Reviving Nathewrimo

Hey guys!

Well I have been super busy with visitors over the last couple weeks. My aunt was here last week, and my brother and sister were here for almost a week. My work has suffered as a result, so I am buckling down to get my draft finished by the end of May. It's a pretty ambitious goal, so I am a little nervous, but I'm thinking that there is no use in getting stressed out about it. I've just got to sit down every day and work on it! I figure I have about 50 pages to go....so that works out to about 2-3 pages every day, not including weekends or the odd procrastinat-y, unproductive day. It's attainable...although I still have to go through my interviews, which is going to suck.

There are a few things that I have on my plate that will distract from the thesis work. For one, I have the OCE Discovery conference coming up in a couple weeks. Somehow, I've been nominated/roped into participating in an oral competition at the conference. It's only a 5 minute presentation, with 2 minutes for questions, so it's pretty straight forward. However, somehow, the OCE is recommending a 2-day course to prepare for the presentation!? I'm attending day 2 of the course tomorrow, and I *think* it's called "networking and communications". I definitely need some help with networking, so it'll be a good course regardless. I'm also STILL waiting to hear about the WWEC conference at the end of June. At this point, I think that I am going to recycle the grad conference posted I prepared, because it is getting ridiculous. I emailed the organizers, and they said that they are STILL going through the abstracts for the conference. Totally disorganized.

Anyways, the visit with Paul and Jocelyn has been great. We spent time in Toronto, out at the lake with our family, and yesterday Paul and I went to Niagara for wine and Buffalo for chicken wings. It was awesome, except for Paul forgot his camera at the restaurant in Buffalo, so we had to go through the border TWICE to get it back. Luckily we look innocent and honest because the border guards had three chances to find the booze we had in the trunk that we did not pay duty on.

Anyways, good times! I'm actually itching to get back to work so I think it's a good sign.

What's up with you guys?? Don't forget to update!