Interesting. Thanks, Chris.


What up, Sic? Bidness, or pleasure, if it's any of our bidness?

Chicago is business, sorta. The Mrs is going to a painting convention, but the family is tagging along.

I'll be back home for a day, then I'm heading out west to see friends and see the country. I'll be sidelined for the summer due to surgery recovery, and the Mrs and I each take our own little vacations each year. I try to take mine earlier, but work has been crazy busy until now.

Hope the surgery thing is not too serious. Vacays are always cool. I guess busy is cool, too, to a point.

You have any music lined up in those towns or is this strictly a bbq run? :)

Surgery is...sorta serious.

We have great BBQ here in KC...I don't really need to go anywhere else. :)

Other than visiting friends in ABQ and Western KS, I don't have any big plans for the western piece. A couple of sightseeing things I want to do. Just going where the roads take me.

Keep on keeping on bro. You can do it.

Hoping it all goes well, Sic!

Best of luck. I have another friend who had the surgery last year. She couldn't possibly be happier. She looks fantastic and said she feels great too.

There's a thing (you know, those things?), where people who have that done, have an increased risk of becoming dependent on alcohol. More so for women, I think.

I have a cousin who had it done, went just as smooth as silk, worked, too, like a charm. She became a full-fledged, card-carrying alcoholic. Did more harm than good.

I think she pretty much ended up replacing one addiction with another.

I like alcohol. :drunk:

I've had two major addictions in my life: nicotine and food. Of course, we can't live without food. This surgery should help fix the signals that make me want to eat all the time, including right now.

We shall see. I'm 7 months shy of 40 and scared to death of dying. The benefits far outweigh the risks at this point.

The reverse phenomenon also happens: alcoholics who give up booze often develop a raging sweet tooth. Carbs is carbs.

The daughter of a friend had gastric surgery about 2 years ago. She's never been happier - she's dropped down to a healthy size, had a baby girl and has got used to eating much smaller portions and much healthier food. And she's enjoying physical activity in a way she never really had before.

Great for her, but that last part is being redundant.

ha! True enough:P

Here's my reason for Happy -

The examiners are recommending my thesis for a pass with minor (editorial) corrections :) (technically it doesn't count as a pass til the exam board passes it but they never go against the examiners' recommendations)

Which means I have 4 weeks to make the changes and assuming they all check out (which of course they will) it is a pass

*does the happy dance*

They really liked it. The first thing they said when I went in was that they liked it, thought it was a very good piece of work, and I should relax because they didn't consider that I needed to 'defend' my thesis.

Instead we had a chat about it - they offered some constructive criticism and advice about what changes might be good if I was looking to get it published (mostly stuff that's fairly typical of a phd thesis) - the intro was a little lopsided and the historiographical context could have been more thorough - a few places where I could have stated my findings more forcefully and made the implications clearer, conclusion could do with broadening out a little (again very typical PhD thesis conclusion) and a slight shift in periodisation might make it more appealing as a published work - but none of which would be required for the thesis to be accepted.
They talked about some of the stuff they liked and asked me to expand on some of it - asked a few questions about my methodology and choice of periodisation and so on.

They made suggestions as to what might be drawn out for shorter articles - they suggested the two chapters that I had already identified as the strongest and most original analysis.

The editorial changes are really very basic - errant commas/typos/formatting errors. Only two changes were content related and they were literally the addition of single sentences to contextualise the figures (e.g troop numbers serving in a particular location at that time).

They were very nice, very complimentary and most of what they said gelled with my own view of the work having read it back.

I have to say, it is something of a boost when someone whose work I've read and who is respected in my field tells me he enjoyed reading my thesis and learned some things from it.

Awe-some!

:celebrat: