No new content yesterday. Between the grey, dismal weather, cramps, headaches, and the phone constantly ringing, I really didn’t get any thesis work done here at the office, and when I got home, my brain still wasn’t cooperating. I forwent thesis work for crafting in EQ, something I really need to put a hold on because I’m not leveling at all, just making stuff which fills up my bank accounts. It’d be worthwhile if I were raking in the dough on it, but I’m really not. So, I need to pause the crafting craze.

Today I’ve got a few articles to go through for the thesis, mostly scanning them for pertinent information, but it’s something to do if I can’t summon up the urge to write new content. I might also sit down with a pencil and paper and try to come up with a good outline for chapter three since that’s my next major undertaking. I have a feeling that once it’s finished, chapter four will be very immersive, capable of keeping my attention for quite a while because it’s the meat of the thesis and will require the most time with all my sources at hand. It might end up being something I stay up long nights for because it will mean constant searching through sources for the bits of information for plugging into my outline in order to prove my point. I’d like to think I have all of that information sorted out enough or marked clearly enough to where I won’t have to do much searching, just grabbing and writing, but we all know I have the organizational skills of a mollusk, so it probably won’t be as smoothly accomplished as I’d like.

Chapter five is essentially a shorter synthesis of chapter four, not quite a conclusion because it will still present new information, and it should be much shorter to write because of its condensed nature. Chapter six is the conclusion and will likely be relatively short, probably even just a condensation of the condensed information in chapter five. We’ll see how that goes. I suck at conclusions, much like how I suck at introductions. Anyone having a conversation with me will attest to that: the way I bring things up is far-removed from what normal people consider normal because I make leaps of thought which most aren’t accustomed too or expecting. Introductions aren’t my forte, nor are conclusions. It’ll be an exercise in patience, trust me.

I also have to create a second appendix. The one I currently have has the glosses for all the French words used in the text. The new one will be a separation of that into two appendices: one for words containing the target suffixes, one for words which are used as examples but which do not contain the target suffixes. That shouldn’t take long. Having a wide-screen monitor really helps in such endeavors as I can keep the chapter I’m working on to the left and the appendix or endnotes or whatever to the right, easily flipping between them to maximize organization and shorten the amount of time I spend scrolling through documents. Formatting, too, will be done at the last since page numbers will have to be added once all my chapters are copied and pasted into a single document versus the separate files I have them in now (for ease of scrolling and editing purposes).

So now it’s time to put on the second disk of Mendelssohn’s Elijah (I couldn’t find my copy of the Messiah), and get to work on something thesis-related. Wheeeeee.

Thesis counter: 37/49       Insult of the Day: pétochard(e) ‘scaredy-cat’ (lit. ‘farter’)