moving day

Today...well, today in 10 minutes (Wednesday)...is moving day!

We still have access to the apartment until the last day of July, so we'll have internet access there still--it may take a few days to get settled enough to have internet at the house on a daily basis, though. For those of you in town, we are hoping to have an open house, but it may have to wait until early September as far as scheduling goes. For those of you far away, we will post photos!

Wish us luck--may nothing important get broken :-)

YIIIPPPPPPEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

No more prelims!

Allow me to take a moment to express how I feel on this, the day after prelims are over...


Woooohoooooo!


Hooray!



YES!


Yeeeha!

Here's to Jess!!

Let me be the first to publically congratulate my dear wife on the completion of her preliminary exams:

CONGRATULATIONS, Captain Sparkle!!!

If anyone needs to find her in the next couple of days, I'd try looking somewhere over the rainbow...

Prelims: The Scoop

Days until prelims start: 1
Days until prelims end: 2

Well, today is my last day of waiting, fretting, and trying to ignore prelims.

Tomorrow is the day--Day #1. For those of you less familiar with prelims, here's the deal: Prelims last two days (Tuesday & Wednesday). Each day I'll have six hours to answer two questions....for a total of four questions answered (between 20 and 40 pages of writing in a total of 12 hours). When it's all over each day, I'll email my anonymous responses in to a secretary at school, who turns all of the students' answers in to the prelim readers. The readers, three professors, then read through all 10 students' answers, which amounts to a good 200 to 400 pages of reading for a each of them (poor things). They decide together who passes, who fails, and who gets a "conditional pass," meaning you need to rewrite one or two of your answers.

So, in case you're wondering, I won't know right away whether or not I've passed. I don't actually know how long it will be until I find out...I'm guessing about a week (?)...and then longer if I have to do any rewrites. Luckily, we have the excitement of getting our house ready to move into to distract me from wondering when I'll hear back from the readers--we are meeting Thursday with the owner to sign our rental agreement, and then can go in and start cleaning, moving boxes of stuff we don't actually use on a daily basis, etc.

Thanks to everyone for the happy thoughts and well wishes...if you have any extra brain power you could loan me for a couple of days, I'd appreciate it. You know, just telepathically send smart waves my way...

See you on the flip side.

Stress-O-Meter

Here we are less than 6 days from prelims...lets see how I'm doing on the stress-o-meter:

Level 1: You're irritable/grumpy much of the time. (check)
Level 2: You find most everyone else irritable, too. (check)
Level 3: Out of desperation for motivation, you have made a "top ten reasons you have to take prelims" list. (check, thanks to the combined motivational needs of P and I)
Level 4: When it's time to sleep you can't...when its time to be awake, you're sleepy. (check)
Level 5: You've had prelim-specific nightmare(s). (check)
Level 6: You have, at least once, just started crying for no real reason at all. (check)
Level 7: You've actually given up on studying (prematurely) because it seems pointless (not because you feel ready). (half-check)
Level 8: Repeat occurrences of levels 5 and 6.
Level 9: You begin drinking heavily.
Level 10: You give up all together and drop out of graduate school.

So, as you can see, I'm somewhere round-about level 6.5...

...here's to hoping I don't get past level 7.

coming in for the home stretch

Well, we here at Mr & Mrs Gubbinsville are nearing the end of our torturous countdown to prelims. Yesterday was Jess' last group study session. This week was originally intended to be devoted to solo preparation--review, relaxing, organizing, etc. Annoyingly, about five different meetings, all of which should not be skipped for some reason or another, have "sprung up" for next week...so much for a devoted week of study and calming myself down before the big day.

Days until prelims start: 9
Days until prelims end: 10

On a much more pleasant note, the day after prelims we will be meeting about our house, signing the contract and whatnot...and then it's moving time!!! This coming Thursday, just in time to divert my attention from more important and more intimidating studying needs, we are also getting a key to the house, so we can clean it up a bit and get it ready for the arrival of our stuff. Also to distract me the end of this week will be the company of one of our favorite houseguests, who will be in town for a wedding.

So all in all, I have a week full of distractions ahead...we'll see just how prepared for prelims I feel come Saturday (my official "I don't care how ready you are or aren't, stop studying now" date).

And what does Andy's week look like? Well, pretty much like this week...and last week...and the week after next...i.e. working all the time :-(.

a weekend off

We celebrated the fourth of July weekend with a wonderful visit from Katie, Alex, and The Cute One on Monday, and a party on Tuesday, including an amazing view of the fireworks (from a downtown high-rise apartment balcony).

The Cute One, incidentally, has begun crawling since the last time we saw her, in April.

"Do it again, Mommy, do it again!"

"Daddy, I think you have a cavity..." thinks Abbie, already exploring her career options.

There's a reason I decided to start calling her "the cute one" :-)


...and below are two of the better shots I got of the fireworks:

Last but not least--P, avert your eyes...


Prelims start in 13 days, and end in 14 days.

Knitting progress: Proof

Ta-da! It's a sweater:

Knitting progress

I would like to officially alert the media, a.k.a. my blog & those poor souls who read it, that the sweater I started knitting long long ago in a far away land called mid-winter, is DONE! That's right, I have officially knit an entire, adult-sized sweater. I feel I've earned my wings, if there were such a thing in knitting...can you "earn your needles"?

In any case, I now have a warm, woolly sweater to help me survive the sweltering heat of July. Great timing, eh? I do have a couple of photos, but they are currently trapped in the camera...I'll post them whenever I get around to downloading pictures.

And, the countdown:

Days until prelims start: 17...Days until prelims end: 18.