6:14

Total, utter waste for the rest of the day. Maybe I'll take my computer to some coffee shop for a hot friday evening out. Somewhere without an internet connection. Or maybe I'll just acknowledge reality.

18 more days before I turn in my first draft.

19

19 unique visitors to this site. I'm sure they are hurrying on to more interesting sites, but it makes me flutter my eyelashes with the pride of a really bad actress who hasn't a clue that the reason she got hired was because the director was hoping to bed her...

2:35

AEI makes my skin crawl. Slimy, slick, scary. Scary in large part because they sound so good, so rational. But there are hidden holes in their argument, I am sure. Particularly in the chapters that are NOT published on the web, the ones where they (presumably) talk about how they came up with the number of SOX costing $1 trillion + net.

So now I have to decide if I am going to give the $25 for the opportunity going hole hunting. What is the greater good???

In the meantime, I think I'll go wash my hands. Yuck.

Technical difficulties...

How does one delete an accidentally repeated posting??

Update on elementary school sex

HR and I finally figured out what the transcriber should have heard: they get great snacks! Snacks, people, not sex, is what you get excited about in elementary school. Amazing that the transcriber didn't stop to think...

But much more fun.

Friday 2:00

I managed to work for a grand total of about 20 minutes this morning before taking off to go call EK. Despite the short timeframe between start of focus and need to leave, I actually got the introduction chapter to clunk into place, I think.

The arc is:
1. Good information in the market is a legitimate public policy goal.
2. Enron etc. has called into question the effectiveness of the (then) current policies.
3. One place to look is the gatekeepers.
4. In this instance, the auditor.
5. There is disagreement over whether auditors are the right target.
6. Regulators say yes, auditors say no.
7. Sorting it out is hard.
8. I'm going to try.
9. And I'm going to tackle the rhetoric along the way, because it has hindered proper debate.

It would be nice if my arc had fewer than 9 points, but at least it has a flow.

Now what to work on next...

5:17

Wow. I actually got stuff done today. More along the lines of refining (over-refining?) my introduction, rather than tackling my model or generating new material, but productive nonetheless. Printing, despite the paper guilt, was definitely a good idea.

Most important of all, probably, was the sense that I am actually working again...

Now I get to play until I go to dinner with HR!

3:25

HR just sent me this choice tidbit from a transcription of interviews done about testing in Georgia:

Here's a quote from a GA interview (re. elementary school students):

"Some of [the students] put CRCT [GA's standardized test] as boring. CRCT makes me have a squishy brain. CRCT makes me not sleep at night. And the things that they love about CRCT is that they get great sex. And they get extra recess."

Who knew elementary school kids had such fun??

1:43

Snapple count: 3

It is

There is nothing less meaningful than a sentence that starts with "It is..." I wish I didn't have such a compulsion to use it!

1:00

Printing and reading was definitely a good call. Also meant that I could work outside in the sun for a little, away from the computer and getting my vitamin D. I can see things to write. Yippee!!

12:11

Second round of farting around.

I think I don't know what to work on right now. Maybe that is my problem. I could print the monster out and read it. Looking for inspiration or a place where I can actually be productive.

I hate that I can't say what I am trying to say. All of the sudden my dissertation has become all fuzzy and philosophical and about the meaning of language. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised: I'm constitutionally inclined towards such thought pretzels. There was the point in my career here where I was inclined to think that theology would have been a more useful and directly applicable degree. But why couldn't I have done a nice simple regression??

Or at least not taken on both the auditing profession AND their vocabulary. Sigh.

Thursday 11:21

Morning reading and farting around done. Morning done too. Oh well.

Yesterday, I managed 2 paragraphs, both of which will probably be turned into scrap. Errrgh. I do think I am at a particularly difficult and slow point in the process, and so am trying to be gentle with myself.

But it is sad to think that I have been working on this topic for two years and still don't know what it is I am really trying to say!

1:59

Ok, so I broke my rule already.

1:12

I now have a rule that the only way I am allowed to be distracted is to blog the distraction, thereby creating a public record of my distraction and therefore (hopefully) becoming so disgusted with myself that I stop being distracted...

12:45

Testing this tool.

12:44

No more chocolate.

12:29

One paragraph down. Focus, focus, focus...

Hello World

Why oh why can't I just work on my friggin' dissertation?? It is 11:42 and I have done nothing towards the goal of a first draft by July 4 (independence day in more than one way) today. Keep adding zeros together, girl, and you still get zero...

So I start a blog instead.