Well, I’m editing the thesis pretty hardcore now. I’m working to get it compliant for both my LSA stylesheet (Linguistic Society of America) and the Grad School’s handbook, and I’m editing and revising according to the notes/comments my committee members have sent. Unfortunately, I don’t have all the revisions from all my committee members. I’ve got a lot from Dr. Phillips, some from Dr. Nelson, and a little from Dr. Tony. The revision process is fun because I get to try and incorporate what three different people have said, but it’s not really all that hard for the most part. It’s only a couple notes in the margins which throw me, and I plan on addressing those individually with each person as I come to them.

I’m also working to combine all the separate files into one document. Well, three documents, actually. The front matter consists of four parts: title page, certificate of approval, abstract and table of contents. The page numbers are to be in Roman numerals (because they’re so useful for anything else), but they’re to start on page three (the abstract). I can very easily keep the page number off the first page because Word has an option for that. The second page? Less clue. I probably could figure it out after fucking with it for a while, but who has the time to spend an hour trying to learn one little thing in Word which could just as easily be fixed through a jury-rigged, roundabout solution? I separated the front matter into two parts: title page/certificate of approval and abstract/table of contents. Problem solved. I just tell the second half to begin on page iii, and it’s all taken care of. It’s just going to be printed off and shuffled together later anyway.

The rest of the document so far consists of chapters one and two, the endnotes, both appendixes, and the references. So far, it’s at 61 pages. I’ve been trying to get the headings uniform and make sure that my suffixes don’t get separated from their hyphens at line breaks like this: –

ard. They’re not supposed to be separate, but it’s hard to keep the word processor from breaking them up, so I have to fudge a lot of lines and sentences to try and keep them together. Beyond that, it’s mostly trying to figure out all these notes and suggestions from my committee and get them worked in as I go along. Next up: making sure all the terms and examples I use in the text have glosses and are included in the appendixes.

So today’s going to be pretty quiet. Heather’s not in, Susan just swung by to tell me she’ll be leaving early this afternoon depending on when her meeting gets out, and therefore it’s just me and the Thesis. I think I’m seriously going to have to name it something else, like Gorax or Rudolph or Alphonse or something other than “thesis.” How about Jerry? I keep “jerry-rigging” parts of it to fit formating rules, though I do tend to prefer the spelling “jury-rig” over “jerry-rig,” but I can let that slide. Okay, so it’s just Jerry and me today at the office. And a head of lettuce. Named Lucy. Yeah.

I wanna give a shout out to Lushbaugh and Jamie to congratulate them. Lushbaugh finally popped the question last night, and I’m uber-thrilled for them both! 🙂 I heard about this at like 3 in the morning when Ian decided to drag his ass up to bed, hehe. So, grats you two! Here’s to many, many, many, many, many years of insanity and craziness to you both. 😀