In the Corps, the part of my job that consisted of actual work on things was about 30% unscheduled repairs and 70% scheduled maintenance. Dealing with all that scheduled maintenance required careful checklists of when things were due.

Thus, when I was applying to multiple MA programs, I created a long and complex checklist on a spreadsheet. It had every school I was applying to and what materials each school needed and when they needed them. I would check off each subtask and note when I had completed it. ("Statement of purpose to Drew: Due 1 Mar. Sent 14 Feb.")

Last semester was a stressful one, so I just reused the document. Most things were the same, in fact– they all still needed GREs, three letters of reference, etc. The only major change was a longer writing sample, but I already know what I was going to use: the paper I'd produced in my most recent research seminar.

However, I made an inexcusable mistake. The kind of mistake that, had this been in fact a maintenance checklist, could have resulted in serious consequences.

I failed to update the deadlines.

You see, MA programs tend to have admission deadlines of either March 1st or March 15th. PhD programs, however, have deadlines of either Dec 1st or Dec 15th. One reason is that some marginal candidates are not accepted into PhD programs but are offered MA slots. Another reason is that the two programs have very different funding implications for the university.

So, to summarize, I had chosen to work on my PhD admission once the new year started. Here it is, and I discover I am too late. I will be applying now for admission into the classes that start in September 2013.

I do have several different options.

1. I can take my MA and get a real job, skipping on a PhD that hardly offers a guarantee of success anyway. (I'm not sufficiently arrogant to simply assume that I'm a shoo-in for admission.)
   
2. I can work for a year, then restart school in September 2013.
3. PhD students are required to do one more semester of classwork beyond MAs. I could take that semester as a non-admitted student, and spend the next semester working on the language skills I will need for the PhD. Basically, I would be investing a year of time in the hopes of getting admitted. The downside of this is that the classwork semester is only useful if I continue my studies at UB. If I join a program elsewhere, graduate schools are not very big on transfer credits. The language skills, however, would always be useful.
   

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My sister's house is on the top of a hill. This makes sledding very impressive.

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Whew, just submitted the last paper of the semester, a full half-hour before the deadline. Tomorrow I pack, bake cookies and mail them to Afghanistan, wrap presents, take my girlfriend out to dinner, then drive to the ancestral homeland to see my sisters and their families. Busy busy busy.

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Right in the middle of finals week, the substation that powers my university's main campus shut down for two hours. (Cause as yet unknown, my money's on "suicidal squirrel"). I'm signed up to a system where the university can send out emergency alert text messages. But the text about the power outage didn't arrive until the power had been restored! According to someone that knows, the problem is that the emergency alert system is run by a computer on campus. Sensibly, that computer has a UPS to keep it going without power. But, the sequence of routers through which the computer communicates requires external power. Whoops!

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I might be about to get a degree, accidentally. My MA project is not yet complete, although my classwork is. (Or will be, when I turn in all my term papers. Unlike a cousin who will not be named.)

But I'm on a list to graduate in early February. My hypothesis is as follows: My MA adviser is also the department's Director of Undergraduate Studies, and is fighting a losing battle with paperwork. As I'm a good student, she might have just signed off some paperwork with my name on it without thoroughly reading.

Even though I'm on the list, I sent an email to the graduate secretary pointing out the error and told my adviser too. Also, there are a couple of layers of auditing before any sheepskins are mailed. So this might be nothing. But if I get awarded a degree without completing the work, I'll be quite embarrassed. I will be completing the project regardless, because I don't intend to cheat myself, and claiming a degree that I did not earn is fraud, even if the granting institution thinks I deserved it. I also don't think I'd get very good letters of recommendation if I received a degree incorrectly and just kind of quietly slunk away. Plus, at any future date an audit might discover the mistake and retract the diploma, to everyone's embarrassment.

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For your amusement, an award-winning short film:

While there are old books that refer to this kind of instrument, in my professional judgement (hah!) it is unlikely that any actual instruments were used;* the function of their putative existence was to insult the musical traditions of a rival culture, or to provoke horrified amusement in the reader.

* It is possible that some examples were constructed, to be installed into a cabinet of curiosities. This was the time when nobles had fake ruins constructed to make their estates more picaresque, after all.

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I gave blood earlier this week. That's not such a big thing, I realize. But it was the first time I've donated since 2003, I think. The problem was my time in the Corps included stints in places with endemic mosquito-borne diseases. Before taking my blood, the experts wanted to ensure that if I'd picked up any nasty viruses, bacteria, or parasites, they would have either showed themselves or been destroyed by my immune system. That requires waiting several years.

As always, the most painful part of the process is when they rip the tape off my hairy arms near the end. I don't mind the needle stick, it's that tape coming off that hurts so much.

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My roommate is currently eating dinner with a girl on our kitchen table, while a friend films them both. It's part of the filming friend's class project. Now I feel terrible about how messy the kitchen is. I've got stuff just sitting on that table! The floor needs waxed! And the slovenly state of my quarters is being preserved on film forever! AAAAAGH!

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This Thanksgiving I spent the holiday with Hil's parents. They have a nice suburban house, and were hosting quite a few of the extended family– total attendance was twenty-two people and three dogs.

With that many people, Hil's mother cooked two turkeys. She did one the day before and carved it into large chunks to be refrigerated. The other one was cooked on the day itself. For both, she used a specialized turkey cooker. It looked like a slow-cooker, except the food-containment vessel was made of lightweight metal instead of high-thermal-mass ceramic. It cooked that turkey to what I thought was perfection, although Hil's mom tossed it under the broiler for a few minutes to crisp up the skin. Being the strong young man about the house, I got tasked with lugging the heavy and hot turkey around between cooking devices.

The major excitement was when Hil's mother put a Pyrex casserole full of yams on the stovetop. It did not like the heat and broke with a startlingly loud sound. I cleaned up all the broken glass and splattered yams from the stovetop while Hil's dad manned the vacuum cleaner to get the glass bits off the floor. Apparently Hil's mom had been using that set of Pyrex dishes on her old stove for years, but now she's got a new induction stove that puts out much more heat.

Dinner itself didn't start until 6 PM, we had to wait for one of Hil's aunts to get to the party with her son. There were three tables, but the two great-grandkids are too small to actually sit at a kid's table and feed themselves, so seating was mostly random. The mood was convivial, although people's thoughts were with Hil's grandmother, in an intensive care ward just a few miles away. (People had gone to see her earlier in the day.)

After dinner entertainment was gaming. I played Scrabble with Hil and her sister, which ended the way I had expected, in an utter and humiliating defeat. Hil takes her Scrabble very seriously. In another room, a bunch of the cousins were playing "Once Upon a Time", a game I very much enjoy. The point of that game is to tell a fairy tale collaboratively/competitively. I've got a copy of that game, and one of these years I'll get my family to try it out.

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