Moot Thoughts & Musings

So this is how today started.
Thesis Status: Almost done with fussy section. Then rewrite intro and conclusion. Get examples straight (there's a lot). Get biblio straight (mostly done).

My dear friends agreed to help me with Ellis; they live in two apts in the same building. They're the ones with little boys born within weeks of Ellis, so he had lots of playmates along with their other kids. I knew this day would be way fun for him. My friend Christina picked us up, brought us to their house, and gave me a clear desk to work on in the basement. Ellis dug right into Josh's toys. So I'm working away. The Fussy Section is actually getting finished. At one point, somebody calls down, "Can Ellis have a soynut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch?" Sure, he'll eat anything. Then a little later, Christina, who has already picked me up and fed my child, brings down a plate of a wonderful chicken curry salad sandwich. I went up to put Ellis down for a nap, which didn't happen; because he was just too excited and environment too strange to sleep in, but he played nicely despite it. Then I went down and finished the Fussy Section. Phew!

Then I opened up a new document to paste together all the sections into one large document. I opened the first section, which is the bulk of the paper, and as I was looking at it, it looked like it had last Monday, before I had worked on it for days. Wait a minute! Where were all my revisions!?!??! I used the spotlight on my computer (a nice feature on Macs, which is sort of like Googling your hard drive). Nothing was coming up. Getting more and more frantic I kept looking. Nothing.

At this point, I'm sobbing hysterically. I couldn't find my revisions. DAYS of revisions. I'm exhausted and I need to send this to my advisor before I got to bed tonight. I walked up to their apartment where all the kids are watching Toy Story 2, and I'm standing in the kitchen just sobbing, and I can't breathe. Erin said, "Ok. TEA!" So Christina put the kettle on. I calmed down. We drank hot chocolate (ok, so we changed our minds). They tried to think of solutions and were all around wonderful and sympathetic. (Thanks, guys!)

I went back down to my computer and looked again, but then I remembered that some time during the middle of the week, I saved it to my flash disk. And I thought I had changed back to my home directory, but maybe I hadn't, maybe all this time I was saving to my flash disk. And I'm a compulsive saver; so I knew it couldn't have been just a matter of forgetting to save...not days worth of stuff. My flash disk was at my house. So Christina kindly drove us back home and yes, all my revisions were on the flash disk. Crisis averted!

I'm still a little shaken by the experience. Ellis fell asleep before 7 pm, plumb exhausted from all the fun. I ordered pizza from a place I can practically see from my house it's so close. I felt apologetic to the driver and explained I had a sleeping baby. he was like "dude, it's okay, really." Chris is working late. And I'm going to finish this draft of my thesis TONIGHT.