Is good news as they say. Well i managed to work on the dissertation some this weekend, i've been getting kinda lazy about it. I think its easy to slip into this denial state brought about by a temporary interuption in work, leading to a cascade of finding other things to do besides working on the wretched dissertation. Anyway, i finished a decent draft (really revision 2 or 3), its 103 pages, so it's long enough for a serious dissertation. I'd like to send it out to committee next week, and this week the goal is to get my boss and a committee member to look at it and make sure it's not terrible. I need to get the committee's signature on a form saying they've read it, two weeks before defense. So i have until approximately thanksgiving to do so, but most people are out that week. So, really I have two weeks left to do so.

Anyway we decided, after much thought, to have a halloween party; its a tradition of mine. It will be next week saturday. Too bad so many of my friends are now gone. There are still enough here, but there is the feeling that this is the last hurrah, a bunch of people are getting ready to graduate. That is the nature of grad school after all, eventually you graduate or quit. That i've stayed this long speaks to fortitude, really.