Well, for those (few) of you who have wondered, no, I do not have my degree yet. My defense was last thursday; at that time I received comments and correction requests by the committed. I went ahead and put all that into my dissertation, especially those comments from my advisor. I submitted this on Tuesday; my advisor still said it was inadquate (over the phone, for about 15'). It was apparently she read the table of contents and the first page of the introduction. So I had to change the whole thing. My advisor was then hurt in an auto accident on wed. On thursday I went to her house and sat down with her and finally was able to figure out what she had in mind (a week after the defense). So I stayed up all night and redid the thesis. On Friday she was in no shape to do anything, so I called a member of the committee who said he would take over the job of the corrections. So I submitted the dissertation to him and another member. I will hear back from them on monday; hopefully they will say nothing else is required and i can still graduate this semester. If not, i'll have to reenroll and get signatures all over again, and continue to kiss ass and get approvals. All this while the postdoc is held up, since I haven't offically graduated. All this without pay or benefits (ie health insurance). All this without being able to go talk to the grad school for advice, since I tried that previous and the committee found out and got pissed off (royally pissed off - I should have talked to them, my advisors friends, who are of course unbiased and have my best interests in mind). So...we'll see how it goes. If it doesn't happen, and I go through a few more weeks of this, then maybe I can go to the graduate school and ask for help. Anyway, i'll be glad to escape my advisor, although I won't truely escape until my paper is published. Until then, it's more kissing ass.