Well, I’ve just spent the past couple days doing a really quick polishing job on Jerry. I incorporated Drs. Nelson and Phillips’ comments and then went through and checked formatting like mad, added page numbers to the table of contents, fixed a bunch of glitchy en- and em-dashes that Word can’t seem to keep from fucking up royally, and took out some other stupid fuck-ups that Word did when I switched to it from (my preferred) Word Perfect. Fuck M$ word processors. Other than Notepad, they really didn’t do a very good job, and hell, there are even better (and smaller) versions of Notepad out there.

Where was I before I went off on how much I @#$%ing hate M$ Word? Oh yeah, Jerry. So he’s cleaned up a bit more, and hopefully a little clearer in areas. I didn’t do as much editing and revising as my committee suggested, but at this point, I really just want to be done so I can enjoy my summer. Hopefully I can get it all taken care of either this month or at the beginning of July so I can have July for vacation and to work on the fall schedule. Even if I get some revisions back from the committee, I think I can still get those in before it’s too late. After all, my fall job is riding on the fact that I graduate in August.

A huge problem I’m having with the thesis at the moment is actually unrelated to research or editing at all. It’s money. Things have been really tight around here financially since I’ve been the only one working, and if it weren’t for Ian’s student loans, we wouldn’t have been able to make it at all. That was one of the major driving forces behind Ian getting a new job besides the fact that he was beginning to feel lazy and bored around the house all the time. So now he’s working, and he’ll get paid next week for the first time, which is cool. The thing is, I lose my job June 30, so no more paychecks for me until late August/early September. How does money and our complete lack thereof affect the thesis? Well, I have to buy a lot of bond paper of a particular weight and color (specifications are in the thesis handbook) that the thesis will be printed on. Then I have to pay to have it printed on a laser quality machine somewhere. Then I have to pay the binding fees and whatever other fees there are associated with the binding process. And if I want my own copy or any other copies, I have to pay for those too. All in all, it’s a lot more than the $1.38 I currently have in the bank. Seeing as how we could afford to pay only half the rent at the beginning of the month and are paying the other half this Friday (when I get paid again), that’s going to be pretty much the rest of my paycheck. There’s almost no gas in the van, and we need to go grocery shopping. Paying out the ass for a bunch of fees and special paper strikes me as more than a little maddening when that money could be the difference between either eating or having running water or gas or electricity or car insurance or just about anything else. It’s crazy.

At least Ian gets paid next week, even if it isn’t going to be a big check. He’ll at least be making enough to get us through the rest of the summer, I hope. And by then, Jerry will be out of my hair, I’ll have a month’s “vacation” (if you can call getting laid off a vacation) to regroup and get ready for the fall, and I’ll be able to think about something else for a while. Hoo-fucking-ray. I know I’m just in a slump right now and that things will change (for better or for worse), so I guess I won’t mind feeling so run-down and tired at the moment. C’est la vie.