Thesis writing analysis

I decided to analyze my thesis chapters like I did my blog in my last post.

I wrote the Introduction like Edgar Allan Poe.
The Lit Review got David Foster Wallace.
Methodology got H. P. Lovecraft, and I think the title of his Best of is extremely apropos.
The Results also got David Foster Wallace.
The Conclusion also² got David Foster Wallace.

And the preliminary bits?
Abstract: H. P. Lovecraft.
Acknowledgments: Ian Fleming. I'm trying to decide if it's more James Bond-esque, or his Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

I write like...

So there's this website* that purportedly analyzes your writing and tells you who you write like:
http://iwl.me/
So I dropped in various bits of my blog, this entry and that. I tried it over and over and over. So who do I most commonly write like? Stephen King. arg. Who do I most commonly write like #2? Dan Brown. pathetic.

This makes me so sad.
I did get one James Joyce, though. There is hope.


I wonder about my thesis? I'll have to try an excerpt later on.

*Someone posted about this on Facebook, and I can't remember who. But whoever you are, credit where credit is mysteriously due.

Grad School

Grad School is self-inflicted punishment for those of us who can't make it in the real world.





This was my realization a couple of months back.

Excellent adventure

There are times when I'm writing my thesis when I just don't know what to say. I feel like I'm stuck, blathering on about nothing specific. At these moments, I really just wanna write in all caps:
SAN DIMAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES!

This is how I got it done and who sang to me on the way

Over the last three days I've gotten 11 hours of sleep. That explains the 25 or something pages of the thesis. Surprisingly, today at work I did not turn narcoleptic.
Would you believe that part of this lack of sleep is that when I get into the writing, I'm having so much fun that I have a hard time stopping?
I think I'm a mental case.


I've also become a Van Morrison fan. I put his music on every night when I'm working.

What can I do to stay mentally alert now?

I'm finishing up a couple of things right now on the thesis and am posing question to my friends from the blogosphere:
What can I do to keep my mind functioning at optimum levels? Stick seems to think that moldy cheese keeps the mind alert. I'm fine with some good, moldy Roquefort cheese. Yum. But too much of that would make me extremely sick.

What are some good options, my dear bloggy friends?

Everybody wants to rule the world means getting a haircut

There was this two- or three-year period in my life when I was in elementary school where every single time I went to Susan's Hair Design on Spanish Fork's Main Street (which was about 4 times a year) to get either a hair cut or the twice-yearly perm, the song Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears would come on the radio. They listened to KISN 97.1 and that station never failed to play the song when I'd get my hair cut. Every time I'd go I'd think, "Nah, it won't come on this time. It's a fluke." But, nope, it always came on for like three years without fail. I told my mom about it and she thought I was crazy. But I'd report to her that in the 20 or 60 minutes that I was there, the song had come one. I think she thought it was weirder that I'd noticed or that I'd care to keep track.
Why did I write this? Because the song just came up on my iTunes and before I'd realized that it was playing I got this urge to get a hair cut and I smelled this crazy (nonexistent) whiff of hair permanent chemicals.



Oh, and just as an anecdote that possibly only I find funny/interesting: one of the phonetic books for my thesis makes clear that the [t] and [d] sounds in Portuguese are produced at the front teeth. What? Do we have back teeth?

Just put down the thesis, ma'am, and walk slowly away with your hands in the air

So Saturday afternoon I fell asleep while working on my thesis. I woke up and hour or two later and my eyes HURT like nothing else. When I moved them at all it was like I was contorting every eye muscle in ways never before discovered. They killed. Then I looked in the mirror, and what did I see? This. My eyes were so red that the white seems to be the aberration of coloration, not the red. I had totally pulled my eye muscles while working on my thesis:
NERD. I'M A TOTAL UBER NERD.

So did you know that you get a nice warning bar on the top of your Gmail account if you hit 95% of your mail capacity? This is what I found out. My account was stuffed. So I've been slowly working on cleaning it up. I've got it down to 43% full. It's a tedious job, I tell you what.

Later that night we went to a BYU 73rd Ward reunion. Bepa's family had opened up their back yard for one exciting Dessert Night. It was so cool to see everyone again. Some of the people I hadn't seen in, oh, I don't know, 3 years or something. The 73rd Ward has been a good home. You know you're from the 73rd Ward when you fight back tears when seeing a video of an empty P4.

Speaking of empty, Kathy just moved out. She and the family are on their way down to Cedar City as I type. This makes me intensely sad. Kathy's great fun. :`(
Gretchie's moving next week probably. Then I'm gone, and P6 will be no more the P6 that we've known and loved. I admit it. I hate change.

Speaking of, I found an apartment yesterday at Old Mill. The real draw is the fact that it has a lot of storage space. I've got too much stuff and my free storage will be no more in a couple of weeks (my mom's moving to Virginia). Emily (Lewdavis) and I'll be moving into an apartment and we're hoping against hope that no one will move in with us. (Keep your fingers crossed) Well, I guess if the other possible chicks are cool I'll be fine with it.

Thesis, Thesis, Thesis and the poem

My thesis has overrun my life. I didn't even know what day was today, which led me to totally dog my friend. I'm a total jerk. Did everyone else know that it was Friday. Man. I bite.
Speaking of my thesis, what else have I done today? Well, I put the West Wing on near the end of the day to keep me company. Oh, and this. And especially this, too.

Background:
The girl writing the letter is still in high school. She wrote this poem after a dance or something. I'm typing everything up just the way we got it. I'll put in the paragraph attached to the beginning of the poem:
On the back of this paper I am putting the poem that I wrote. It is so true if you think about it! I just couldn't think about anything but him that day so I put feelings onto paper. Then I gave it to him!

The Boy
He walks onto the floor,
Calls his partner down once more.
She clasps his outsretched hand.
She has always been his greatest fan.

He smiles through perfectly straight teeth,
And begins to move his feet.
He dances his graceful dance.
She tries to follow, but is stuck in a trance.

His eyes light up with each new turn
She looks up and her stomach begins to churn
The music slows and time seems to end,
He has become her best friend.

Then she ends it with:
Tell me what you think! Being able to write poems runs in the family, and I think I got a little of that talent.


So, there you go. Wow. We used to do dramatic interpretations at work. The were very moving.
Have a great day!!!

Oh, so many stories to tell

If you haven't taken the poll yet, give it a go. Thanks! :D

My friends, Libby is dead. Yes, my dear Libby has a cracked radiator, needs a new water pump, the clutch is gone and she needs new brake pads. All told, we're looking at at least $1800. Ouch. I paid $2200 for her. I don't know if it's worth the $1800. (insert crying and blubbering) I love Libby, she's been a good car. I don't know what to do...I mean this is the car that Bepa learned to drive stick in--which was quite the spiritual lesson. Maybe I should post what I learned. I'll do that later this week. I'm getting all sentimental and sappy over my car. I heart Libby.

I had loads of fun last Friday night cleaning the bathrooms and kitchen. Really, I probably shouldn't have enjoyed it as much as I did. But I put the Diane Rehm Show podcast on the iPod, and scrubbed away. The stupid thing is Steve grouted our shower without bleaching the walls, so there's mold under the grout that I can't get to. So frustrating. But it looks better.
Saturday morning I went and saw the third installment of Pirates, which was okay. I hate the first movie, liked the second, and liked the third until the laboriously long and tedious ending. Fight, fight, fight, nothing important happening, fight, fight, fight, tie up loose ends, create more loose ends, open door to obvious 4th movie. Meh, whatever.
But then on Saturday night I went to the Mason Jennings concert with MO, Lydia and her mission friend Bri. It was AWESOME. If you don't know Mason Jennings, click on the link. I love his music. You can stream some excerpts of his latest album on his website. The player's at the top. It was an hour and thirty-five minutes of bliss, I tell you what. I also got this snazzy shirt. I love his music because he's a story teller. He takes snippets of life and encapsulates them into his music, portraying the situation for what it is, without anything flowery. He's also great at orchestrating his lyrics; the music's always perfect. Props to Dan for introing me to Mason Jennings last summer on study abroad. I've now got like 174 songs. Ahhh, Mason Jennings, how I love your minstrel musings!
We made bank in honey pot notes on Sunday night. We've been writing many scandalous ones feigning that we're other people, or just faux hitting on guys on the ward with excessively sappy notes. We've gotten some doozies in return. Maybe I'll post a few later on for you to read and enjoy. I wish that I had the ones that we've sent out. They're racy ;)

AND I got to play softball tonight, AND we won so we get to keep playing in tournament. So here we go, game on Thursday. WAHOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Thesis is coming along I guess. But if anyone knows the best way to transcribe a prepalatal affricate to show that there is only minimal fricative representation, I would really appreciate it. I'm having a rough go.


Oh! And Kyla (our neighbor and friend for the last 15 years since she was in high school) just had her 7th kid last week. Her name is Averi, and she's adorable.
And here she is with her sister, Hannah.

Action, moving, doing something and being okay

A couple of days ago FoxyJ wrote an excellent post about the "The Celestial Perpetual Motion Machine." It struck me as very fascinating. She always would say fascinating things as we would gather at the computers in the office. The biggest reason why it hit me was because I'd been thinking about the same things as of late. Honestly, though, I've been thinking about this since October or so of 2000 when I was a greenie in the mission field.
A while back I was talking with a friend of mine about his fear of not moving forward and acting because he was so afraid of making a wrong decision that he was tied down by catatonic, "I-might-make-a-wrong-choice" fear. While none of us want to make wrong decisions, inaction is just as damning. Why? Damnation means a stop in progression. When we're not moving forward, we're at least stopped, even if we're not taking steps backward.
Thinking back to my parents and the way that they raised me has taught me how the Lord helps us. My parents were really good at teaching me to make my own decisions and then at letting me make them. They were also very good at holding back for a little while to see if I'd correct myself and come back to a good path in life. (I mean this spiritually and well as everything else.) If I weren't coming back to where I should be, my parents would bring me back.
Have you ever felt this with our Father in Heaven? We're all given the Light of Christ to help us make decisions that will bring us happiness. In my mind this also teaches us that when we stray a little bit, we know. And when we've wandered off a short distance or a long way away, God will try to bring us back.
So what does this have to do with inaction and moving? Well, if we're not moving, we're not going forward on the path to happiness, we're not making decisions that will help us draw closer to our Father in Heaven. We're not even making the wrong choices so that we can recognize them, come back/be brought back and then learn from them. Now don't go off saying that Vanessa said that it's okay to sin a little and we'll get our stripes and then we're hunky-dory. What I'm saying is that we're human and we're going to make mistakes. Why not be moving forward when we make these mistakes? Then when we're brought back we'll have some good, forward-moving inertia.
The crux of my run-on blog is that we should have the courage to move forward. I really feel that our Father in Heaven trusts is to make right decisions, otherwise why would He have sent us here? I also believe that He knew that we'd make mistakes, so we have a Savior. But have you ever noticed that the more that you move forward, the more you make use of the Atonement of the Savior? I think it's just that we're becoming more sensitive to better choices and recognize more often how to correct our behavior.

And honestly, this belief that I need to keep moving forward--if for nothing else to someday have things be alright--this belief that acting and doing something has been what's kept me going over these last few, somewhat turbulent weeks. Even though I really enjoy my thesis (see here), it's not easy. It can be really hard. But I'm forcing myself forward because I refuse to stop anymore. I want to be happy. One of my favorite scriptures is 2 Nephi 5:27 And it came to pass that we lived after the manner of happiness. I think that scripture encapsulates everything. Maybe I should've just posted that. Remember that 2 Nephi 5 comes right after Nephi's psalm and "O wretched man that I am!" in chapter 4. Nephi's bemoaning his mistakes. And they're fleeing from the Lamanites. And their family's been torn in two. Yet, they're happy. I think this is a very telling part of the Book of Mormon.
We can be happy too, even in all of our struggles. I think that a lot of this is simply desire to be good, looking to God and then having the courage to go forward.

There. I'm done. Sorry about the hugely long blog entry. If you're reading this sentence right now, I'm really impressed that you made it this far.

Nerdiness and Blog Changes

I have a tendency to fidget around with colors and set-ups on things like blogs. Well, pretty much with anything techie. Let me know if my color scheme, picture, writing or anything is thoroughly annoying. Oh, I don't like the color of the "venom is blogging" header, so if anyone has a suggestion, let me know. Should it stay blue, and change to a different shade? Or should I change the color. Keep in mind the trickiness of the green and grey background.
Also, I am a nerd. I've been working tons on my thesis as of late. I realized today as I was reading another thesis while sitting out on my porch with my legs resting on my hammock, that I was grinning happily. I wasn't grinning happily because I was on my porch with my Brazilian hammock, no. I was grinning because I was enjoying the work that I was doing on my thesis. Sometimes I get so excited while I'm working on it that I lean forward toward my computer all excited-like. I am a bona fide nerd.

Lunch at 1:45...am

Working on the thesis today for hours and hours, without moving that much meant that I had no desire to eat. Clearly instead of eating dinner tonight it was MUCH more important to watch the great Jazz game. By the time it was 12:30 in the morning I realized that I should probably go get something to eat.
Wendy's has this really funny guy who works nights at the drive-up window. I know this because I went thru a Frostie phase a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, he's great. He's always got a green bandanna under his Wendy's cap. He's a lot of fun. Kathy and I have enjoyed going to Wendy's and having him help us. Those of you that live around here (being Provo) should go to the Wendy's down the hill from the Y late one night. He really is funny.
And I don't think I'd dare wink at royalty--unless of course this is the princess in question.
And one last thing. Have you heard Mason Jennings? Dan introed me to him while we were in Brazil. I'm up to 10 hours of his music now. But the best news ever is his tour. Guess who will be here on the 2nd of June??!!!
Oh, I lied, there's one more thing. We planted a garden out back tonight under the tree at the corner of the parking lot. I'm really happy. G&K said that we could plant one if I behaved and went to a ward activity last week. I'll keep you all updated on the garden.