Mini-Nano Challenge – Day 30

And… my mini-nano SFD is complete. Just wrote THE END.

Mini-Nano Winner!

It really is a SFD. Amongst other things, the pacing is terrible. It was super slow until I realized I only had x days left, then I sped up so I’d get to the end in time. But! The good news is I realized where the end should be fairly early on so I did have a specific place I was aiming for—and I got there. Yay.

Final word count: 7,653 words! That’s an average of 255 words a day.

Going to continue with the 250 words a day goal for October 🙂

Fall 2012 – Week 4

What I did this week:

Fixed up WorldCat lists (here + here), made public, added links to research page.
Scanned 1 chapter (I found another book), printed 6 chapters.
Hole-punched everything printed so far and put in binder.
[redacted]
Tidied up Zotero, sorted research by type, added to Scrivener project.
Researched Scrivener/Zotero integration.
Integrated template into Scrivener file, organized project (so many levels!).
Took out 6 books from library.
Bought supply printer paper + ink.
Am all ready for some power data-gathering!

I think I’ve also successfully reformed my blog-reading habits (it’s been a month). I sorted all my feeds into 3 categories: news & pop culture (skim a couple times a day), books/reading/writing (read once a day) and everything else (aka the fun feeds, which I’ve been saving for the weekend and reading all at once — like reading the Sunday newspaper. love!). So far, so good. Yay for productivity!

I may be slow but at least I make it to the finish line by my own two feet

Clicked on this article this morning…

For true distance runners, to lie about time or distance is to lie to ourselves, to diminish the importance of the many sacrifices we make to reach the starting line. Focus and discipline form the core of a runner’s being; they are what make us put on a reflective vest and run six miles into the sleet at 6 on a dark winter morning.

…which led me to this long and fascinating article. Long read, but whoa:

West Wyoming was Litton’s pièce de résistance, and even his most indignant accusers had to concede their perverse admiration. In this race, the key to winning was ingeniously uncomplicated: Make the whole thing up! For his fabricated marathon, Litton had assembled not only a Web site but also a list of finishers and their times (plus name, age, gender, and home town), and created a phantom race director, who responded to e-mail queries.

Crazypants.

Resilience

In last week’s FUM, I asked the question “What’s your superpower?”

My answer? Resilience.

Yesterday I was in a bookstore and in one of those middle-of-the-store table displays, I saw a stack of these (in retrospect, I should have snapped a photo):

The full title is Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back. Bounce. You know, like Tiggers do?

Weird.

14: The Water’s Lovely

The Water’s Lovely by Ruth Rendell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

View all my reviews

This one’s been lurking on the shelf for a while. Found at the library book sale, April 2010:

The Water’s Lovely was more like her Barbara Vine books than the other ones she’s written as Ruth Rendell. The Rendell books tend to be more police procedural; the Vine books more psychological thriller. This one’s not a thriller, exactly, but it’s more of a psychological mystery than a procedural one.

Previously on The Remainder Table… I wrote about Rendell’s An Unkindness of Ravens and Not in the Flesh and Vine’s Grasshopper. I’ve read some other Vine books, but that was before I started these posts.

Twenty-something Ismay shares a house with her younger sister, mother, and aunt. She and her sister live in the downstairs flat; her mother and aunt upstairs. Her mother, Beatrix, is mentally incapacitated and Beatrix’s sister, Pamela, has essentially given up her life to be her caregiver.

Precipitating Beatrix’s mental decline was the death of her second husband, Guy. Beatrix (prior to losing her mind) and Ismay both think Ismay’s sister, Heather, killed him, though there’s a possibility his death was accidental. But, they’ve never asked her or discussed it and so it’s festered for over a decade. It’s clear Ismay thinks her sister is not all there and has appointed herself Heather’s ‘companion.’

Ismay has a boyfriend, Andrew, who is an asshole. (But she’s in love…) Andrew looks like Guy, who Ismay had a crush on as teenager before he was possibly murdered! Things start to unravel when Heather starts dating Edmund. Ismay frets about whether he should know about The Secret. Andrew goes off the rails when Edmund starts staying overnight because he doesn’t like having to put clothes on before he goes to the bathroom in the night because he’s a psychopath.

There’s a cast of wacky supporting characters who are pretty entertaining. The ending isn’t particularly surprising, but I don’t think it’s meant to be. I think the story is more about what people will do—and what they will willfully choose to ignore—for the people they love, and how these actions can be both selfless (to protect the other person) and selfish (so they won’t lose the person they love / end up alone).

PhD Comics: The Plans

Project 366 – Week 38

260/366
legs are so heavy
each step is like pulling foot
out of a mud bog

261/366
the dissertation
is officially started
let the fun begin

262/366
summer, you fooled me
thought you were drifting away
but you’re hanging on

263/366
“holy shit!” —from a
car’s open window as it
crosses a speed bump

264/366
my new favorite thing:
home fries and fried eggs baked in
a cast-iron pan

265/366
scanning is hella
boring but later will be
appreciated

266/366
first day of autumn
on cue, the sun disappears
a cloud curtain drops

if you have to be sure don’t write

I saw this quoted in an essay I read this weekend and I had to hunt down the poem:

I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can’t

you can’t you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write

W. S. Merwin,
from “Berryman“

Fall 2012 – Week 3

What I did this week:

Dissertation is officially started 12/09/17!
Figured out how to set up template that will work across multiple platforms (within Scrivener + transfer to spreadsheet to make tables later on).
Started creating said template, using first author and book as a prototypes.
Filled in author 1’s info.
Filled in book 1’s quantitative info.
Realized scrap paper will be useful. Math ftw.
Scanned 15/~100 chapters (searchable pdf, esp. for analyzing sample page).
Printed 10/~100 chapters (paper copy to write on for qualitative analysis). Started binder to keep these in. Found set of alphabet tab dividers. /nerd
Downloaded a couple programs to analyze word frequency to try (Reckoning & Text Master). Tested these out.
Printed full list of books (to take with me to the library).