The Thesising Continues

As most of you might have surmised, there’s a very good reason for me not writing a blog entry at all for the last week: my thesis. I’ve been awash in a sea of figures this week, taking the first part of the week to create about 400 or so figures total in SCIPUFF and TecPlot, cropping them all identically one-by-one on Wednesday, and then inserting and arranging them all into the Appendix of my thesis. I finished that yesterday (well, unless I end up adding more figures), and here’s how big my Appendix chapter is: 64 pages (52 of them full of color images) and 104 MB. That’ll probably end up being more pages than the “real” part of my thesis, haha. But now that I have all those images generated and printed out so that I can look at them side-by-side, I can decide which ones to put into my Results chapter. I also set my thesis defense date for Monday, June 11th at 10am, meaning that I have to have a completed draft of my thesis to my committee members by Memorial Day (or the day after), to give them two weeks to review it before my defense. With a week left to write my Results and Conclusions, I’d say I’m in pretty good shape!
Our church softball team couldn’t start out the season with back-to-back wins. On Monday we hosted Oakwood Presbyterian, and we led 6-5 after 2 innings, but then the wheels fell off in a couple never-ending innings, en route to a 22-10 loss in 6 innings. I played the second half of the game at first base, and was 0-for-2 at the plate with flyouts to right-center and right field (of course, when I finally start hitting to the opposite field, I make outs), and unfortunately made the last out of the game with my second flyout. I hate making outs, but especially the last out of the game.
A bunch of us helped Amber move out of her apartment this morning. After graduation tomorrow (Kerrie, Daniel, Jonathan, Zack, Addison, Margaret & Ben are all also graduating with their M.S. in Meteorology tomorrow), she’ll be moving to Cary (Raleigh) on Monday with Chris, who’s been down there for a year already. And so it starts, people from my grad class finishing up and moving on…
Tonight Sue hosted a big picnic/cookout for all of her grad students, which was fun. Sue & Randy had a bocce set, which we had a fun time with. I’d never played bocce before, but I guess this wasn’t quite like regular bocce (with a long, level playing surface), as we were playing on their lawn, on the cusp of a big hill. It definitely made for some interesting strategery and exciting bowls (and a lot of body English, trying to persuade the balls to stop rolling down the hillside a few times. 🙂 The picture is of Andrew launching his first toss really high in the air, not knowing it was supposed to stay pretty close to the ground, hehe.
That was a really exciting Preakness Stakes race today, with Curlin coming charging from behind to win by a nose, denying Street Sense a shot at the Triple Crown. I love watching the Triple Crown races, they’re some of the most exciting moments in sports. I was a bit annoyed at NBC for ditching overtime of the Sabres-Senators NHL playoff game for the start of pre-Preakness coverage over an HOUR before the race actually began. I’d understand if it was ten minutes from post time, but an hour and a half? Come on… I mean, I love the actual horse races, but I could care less about all the pre-race stuff, especially when there’s a playoff hockey game in overtime.
Only two nights until the season finale of “24”!! I wonder how this season’s gonna be resolved, and what cliffhanger they’re gonna set up next season with. (I’m still not mentioning any specifics on my blog, since it’s about 3-4 weeks behind down in Australia, and I have a couple friends who watch the show and check my blog now and then.) Overall, Season 6 hasn’t been as consistently good as Seasons 4 or 5, but it’s started to pick up again the last couple weeks. Sometime this summer I really should watch Seasons 1-3, I’ve heard those are really good too.