Today is the end of an era (and a long one)

Well, it's been a little while since I posted here last. This sentence is brought to you by the League of Obvious Statements (motto: "helping dumb people have conversations since 1326"). When I was in Toronto (between the wedding and coming back to Columbia) it became obvious from the questions my parents were asking that they aren't reading this thing. It is therefore something of a relief to look at the comments appearing (sporadically) here to see that at least SOMEONE out there is.

Anyway, things to report: As of TODAY I have handed in the final copy of my thesis with all the changes that were requested of it. This somehow added over 10 pages of length to the bastard... I was about to say "little bastard". Anyway, I ended up having to email it to one of my wonderful nice friends back in Waterloo, who printed it for me, and handed it in to the GSO and the graphics people (who print and bind it - it is important to have this done because people measure your seniority as a professor by the inches of dust accumulated on unopened copies of your thesis (i.e. all of them)). I am also lobbying to have hiring and tenure review committees take into acount the number of layers of parenthesis used in your blog. I think this is important.

I've also realized that having a best friend from high school who is a fully licensed tech geek is coming in handy, because I need a program set up to flashes text at people and responds to their inputs. I get to spend the rest of today working out the exact script for him to program (that and sort out overhanging issues with the ethics committee in Waterloo about this gosh darn experiment ('gosh' was invented for those who refuse to believe in 'darn' (but I used both. Which means that I'm decisive (which apparently qualifies me to be president of a largish country these days)))). (four layers of parentheses! In your face people-who-have-multiple-widely-cited-publications!)

So lets see... where were we. I defended Mr. Thesis, had a nice party to recover afterwards (in which my blood/alcohol was restored to a more humane level), spent a few more mad days meeting people in Waterloo, flew out for the wedding in the beautiful northern tip of Cape Breton Island (in a town called "Dingwall". If you shout that enough times from a street corner, passers by might give you spare change and possibly also business cards for local psychiatrists), I wore a kilt (there are apparently pictures of me being slung around at the dance afterwards, skirt riding almost dangerously high), spent a happy few days in Toronto meeting yet more people and coasting a little bit... and now I'm back 'home', finding out that health insurance in America is insanely complicated. There's a whole language of deductibles and co-pays and areas of coverage, maximum coverages, minimum this that and the others, and statements like "80% for PPO"... And you have to chose between plans that vary along many of these dimensions, obliging you to decipher what all this crap means. It makes me long for Ontario, where you just walk into a clinic, flash your health card and talk to a doctor. [sigh].

Americans apparently believe that their system is "more efficient." Presumably they aren't counting the massive synaptic commitments required to figure out exactly at which point men in suits are liable to surgically extract your vital organs to pay for all this nonsense. I would give you more examples, but my frontal cortex would try to escape down a ventricle, and I don’t think my insurance covers having it sewn back in.

Other exciting features of Columbia for the uninitiated: Homicidal traffic lights. See, back at home traffic lights follow a sequence; green, yellow, red. So if you have, say, a green light and you want to turn left you can park your lovely posterior in the middle of the intersection until there is a suitable hole in the oncoming traffic, or until the light turns yellow - hence stopping the oncoming traffic and letting you turn in relative safety. Here they use a more sophisticated system, known in specialized traffic control circles as "for God's sake don't do the same thing twice". So, if you have a green light and park yourself in the middle of an intersection waiting to turn left, the other cars will be flashed with special "do something random" signals, and you are launched into a game of death-frogger until you can escape. Note to the uninitiated: This game is extra fun when played on a bicycle - it just doesn't have the same visceral thrill when you're wearing half a ton of metal that come with seatbelts and airbags (it can then be considered merely 'hair-raising'). To be honest the actual drivers here are pretty good, and I'm the one who believes that when you're on a bike stop signs and red lights become just extra severe "yield" signs ("like really REALLY yield! I mean it!"). But still, I don't see why that should interfere with my constitutional God given right to whine.

Ok, I'll sign off now, but I promise not to take nearly such a long time with my next posting. It's sort of fun to be back in this writing head-space. Oooh, there's an email arrived. Is it my friend saying that the thesis is in ok?... hm. Sort of. It seems that I have to delete a comma and one word from the title page of my thesis, and scan my signature onto a page that has the characters "ii" added to the bottom and send all that in for Friday, and THEN it will be accepted. [sigh].

BUT, today I DID officially send in the note to withdraw from enrollment as a grad student. It has just been pointed out to me that this means that for the first time in 22ish years (depends where you start the clock), I am no longer officially a student. Wow. Is that ever a head trip.

Well, back at that grind stone then. Hang in there (me, you, everyone).