A run-down of the week:

It helped to read
"How To
Grade A Dissertation" as I launched into chapter one.

Writing this week was B or B-. The ongoing decisions are piled thick; one of
the more challenging layers of decisions for me is just how polished to make the
first draft. How will revisions go? I have to draft more before this can
be settled.

Wednesday I attended a colloquium on my program’s qualifying exam process.
I was invited to share a select few insights into the process. When it was my
turn to talk, it seemed like others had covered everything already. I
talked anyway. More than anything else, I was in it for the face time. I
have so few occasions to interact with those who are in coursework. Plus,
with the diss, I appreciate excuses to get out of the house.

A meeting with my chair turned up some
promising ideas for the first chapter. I was having a hard time
differentiating the first chapter as an introduction from the first chapter as a
part of the diss where I set up why this? why now? I’m fairly sure that
I’m still overshooting in my sense of what chapter one can accomplish, but I
have a better plan as of Wednesday than I had on Monday or Tuesday. The
writing I did on those days will wind up in the actual introduction–a short
introduction that will be a mini-chapter unto itself. More of a teaser and
an abbreviated overview of what follows. So the few pages from early in
the week will be appropriate for the intro, but I don’t need to mess with that
section any more until I’ve finished drafting and major revisions (June or
July?).

Other than the diss? Shoot, let’s see. I missed another of Ph.’s
soccer matches on Thursday evening because I was teaching. His team won,
3-0. The class I’m teaching this fall is the best teaching I’ve done since
I arrived in Syracuse in ’04. Every session has lift to it for some reason or
another. Spatial analysis projects (a defensible fit with the shared syllabus).
Recently we read a chapter ("Thrashing Downtown") from Steven Flusty’s The
Spaces of Postmodernity. Thinking…thinking. I bought Y. a new
bag of dog food this week. And a new ball. We play fetch in the back
yard just about every day. But he won’t fetch the new ball. He runs
it down and then returns without it. What the heck, Yoki? I’m trying to
cuss less. Is. is acquiring the language at a supersonic pace. And
you never know who is reading the blog. What else? I swept under the
couches today. Quite a few Cheerios under there, and also several of Is.’s
small toys piling up out of sight. What else? At the water/sand
table in the back yard this afternoon, Is. shoveled a heaping helping of sand
into her mouth. Nothing can be done about this. I’m forgetting some
stuff. I didn’t run as far as usual this week. I’ve been covering
2.7 miles up to five days per week. But I ran it just three times this
week. I don’t know whether it’s seasonal allergies, a head cold, or some
other phlegmatic whatnot. Been getting roughed up in Facebook Scrabble.
I’ll keep playing the tiles I’ve got and then give it up for good.