What's another year?

So, it has come to this. I talked to Gary yesterday about the job market and my future, and...I'm just not ready yet. I SO wanted to be done by next summer. It pains me to add an additional year to this whole grad school process, but I just don't know how in the heck I would finish by next summer. And I would not be looking too great on the job market this fall either. So, I'm aiming to finish after NINE years. Ugh. I am not sure how that's going to go. I hope it makes me feel less stressed (I certainly do feel some relief), but I also know that it means that the ick of not feeling like a productive member of society will continue for an additional year. Maybe I will find some way to deal with that in DC. My mom suggested I be a Walmart greeter. She really meant that maybe I should try to do a few hours of week of something non-thought-provoking/stress-inducing. Probably not gonna happen. The Walmart part, that is. Now if the Container Store (so excited there's one of those in DC!)/Target/Claire's/The Icing needed a greeter...Hmmmm...

P.S. Why does SSCC hate me? I have a buttload of crap to do this morning and I can't connect and their website isn't working either. Argh!

Official conversion date

Yesterday I met with the rabbi. Yes, he forgot about my assignment. No, I didn't remind him. I did complete it, but it was crappy and I was too embarrassed to share it. So I'm glad he forgot. Anyway, it's supposed to be my last meeting with him b/c...we actually set a date for my conversion! July 12th. Just 2 weeks away. Whoa! Sadly, Josh will not be able to come with me. It's up in Bucks County (a ways from Philly) and he's in trial and can't get off work during trial. I think I'm going to ask his mom if she'll come with me (she works at a school so has off in the summer). It would be weird to do it all alone.

Now I need to tell my parents. Again. I mean, I told them, but they don't know when it's happening. And now my dad is in Nebraska visiting family for the next 3 weeks, and my mom is at home so it requires 2 unpleasant phone calls instead of just one big one. Oh well, I can deal. I guess I could ask my mom if she wants to come along, but I don't imagine she'll be really keen on that idea.

So do you want to know my Hebrew name? It's not Esther! It's Eliana. It's not biblical, it's just a name that I think sounds nice and like the meaning of. It means "God has answered me." I tried to find a picture of it in Hebrew (it is very pretty and will look FABU on the necklace that I am sure Josh is ordering for me at this exact moment...or not), but the one website that has it won't let me save the image. Whatevs. Believe me, it's pretty.

So just a beit din (think Jewish master's defense with a committee of 3 rabbis) and dunk in the mikveh and I'm official!

Super stressing

I feel like I went from being Ms. Laid-back-pants to Stressie McGee in the course of a week. Since my return from Madison, I have been overwhelmed with job market issues, diss issues (it took me hours and hours just to make the space to be able to save my data set somewhere), paper issues (JJ and I are presenting in less than a month and nothing exists), and housingmoving issues. Joshie and I are supposed to go to DC on Monday to look for a place. We went in early June or late May or something (I can't remember ANYTHING lately). Anyway, last time we were there, we were apparently ridiculously early for the apt market. Nothing was available in August. It was all June and July stuff. Fine, so we've been biding our time and now it's upon us: an actual day that Josh can go down to DC with me for a housing search. So we've been looking on craig's list and sending emails, and it is crazy-town down there. Some guy with a pretty nice place at a reasonable price (for DC) has actually had people offering to pay his last month's rent AND moving expenses just so they can get his place. What? Is that normal? It didn't seem like that was the case a month ago. I really want to puke about all of this. And then, just to make things more complicated, we have a very narrow window in which we can move. We're in Montreal for ASA until the 15th and then leave for Europe the 21st. What were we thinking? Do I even have a brain? Does it just turn off for hunks of time? So, excuse me, but I may just huddle in the corner and rock for a while. Or have a drink.

And I haven't done my homework yet for the rabbi this week (the only week I've actually had homework) and I meet with him tomorrow. Of course, he's been rather fly-headed about my conversion (didn't tell me it's not happening tomorrow until yesterday, etc.), so maybe he forgot about that too...

And, of course, you're all stress-pantses too, I know. Like Ang knows we're all tired. (She's right.) But there's nothing like a good rant.

And one is supposed to publish how many pieces a year before perishing in academia?

Blech. Argh. Whatever.

Ok, you know how my paper got rejected? Right. And maybe you recall that I sent it out to another journal. I put it in the mail (b/c that's how they wanted it) back in late March. A couple of weeks later, they acknowledged receipt of the paper and wrote, in their email, that I should contact them if I hadn't heard anything in over 2.5 months. 2.5 months came and went, so I emailed them. Apparently, only one reviewer has gotten back to them (no idea what said reviewer had to say about it...puke!). They promised to nudge the others to get a response. Another week has passed and now I get an email asking for an electronic copy. I sent it immediately. G says to contact them in ANOTHER month if I still haven't heard anything. Ok. And so, if I'm lucky, I'll get an R and R. (In that case, maybe I'll have a clue if I might possibly get something published by 2007. Note: there is a big blank hole under "PUBLICATIONS" on my CV.) Or, more likely, I will send it off to another journal after another rejection that took 5 months to find out about. Was the faster rejection better? Probably. I mean, I know the whole journal publication stuff is supposed to take forever. But this experience just leads me to ask if it is even worth trying for an academic position when I am SO SLOW to produce (and feel ill about/am deathly afraid of it all)?

Philly phun

Musical and other kinds of smartie pants-es,

Joshie and I are having a little party on Friday night. It's Philly themed. I am trying to come up with a coolio playlist, but I'm looking for suggestions. I mean, I know there's The Roots, Will Smith and/or Jazzy Jeff, Jill Scott, Musiq, Patti Labelle, Teddy Pendergrass (though for the life of me I can't think of a song by him). Any other ideas?

Also, if you were going to go to a party as a hipster, what would you wear?

Much obliged!

BTW, I am SO EXCITED to be seeing you next week in Madison!!

Mistakes are made

First, I think I've been using the wrong NELS data for the past however many months. More than I care to think about. I just ordered the correct data. Maybe it doesn't matter. I just ordered a later version than I should have. I imagine the var names are the same. And in the end, I am always using the wrong data until I am in Madison where I can use the restricted data. I was just spazzing out over missings, etc., and I might not have to do that so much with the almost right data. Whatever. I am putting that on hold for now. So I decided to work on my other data set...

Um, why is it that when I compare a distribution of information printed in a book, it is not the same as the information I get from the data myself (that the authors in fact collected and used themselves)? Did that make sense? What I mean is this:

Their distribution:
Category 1: 2507 cases
Category 2: 1426
Category 3: 1329
missings: 0

My distribution using their data:
Category 1: 2420 cases
Category 2: 1387
Category 3: 1453
missings: 2

What? That seems like kind of a whoop to me. I am trying to sleuth it out of the rest of their book (and everyone else's work using this data). Weird! I feel like I have just detected some big scam, but maybe I am overly dramatic. Maybe. Though now I should watch my back just in case I'm getting too close to the truth...

Moving sucks

Did you know that? I wasn't sure.

So Joshie and I moved up the street on Monday. It was up there as one of my most painful moves ever. It was actually emotional pain rather than physical pain though as we hired movers. Or should I say "movers." No, they were movers, but you'd hardly think it to look at them. There's this company in Philly, Mambo Movers, and basically they are a bunch of artists, musicians, local hipsters (ok, they're all hipsters) who move people's stuff as a way to make $ while still doing what they want (art, music, hipster-ness). And, they are pretty cheap. So we hire them. They're supposed to show up at 9am. We are nervous b/c we reserved the elevator in our new place until 11am. Not a smart decision. Anyway, of course, they are late. I was waiting outside for them and there was actually another Mambo truck sitting in front of our building. Apparently, I learned all the Mambo guys (b/c I think it's all guys) stop by Whole Foods, pre-moving. So off that crew of 3 hipsters goes. Then I see more actually moving people...by this time it's 9:30am. So I ask them about our crew. Maybe that's their truck (a Ryder truck) outside of WF. I go in WF to harrass them and spot 3 hipsters outside of WF just eating their bananas, talking. So I ask them if they're Mambo guys. Of course they are. They hate me for interrupting their breakfast, but we only have the elevator until 11!

So they start moving our stuff. It takes until maybe 10:50am just to get our stuff out of our old place. Maybe 10:55am. Crap! Josh is waiting by the elevator at the new place. They get there and immediately get in a fight with the 11am elevator guy. Not a physical fight, though Josh thought that might happen. Anyway, this guy is crazy. He seems to agree to sharing the elevator for a while(he's moving out of the same floor we're moving in to, so it's actually kind of handy), but then he changes his mind and complains to the front desk and then he yells about people and then he threatens to call the cops on our movers and he just acts generally insane. So we have a few things in our new place but no where near all of our stuff. And I hide in our new apt. And I sit and rock back and forth imagining our movers just dumping all of our crap on the loading dock and having to move it in one box at a time (b/c of rules about using the regular people elevators, etc.) or maybe getting access to the freight elevator at midnight and then moving everything in. Or Josh getting punched in the face by the crazy guy or worse. Anyway, our movers kindly decide to go off the clock and take their lunch hour and hope that the guy calms down. I sit and rock for another hour. The guy did calm down, we did get all of our stuff in our place. I think the guy probably cost us an extra hour's worth of movers. Whatevs. We are all alive/not in jail/not physically assaulted/not kicked out of our new building. That's good. All in all, I was very proud of how Joshie handled the whole thing. I couldn't have imagined anyone dealing with it better than him. So calm, so reasonable.

Anyway, there's more annoying crap about our old management company going into our apt and starting to paint before we finished cleaning our apt/vacated it completely (and there being pee on the toilet seat I had just cleaned), but I won't get into it. Suffice it to say: moving sucks. And we have to do it all over again in August. Maybe I will have recovered by then. Or at least found all of my clothes. (I know that more shirts exist somewhere than are currently in my drawers.)

And now...the diss. Ewww. Puke.