Awesome Saturday

It’s been an awesome day!  I slept in, and went to Emily’s concert at the mall.  She played for 40 minutes.  What a treat for  me that was!  Emily in Cannonsburg and Sarah in Lexington, both performing today.  It would be my greatest dream to see my daughters perform together one day.  All of them together.  They do sing and play music together in our home at Christmas.  It's great fun.

 
So after Emily’s gig, our family went to dinner.  We rarely do that anymore – this was the first time we’ve sat down together to eat since Christmas.  Then home, and me and the girls drove to the mall.  I was looking for a birthday gift for someone special, and found one.  Sarah recently had her 25^th birthday.  Tomorrow we celebrate.  I have special gifts for her...this one is a surprise!

After shopping, me and Someone went to the driving range and split a party bucket.  I take about 2/5 of the bucket and work on one side of the range.  He takes the rest and goes to the far side.  I don’t like to talk while I hit balls – he does.  He always talks.  Maybe it’s why I like golf and tennis.  They’re social games but not too social.  In tennis, you are on opposite sides of the court – you fairly shout to each other when you have to talk.  In golf – well, we both prefer to walk over taking a cart.  He tends to slice and I tend to draw - we are both right-handed.  Needless to say, we are rarely within ear shot unless we are on the tee or green. 

Anyway, Someone always finishes way before me.  If I don’t take time to focus each shot, I spray the ball.  He practices like he’s playing 36 holes in 30 minutes.  Then later this evening, me and Someone watched Kentucky beat Iowa in the NCAA tournament on our hi-def TV.  Very exciting game, and pretty nice picture too.  Hi-def is good.  I was never good at basketball, but Someone can play well.

So, it’s getting late.  Tomorrow, I’m getting up early to get some stuff together and head off to Sarah’s.  It’s a birthday celebration and a two-hour drive to get there, across some of the most beautiful countryside you'll ever lay eyes on. 

Still no word on the status of my proposal.  Ignorance is bliss for the moment.        

Game Plan

What’s the game plan?  That’s a phrase I use a lot.  It could be that I learned it from my first husband; he was always asking me about the game plan.  Perhaps it’s because I’m usually always working one, and always have been.  It’s a very bad thing not to have a contingency plan.  The worst times for me have been not when I didn’t know what to do, but more that I didn’t know what I wanted to do. 

I submitted my proposal all glitter and shiny new.  Two days later – it was rejected in the forms review.  There were implied date rules not explicated; they said to “attach” when they really meant “append”;  they now want form X in place of form Y.  And... to my own fault, I left a leading zero off a date month.  It’s just as well, I did some repairs to Chapter 3 that would have been caught for sure later on, and I made some improvements to the front matter.

So it’s re-submitted and I’m trying not to think about any of my research until I hear back.  It could be as early as Monday or as late as April.  So what’s my game plan?  I’m going to try to make the most of the time off I have right now!  Tonight, I went to a karate class (I haven’t practiced once since October)!  I cleaned floors.  I’m screwing around on the computer.  Soon as I’m off this thing, I’m playing my guitar.  So there, world.  F all things related to work.  I’m having fun tonight!     

Recovery

I’m going to regret tonight, tomorrow...which it will be in three minutes from now.  ***Celebrating the submission of my proposal properly tonight***   Please excuse sloppy grammar and spurious punctuation – past caring at the moment.  It feels like I’ve come back from a near-death experience.  How would I know what that feels like?  It’s a sudden disorientation.  With one click of the Submit button, instant change happened.

Thank God I took today off work.  I’d have been a zombie-queen.  It was a 5-day weekend with four days being...I can’t even remember.  It’ all a blur now.  I wonder how bad my proposal will be rejected?  My committee lady commented “I’m sure you will get some helpful feedback.”  Yeah – I’m sure too.  I’m expecting the rating that means What is this shit?   I hope it’s not shit.

Gotta tell you what inspired tonight’s celebration.  Someone drove us to Lexington today.  On the way back, I saw two flocks of wild turkeys in fields.  It’s sort of a thrill to see big wild turkeys grazing...or trying to find food...I doubt they are eating grass.  So in honor of the turkeys – Wild Turkey.

So I’m very proud of Erin.  She wrote final action plan and some challenges for her high school future problem solving team yesterday in the State Governor’s Cup competition.  Someone and I went to the awards ceremony today, in Lexington.  Her team took 4^th place and will advance to the international competition in Indianapolis this summer.  Erin hopes the Austrailian and New Zealand boys return this year.

She loves the way they talk.

When she got home, she explained the final action plan her team decided on and explained the theory that supported their solution.  I was in awe and thrilled to see her so enthused.  She was talking and grabbed a sheet of paper, flipped it over (a page of my table of contents), and drew this as she explained it to me.  J    

Expected impact of a free trade agreement among war-torn countries

Milestone!!!

It’s late but too much excitement in my head at the moment – and I’ve just got to finish a ceremonious drink of Wild Turkey before calling it quits.

I submitted my proposal 30 minutes ago.  It’s done!!!  Hallelujah!!!  I was worried the day would never come and honestly, I feel like there’s not the slightest glimmer of hope it’ll be accepted.   Still, it’s done!  It's supposed to take minimum 15 days to hear back about it.

 

Running on fumes now ....I gave “all-nighter”  a new definition this weekend.  Literally!  We switched to Dayight Savings Time Sunday morning.  I’d worked all day Saturday through the night.  I noticed the time on my computer and thought something was screwy.  “It can’t be 7:30 AM!”  I looked out the window and saw dawn.  I looked at my watch and it still said 6:30.  “Oh shit, it’s really late,” I said.   Late?  I was the first one up. 

I’m off work tomorrow (oops...today).  Someone and I are going to Lexington to see Erin “win” the Governor’s Cup State competition.  Even if our school doesn’t win, perhaps the FPS team will place high enough to advance to internationals.  We will go watch the awards ceremony and cheer for our daughter.   The team competed last night and there’s nothing to see when they compete.   The 4-person team goes into a closed room and gets two hours to solve a problem scenario. 

OK, getting tired now so I’ll post this and crash.

Houston - we have a problem.

Last night, a worrisome discovery presented itself to me. This happened on top of a very exciting event – Dr. David Hofmann signed the release giving me permission to use his Safety Citizenship scale and mailed it to me. I have a piece of paper with his actual autograph! I cite like 4 of his studies in my work. Not only that, one of the first things I read when I started down this road was his study with Stetzer (published in 1996) in which they studied miners in Africa. How exotic it must have been to enter an African mine to study their adherence to safety procedures.  Probably, there was nothing exotic about it all, but it must have been quite thrilling. I would have been claustrophobic – I hate caves.  Being underground is not at all appealing. I don’t even like to be in a small room with somebody standing in the doorway.

The worrisome issue is that I read that 86% of my sources must be within the last 5 years. If not, then I must identify the gaps in the literature and explain my sources. Panic. I did some thematic analysis on my sources, all 236 of them. Only 37% are within the last 5 years. Not good. But, the analysis shows that I’ve covered every major topic from the time it became important up through 2010 or more recent, and really are no gaps of more than 2 years. The guidelines also state I must have at least 50 sources. More than 100 of mine are within 5 years old. Another justification is that very little has been published about some of the topics covered in my literature review. In some cases, I included everything I could find in peer reviewed journals over the past 15 years (e.g., near miss reporting, confidentiality in reporting, servant leadership applied to safety management and performance).

I signed the final paperwork to close my grandfather’s estate yesterday. With that, he is finally (really) dead. That was the last thing, the last time I will do something for him. How strange that things seemed different after I signed.  Finality.  It was only a short while ago (though really it was July, 2010) that I sat with him as he drew his last breath on this earth. It was a relief to see him go – not because I wanted him dead, but because I wanted his suffering to stop. If he had been an animal, we would have never let him linger as he did. Someone disagrees with me about the benefits of a national Death with Dignity law. I’m all for it, and I hope one is available to me if I need or want it.

Anyway, that’s depressing stuff and enough of that.  My “involved” committee person reviewed Chapter 3 and commented that it was excellent.  She had no corrections or other remarks and told me she felt certain the review board would be happy with it.  I HOPE so, but for now, I'm basking in glory (well, kind of...but not really).

 

life happens

Social networking got a bit too social tonight.  I keep chat offline because I prefer to lurk in stealth mode.  But on FaceBook, the status bars get too distracting after more than a few minutes.  No worries like that on the blog though.  Writing my blog is like preaching solo in a sound proof room.  Do I preach?   I hope not.

Today was a good day.  Someone worked an early morning pancake breakfast with his father, so I ran kids today.  Tennis, then pre-calculus tutoring, then to the store for “dire necessities” which turned out to be scrunch spray, a hairbrush, and popcorn.  Then I drove them to a party this evening, came home, and cleaned the kitchen.  Call me Cinderella. 

All the while I was running kids, next week was running through my mind.  I need an attack plan to reconnect with my stakeholders and make them execute.  Maybe it’s time to hit the road.  It’s getting exciting now.  I put the chapters together and merged the reference pages.  I’m rechecking references (it’s good to do that).

Not only work, I found myself thinking about what it might be like to have free time again.  It’s been so long!  Golf.  Tennis.  Play my guitar.  Read books on my shelf.  Play piano.  Learn to play cello?  Landscape our yard.  VISIT SARAH.  Start running again.  Hike.  Sculpt.  Sew.  Learn to knit.  Endless possibilities!

part dog, part kangaroo

I’m officially off work tonight.  And off this computer (just as soon as I read Post Secrets). 

Patience is not my virtue

This day has not at all turned out the way I wanted it to.  I’m terribly impatient.  I didn’t use to be this way, but it seems my life is nothing but clocks and calendars anymore.  Obviously my chairman is in no hurry.  He promised to have comments on Chapter 3 for me yesterday.  Still nothing.  I will text him tomorrow…make him sorry he ever agreed to chair my dissertation.  I’m running out of time to get this thing submitted before March.  He has to OK it before I can send it to the committee, and one committee guy has not seen any of it yet (that was his choice).  It does no good to fret over it…but I do….all the time.  I wanted to send it to an editor too….more time needed.  And I’m still waiting for EVERYONE to sign permission forms and send them back.  Is it possible that 7 different people just told me what I wanted to hear and now will watch it all go down the drain?  No – they won’t watch.  I will.  They won’t give a shit.

Why am I in this situation again?  Obviously I’m a terrible judge of people, or I’m just extremely gullible.  If somebody tells me something, I assume they aren’t lying.  Maybe that’s the wrong assumption.  I’ll be first to admit I’m not a people person.  In my fantasy life, I live in the back of a hollow far away from civilization.  No noise from cars or sirens, no neighbors, just wildlife.  I look at property online sometimes…and dream.

Someone would never go for that lifestyle.  He’s got to have city conveniences and hi-def cable TV.  So, I’ve been married to Someone for about 18 years or so.  We had common interests when I had a life, but we are nothing alike. 

Do opposites attract?

I guess that’s OK as long as he has hi-def cable TV and I have a place to escape to (someday, I will…if I live that long).