flakes of a freak snowstorm started falling. I stopped at Trader Joe’s on the way home, picking up tofu and some interesting Indian veggie burgers, then locked myself in the house and watched the storm. I was pretty depressed; the combination of isolation and a complete lack of sunlight left me useless. I managed a walk to the library into a bitter wind to pick up a couple books and started “Children of Men”. I finished the movie Thursday morning before starting on the dissertation. Most of my Thursday and Friday work revolved around revision and modification. I had to fix this, change that, etc. Now, you’d think that would be pretty easy, but I can free flow write much easier than I can revise. Revision, especially the type of revision when you’re modifying tenses and changing the form of numbers to match APA guidelines, is a motherfucker. By Friday night I was pretty angry and frustrated. I knocked off after dinner, had a couple beers, watched “The Curse of the Golden Flower” (Gong Li was fabulous), and fell asleep with a head stuffed with overwork. I woke Saturday morning on a mission. My revisions were more or less complete, so I free-wrote over twenty pages of chapter five at the kitchen table in about seven hours. I’d work a CD worth of time (mostly Tom Waits), get up, walk around, take a shower, whatever, then get back to work. I wanted that bitch finished so I didn’t have to worry about it today. Once I finished the draft I drove to work, printed it out, stuck a copy in my advisor’s mailbox, and just about collapsed. Last night I got drunk (six beers, drunk for me) and watched “For Your Consideration” and “Sin City”. Both were good, although I’m not finished with “Sin City” yet. I hadn’t seen the film in a few years…I had forgotten its strengths. The neighbors called and asked if I wanted to hang out, but I blew them off. I’m not good with people after a couple days of isolation. I almost have to relearn conversation.

Ok, five bullet points:

Shadow and I walked through the woods both today and Friday. The walks were gorgeous…all of Tuesday’s snow has disappeared, the sun has been out, and I feel more alive. Shadow struggles with the longer walks now, I can tell. We can do about ¾ of our old four mile walks without too much damage, though.

Today was the last day of the Bacon show at MAM. I only saw the show once, but I might actually get another chance to check it out in Buffalo in August. Apparently the show will be at the Knox when we’re visiting M’s mom.


I’ve been reading both Murakami’s “The Wind Up Bird Chronicles” and Nietsche’s“Thus Spake Zarathustra”. I had picked up a shitty translation of the latter at the library Saturday, absolutely unreadable, so, as a post-draft reward, I bought the Oxford Classics translation on Saturday. Of course, my brain was too fried to read the book. Last night I read some of the Murakami, though. I almost wished I had saved the book for Italy, though. Murakami provides good plane reading.

Speaking of Italy, I finally turned in all of my passport application materials. Apparently they need ten weeks of processing time. No hurry. I don’t leave until October.

The sun still isn’t down. Tonight almost feels like a summer night. More later.