I had all kinds of good plans about how I was going to document this chase to a PhD, but when it came right down to it, I just did not have the energy to write with both a full-time day-job and and a full-time load of research and classes. Actually, all of these kinds of things are choices in the the end–and I chose laziness in self-defense.
Today is a seminal day in my trajectory. My thesis advisor gave me permission to submit the final draft of my dissertation so the “readers,” two members of the committee can read it and decide whether they think it is worthy of defense. He also told me there was literally nothing for me to do until they got back to me. Actually, that is not quite true. I can work on the slide presentation for my defense just in case they approve the dissertation.