After reading for 3 hours tonight, in preparation for this conference and the fact that someone who could possible just decide to tear me arsehole based on what I have to say will be there, I’m burnt. Of course my mind’s capacity to store an endless amount of pointless crap never ceases to amaze me, and this song has suddenly popped into my head. I felt the need to share it, as I’m sure I’ll be singing it for the next 24 hours. Hey if it has to be stuck in my head, I feel the need to make as many other people as possible sing it as well.

As for my mind’s capacity to hold an endless amount of pointless crap, which two people/characters described this artist as being “So Rad!” This applies to TV, not to the some of you who are old enough to have to possibly used the phrase “so rad” yourselves.

So I head out tomorrow for the conference, presenting Friday at the butt crack of dawn. My bags for the most part are packed, I’ll finish that tomorrow. It’s only one night, so I’m not bringing all that much. I plan to make my exit rather quickly after presenting and get back home. It’s about a 2 1/2 hour trip.

I had written a 16-17 page paper to give, assuming that it would take me a minute to get through each page. Oops! Not even close! So I’ve spent today slashing and trying to get my paper to fit into the 20 minutes I’m allotted. I think I’ve done it, I just would rather not have to cut anything out. I also made a very quick power point presentation, with some nice photos trying to summarize what I had to cut out. If I could I’d just record my paper onto my PC and get up there and pretend I was reading, I so would! I do not like standing up in front of rooms of people and speaking to them at all. It’s more because when I have to read from a printed script, I tend to be nervous and fumble my words. Given the fact it’s so early in the morning too, that won’t help. It might though mean most people won’t be getting up and coming to the session that early. One can only hope.

I had my meeting with my advisor this week to in order to get comments on my dissertation chapters thus far. Much less painful than I expected. Upon getting back from the conference I need to revamp them with his suggestions and send them to the rest of my committee for feedback. The goal is to have the whole dissertation drafted by Mayish, which is going to be a lot of work but doable. It looks like I might make August graduation too. I was expecting being stuck waiting for December/Fall graduation. Woot!

So I had written this big long post ranting about some issues I’ve been dealing with this week. My intent was to post it today, but it’s a fricken book of a post and I wanted to proof it one more time. I never got to it, so I will save it for this week I guess.

Today I spent working on a paper for a conference I have to attend on Friday this week. Fun stuff . . . not! I simply took a paper I presented last year (actually at the end of 2006) and then published in 2007 and have revamped it. I’ve switched the order of things I discussed around, put in some new introductory sentences for those sections, added some outlines for 2 new sections to write and updated the other sections to match my more recent dissertation results. Of course at this point the paper is now 20 pages long and I have 20 minutes to present. I will probably have to cut some stuff out because it will go over my allotted time. I should have it finished tomorrow, leaving Tuesday-Thursday for proofing and edits. I also need to make a power point presentation for pretty pictures to go along with it I guess. Could I share the photos online I would, but I really can’t because of the topic 🙂 For those who don’t know, my dissertation is on the mortuary rituals of the Delaware Indians, so the photos I have (of artifacts only) aren’t for publication or distribution.

I watched the Oscars while I was writing tonight. Aside from “Sweeney Todd,” I have seen none of the films nominated. I really don’t have a desire to see any of them either. It’s hard to get excited over the Oscars when you have no interest in what is nominated really. I’m sure they were all excellent films and all, but for me I want to go to the movies to be entertained and escape, not think or see real world problems. Seems to me a lot of these films fit the later bill.

I’m currently working on a real post, but it’s a doozy as I’ve been in a bad mood for days. For some reason though I’ve had this song, “There’s Something Going On” in my head all day. So now I feel you should too. I even went on iTunes to buy it, shocked to see it’s been remade a few times!

I would say bonus points to anyone who realizes who this is without googling, but her name is in the beginning 🙂 Though even from her name . . . do you realize who it is? It was her one hit big hit as a solo-artist, at least in the States. More bonus points if you recognize the background vocal singer 🙂

OMG! There was a lot of noise coming from the basement, like some cat was doing something it shouldn’t be, knocking stuff over and such. Well I go to look downstairs . . . Percy is looking up at me with a mouse in his mouth! YUCK! I thought at first he found a toy, but it was real! The BF said good for him and was going to let him EAT IT. I said absolutely not, you go down there and get it and throw it outside! Well it turns out, the fricken mouse was alive! Percy dropped it and now it ran off and is hiding in our basement. I’m sorry, the mouse has to go. What mouse would even bother coming into our house when we have 5 cats! Can’t they smell them. I love animals and stuff, but this mouse must get out now. I will not be able to sleep knowing the mouse might climb up the steps and get into our room.

Update: The mouse is dead. I went downstairs to look around, Grim the kitten was fixated on something. It was the dead mouse.

The BF has been busting on me cause the past two days I’ve been, shall we say, slow to get out of my jammies after waking up. Well I’m not going anywhere, I’m sitting in front of my PC typing all day! Yesterday I did put normal clothes on, around 4pm. Today I’m not even bothering. My jamies are more comfy. Like I said, if I knew I was going out, I’d put on clothes. The only time I’m going out is to walk the dogs. I put on a big winter coat and probably look stupid in jammie pants to passers by, but I don’t care.

Tonight is a total lunar eclipse, if you hadn’t heard. It starts at 9pm EST and lasts till about 10pm. Of course currently it’s snowing here. Finally we get some snow, but on the day I’d rather have it clear so I can see the eclipse.

So I need to get back on a regular sleep schedule pronto. I’ve always been a night owl and off and on through grad school I’ve had bouts of insomnia when I’ve been overly stressed. Lately though my sleeping issue hasn’t been that, it’s been “Big Brother After Dark” on Showtime. I’ve been staying up too late to watch those morons and I’ve paid the next day as I don’t want to get up! However I have to nip this in the bud. For one, they are getting boring and not doing anything fun to watch, at least not until very late their time which isn’t on Showtime my time. I mean if they are going to be boring, can’t they be naked? At least I can look at something then and be somewhat entertained.

Anway, I’m in a crunch the next two weeks to processes a lot of my dissertation data and write it up, so I need to force myself to get to bed and get up early. I have a conference at the end of February I have to go to and I agreed to give a paper at it. Why why why! I said I wasn’t going to do this again until I was finished! Grrrrr! Fortunately I don’t have to start from scratch this time, which I think is why I agreed. I’m taking the paper I presented at the last conference, taking some things out, adding new stuff in and solidifying the results a bit more.

So a few months back, actually now that I think about it several months back, I had blogged about a big decision I was facing. I made it, but couldn’t comment on it and didn’t know when I could. Now because an announcement has been made, I can. Well, kind of an announcement has been made, but not everyone may know about it yet.

*Sigh* Here goes . . . .

As you may or may not have heard, I have in fact sold my site SoapOperaFan.com to one of the companies that advertise on my site. The sale was actually made months ago, I had just stayed on to continue running the site for the time being until they took over. It now seems they are finally going to be taking over soon, and even posted on the site’s forum about the site being sold and what not. It’s not on the main site yet, but soon changes will be made there and it will become evident. Probably within a month I’ll no longer be working on the site anymore, or if I am in a very limited capacity while they take over and get the hang of things.

I’ve actually been waiting to be bombarded with emails about this from the forum, but they never came. Most people who post there asked me questions, I answered them. I had also written this standard explanation right after the sale and plan to set it as the “auto-response” for my email when the time comes and I start getting tons of emails about what happened. Here’s what I wrote . . . .

I’ve been doing my various soap pages (Days, Another World, Passions, The O.C.) for almost fourteen years now. What started out as a hobby essentially blossomed into pretty much a full time job over the past several years.

For well over a year I had been receiving offers from parties interested in taking over or purchasing the page. I turned down initial offers, but a year later when more came along, I was at a point in my life where I had some choices to make regarding my future. As many of you may or may not know, I’ve been in graduate school for a long time now, and I’d really like to finish! The soaps were supposed to be a hobby, not my life and career, but that’s what it started to feel like for me. Due to the fact that I am now on a very strict deadline to finish school, I opted to make the difficult choice to give up the page.

Other issues also factored in my choice. As I have said, it was not an easy choice as the page has been so much a part of my life for almost 14 years now that I couldn’t imagine not doing it anymore. That in and of itself was a major issue for me believe it or not. I felt I was putting too much of my time into the page, sacrificing school, personal time, and well a personal life for the page at times. As many who have been with me for a long time know, I would even keep the page up to date while on vacation. Let me tell you, that doesn’t go over well with those you vacation with!

So all these factors contributed in my decisions to give up the page, and I truly hope you can understand. Again this wasn’t an easy choice for me, but essentially for so long I feel I have put the page first and now it was time to put me first.

Well okay that pretty much is the explanation and reasoning why, but to be honest a little was left out of the story 🙂 I had received my first offers 2 summers ago, but it just came out of the blue, I wasn’t prepared at the time to even enter negotiations of that kind without fear of being taken to the bank. I basically said not at the moment for a few reasons, but would be open to talks in a few months. I figured that would give me time to get my stuff together I needed, and it would give me time to decide if this was something I really wanted to do. They didn’t call back though, I guess they lost interest. Then a few months later came the decision at NBC to cancel “Passions” and remarks were made that “Days” future wasn’t so solid either past 2009. Immediately I thought about the opportunity I had to get out while the going was still somewhat good and wondered “WHAT DID I JUST DO!” I was pretty sure at that point nothing like that would come along again. Of course “Passions” was picked up by DirecTV, but “The OC,” another show I covered, got permanently canned around the same time. I honestly didn’t expect to ever get another offer for the site, imagine my surprise when I got two!

So here I was with two more offers to buy the site. I knew at this point I couldn’t just say I need time, I need to think about this some more. I did that before without even hearing any kind of offers and regretted it, I didn’t want that feeling again. I examined my options, the way the shows seemed to be heading, the fact had I gotten out the summer before I probably would have finally finished school already. What should I do? One option of course was to keep the page and either ride the current shows out till the end, and then possibly pick up some new soaps if need be to keep the page going. I always got emails asking me to cover this soap or that soap, so I knew it might work. However it also meant adding more work on, something I didn’t have time for, as well as the fact that I really didn’t feel like “starting over” with soaps I knew nothing about as is. Plus I had around this time started exploring doing more stuff with primetime shows, as that’s where more of my interest was laying (hence The Primetime Dish was born).

So I worked out a deal to sell the site. Of course the ironic part is now that I’ve sold “Days” is the best it’s been in years story-wise. “Passions” however has been canned yet again, and there is still no certainty that “Days” will survive past this year. No looking back though, only forward to whatever the future holds 🙂 I am keeping The Primetime Dish, and once my dissertation is drafted I’ll probably explore expanding it a bit. Oh I have ideas for it, just no time right now. I also actually have a few other site ideas I have been itching to launch when I get the time.

-Dustin

Okay so I still don’t have the recap of the cruise, but I do have my photos online. I actually have my photos online from this years cruise, last years cruise, as well as Orlando/Miami, San Diego, and last years trips to New Orleans and Vegas! You can see all the photos on my Webshots Gallery. All the albums with “NEW” by them are the ones I uploaded tonight. Nothing has descriptions though, so you’ll have to figure it out or write your own 😛

So it is the end of the semester. All of the sudden it comes to my attention, I’ve been registered for 2 classes I have not attended all semester long except for the very firsts classes. Somehow with my very busy schedule, I just forgot I was registered for them and didn’t go to them . . . for the whole semester. This means of course two Fs and automatic expulsion! Nooooo! There are variations of this dream of course, such as I attended half the semesters, but didn’t do half the reading and now have books upon books to read before next week’s final. When I have nightmares lately, these are generally it!

I am supposed to graduate by the end of this semester (May), so says the school 🙂 My time is up, and I either have to give up or apply for yet another extension. This takes me beyond ten years, which could be an issue. When I first started, 10 years was the limit. To get beyond ten years you had to have a really good reason and the school had to approve it after some petitioning. Now though that 10 year figure has gone poof in the guidelines, you simply have to keep applying for and being allowed to have extensions. Why the 10 year figure when away, I’m not sure, I have my theories that it might have something to do with how long it is now taking people to finish undergrad alone.

I am determined to get this dissertation done once and for all by the end of the semester, to end these dreams once and for all, to close this chapter of my life. Plus I’m currently working at getting stress out of my life, the dissertation is a major part! I’m a little over half way to finishing it. Actually probably more, since I already know the majority of the results. They just have to be typed up and proved with statistical graphs I’m currently making (but I know enough to know what the graphs will already say). Come next month I’ll be working on the dissertation full time 7 days a week (hint hint), something I have not been able to do and has dragged my progress down. Therefore I expect to have it done come May. However editing and getting my committees’ approval to defend by then? Well that’s another story at this point! My advisor though has me applying for graduation in May, when the time comes we’ll deal with what needs to be worked out.

Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes! Big ones coming up in my life, soon and fast! I’ll get that post up about that big decision too, but something tells me enough of you have enough info now to figure it out 😉