Two more chapters to go

It’s early Sunday morning and I’m not supposed to work today. But that’s really hard when I didn’t work yesterday. I admit that I had a few hours of potential work time, but I used them to clean the house, organize TM’s toys, and read some of HP Order of the Phoenix again. So now I’m wishing I had written something. Oh well.

The writing was going well until I decided the chapter was simply boring. Then I wanted to include some phenotypic data. But…after much analyses, it appears that the phenotypic data will stand very well on its own. So now it’s back to genotypic data on its own. I think I’ll build it around bottlenecks, admixture, and dispersal patterns. I forget what the last incarnation was, but hopefully I can hit it again hard tomorrow. It gets frustrating when it takes so long to write a paper! I don’t want this one to take so long. I remember one of my MS advisors could write a paper in a weekend. Well, she has a lot more practice than I do, I guess. Still, it’s frustrating. I just want to finish this dumb thing!

TM grabbed the stove burner a couple weeks ago… her thumb was one big blister and she cried for about 8hrs straight, despite the constant ice bath. Now you can’t even tell it was there! Kids sure heal fast.

I’m waiting to hear back from reviewers about my last manuscript. Fingers are crossed. I really don’t want to do major revisions again, but with my luck, that’s what it’ll be. No, no, positive thinking! It’ll be fine! Sometimes I’m a bit of a depressionist.

The last two nights I gave up putting TM to sleep and just went to sleep myself. I don’t know when she finally went to bed…but now she has a cough and is complaining of being sick, which probably means she’s sick. Do I brave the Bangalore traffic today for church? Do I just go for the first hour? What are the chances she’ll throw up in church? I guess I’ll have to wait ‘till she gets up to know. At least she’s still sleeping (6:40am), ‘cause she certainly needs it, especially if she’s sick. Not the best time for me to give up on getting her in bed, but I thought it was better to give up than to let my blood pressure keep rising, which is what happens…Hey, she probably got to sleep at the same time she would’ve if I were fighting with her the whole time, yesno?

We’re having some people over for dinner today. I hope we have enough food for them. And I hope they don’t expect wine or anything, ‘cause that’s probably a let-down for most people when they come here (we don’t ever have any). And the coffee/tea is a problem for most people, too, since we don’t know how to make it, though I keep a stock for my mother-in-law when she comes to visit. Ouch. Well, we’ll figure it out.

The house is a mess, of course, which is what happens after a day of being at home with a 3-yr old. But today’s Sunday and it’s our cleaning lady’s day off, so hopefully Q will step in and help out. If not, hey, I don’t mind having people see the house in its natural state. No major skin off my back. I hope.

I tried running SAS and after about 20 minutes, gave up. I’m used to SPSS, and SAS is rather different. Luckily, my advisor picked up the pieces and ran the analyses for me. Yay! He’s great. It was his fault that now, I’m considering writing 2 pprs instead of 1. But I stink at writing, and it takes me forever, so I’m not really happy about that. Oh well. What can ya do.

Hope everyone has a great day!