Wrote a sort-of big post moments ago, but true to my apparent jinx this week, the Blogger server chose my exact posting moment to poop out.

Anyway: thesis, defense, train, and wreck.

Would have been very nice to know more than one day in advance that the analyses I was using were inappropriate for the type of data I collected. Now that I know, of course, it seems obvious. That is, obvious to anyone who looked at the document in advance, of course, instead of cramming it into a desk drawer until the day before the student's actual defense.

So all the quals-writing time I sacrificed in the past two weeks to get this thesis in were not a sacrifice but a waste! Now my quals paper (due tomorrow, of course) is merely a crazy-quilt of information bits, and does not even meet the length requirements yet. And yet I still have to redo my entire thesis by next Monday--again.

In better news, I discovered that the reason my tax return was so delayed (by about four months) was that the state was redoing my return to give me a bit more money than I expected. This has happened a couple times before, but I still don't understand what credit they're giving me. The EIC seems to require having a child, for example. (Which I don't, more's the pity.)

Anyway, so much for counting my catching-up chickens before they hatch...god, I need a serious rest.