Tales from the Steppes

2004-08-05

9:42 a.m.
So which one are you tonight, Do you change with the morning light

I guess it has been a while since I have written and it is not because things haven't been happening in my life. It is more because the things that have been happening are terribly boring but problematic.

The new house is still fabulous. Even though we will have to have the dirt cellar excavated and concrete poured and some other waterproofing work done as well. We knew this when we bought the place - it was always our plan to do so. I would have liked to wait until we were unpacked, but my control of the weather seems to have slipped a bit lately.

Childcare has been interesting, but will resolve itself completely in the fall. I have finally located an acceptable preschool for the YM. You would not believe how hard it is to find a full-time, reasonably conveniently located, clean, reasonably priced preschool. With an opening. I was starting to feel like Don Quixote and had already put a deposit at a school that I really did not like much, but could live with until something better came along. But I got a call Tuesday evening from a school I liked saying they had an opening and if I was interested, I needed to get over there with my checkbook by end of day Wednesday. Woo hoo! See what I mean? Not very interesting but definitely problematic.

The only truly nice thing to come out of this Chinese fire drill was a call I got nearly 2 weeks ago that I have been remiss in mentioning. A friend read my last ranting entry, tracked my cell phone number down from other friends, adn called with a gracious offer of assistance. Totally blew me away! I was completely speechless and tongue-tied in my amazement and did not adequately convey my thanks. So here goes a better attempt - Mel, thank you so much for your very kind offer. It meant a lot to me.

I have been in a quandry of late and need advice. I have a situation with my pesky thesis that needs to be resolved pretty quickly. I have been working on a thesis that involves studying children's use of space in a New urbanist community and have done the background research, behavioural observations and mapping, and the physical space data gathering. I still have to do ~ 40 interviews with children and as many as possible with their parents, as well as writing the whole thing up. But this has been very hard to do around my job. And now the head of my program, my thesis advisor as far as the school is concerned and in reality a member of my committee, is leaving the school.

I do have the option of changing thesis topics to do one that is closely related to my work. I would probably look at redevelopment of suburban strip shopping centers to provide actual places/communities through form-based coding. It would make my boss happy, maybe make it easier for me to secure a permanent position here, and I could do most of it on the clock. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? I mean, it is a timely problem, a nearly universal situation, and my boss tells me I will win the Nobel Peace prize if I can figure it out. The only problem is me. I have a fundamental problem with walking away from all of my other research to do something that is too much like work. I am not burning to know the answer to this urban design problem.

The SU tells me I should just bite the bullet and do the urban design thesis. After all, he says the goal is to get out with the piece of paper. I have never been able to look at things that way or be motivated by goals like that. Probably why I am a mediocre student on paper. I would truly appreciate any words of wisdom from others, as there are probably many angles I have not considered. I need to resolve this soon, not only from the perspective of finishing up, but for my own sanity. I have lost much sleep over this and know I could probably dither for months thinking about this. Oh wait, I already have.