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I know it's been dern long time since my last post, been super-duper busy and crap. But now that's all (pretty much) over! To start from the back with the most recent news, I passed my oral comp exam. Anyway, let's see how much of the past two weeks I can remember.
That Saturday two weeks ago The Family Ghost recorded our last two songs. Ryan couldn't make it Saturday, but the rest of us plowed ahead and loosened the "live" restriction of our recordings a little bit. We recorded "Fall Behind" and began work on "Slowly Rising Dub" (the "dub" version of "Histrionics"). The latter was pretty rough. I had modified one part of the bass line to be somewhat reggaeish, but was playing around more with delay in the other parts. Then I decided that to hold it all together it'd need a solid bassline, so I reggaed up the rest of it. Paul had to leave but Jacques and I recorded our parts. Sunday Ryan came over and we finished his parts and then Paul put down the synth for the dub thingie. Even though the parts weren't all recorded simultaneously, we still took a pretty live approach to the multitracking. Jacques and I were up late mixing the two songs down and mastering them and remixing 'Doctorate." Then we tried to finalize the artwork and get everything compatible to submit. That became a headache and we were up too late so we put it off 'til the next day (so we finished it and all that crap on Monday). Then I was up even damn longer to get shit ready for the next week.
That next week was the last of my action research project work. Teaching, busy, all this time trying to get my paper and all that junk ready as it was due next (which is now this) week and not really making progress. Been taking lots of naps during my planning period. Oh, one day last week stretching I hurt my shoulder. This was a couple days after working out. Hopefully it's finally feeling better now, but maybe not. Maybe it's still messed up. It hurts the worst in the morning (yesterday morning was the worst yet). Saturday the band practiced again. With the recording finished and sent off for duplication all we had left wast just to practice the songs. As I had my stuff to work on, it wasn't a long practice. We'll need to make up for that this coming weekend.
My PowerPoint presentation was due to be submitted Sunday night. At the start of the weekend I had 10 slides for it and ended with 28 slides! This weekend was a crazy mass of papers everywhere and sorting and scoring data and stuff. My paper was due Tuesday night. My oral comp exam was Wednesday. At my work's christmas party I had won a free comp day so I took Tuesday off (my students actually flipped out in disbelief when I wasn't there a day). Spent a good 12 hours writing on my paper. That started off at around 20 pages or so and eded up with 45 (that sounds more impressive than it actually is, 'cuz at least 20 or so were fluff like table of contents, references, appendecies, etc.). I actually finished at a reasonable hour. Unfortunately, I was so wound up I couldn't really get to sleep for a while anyway. Yesterday I took my exam, as I'd said. After the faculty meeting, I got home just in time for it. It was a phone interview. I logged into some program that showed my presentation on my and my evaluators' end and they called me. I heard some people's were short, but mine lasted almost an hour. I really didn't get a chance to practice for it or anything. I know I flubbed on it a bit. At one point they asked about a source and I had to flip through and keep going back and forth through my paper to find what the source was and took a long time to find it. I kinda probably messed up one part of it and they asked a lot about that and expressed a bit of confusion over it. Fortunately, that was one of the things I addressed in my "things I would do differently" and "suggestions for future research" portions. Also, I had bar graphs for my data. Over the connection those pictures came out distorted as hell. They looked a bit like Autechre album art or something. Not my fault or anything, but weird. I just had the original up on my computer and described those slides to them. Also, after saying goodbye I hung up but then it sounded like one of the professors was just starting to say something else. Oops. Mary Beth commented on the lakes underneath my armpits when it was over.
So then grades were due today so I had to be up finishing those, but I'm all freaked out over the exam I'd just taken. I kept looking online at the course's website over and over for information on it. It came today about two hours ago in a phone call from my professor (note: she wasn't one of the people giving the exam, pretty sure she couldn't be). But she let me know I passed and I've been excited and happy and all that and stuff. Now, it's technically not over yet. My actual paper has to be graded and I have to pass that. I don't think that will be too much trouble and what I suspect is the biggest hurdle is over. Yay! Yay! Yay!
That Saturday two weeks ago The Family Ghost recorded our last two songs. Ryan couldn't make it Saturday, but the rest of us plowed ahead and loosened the "live" restriction of our recordings a little bit. We recorded "Fall Behind" and began work on "Slowly Rising Dub" (the "dub" version of "Histrionics"). The latter was pretty rough. I had modified one part of the bass line to be somewhat reggaeish, but was playing around more with delay in the other parts. Then I decided that to hold it all together it'd need a solid bassline, so I reggaed up the rest of it. Paul had to leave but Jacques and I recorded our parts. Sunday Ryan came over and we finished his parts and then Paul put down the synth for the dub thingie. Even though the parts weren't all recorded simultaneously, we still took a pretty live approach to the multitracking. Jacques and I were up late mixing the two songs down and mastering them and remixing 'Doctorate." Then we tried to finalize the artwork and get everything compatible to submit. That became a headache and we were up too late so we put it off 'til the next day (so we finished it and all that crap on Monday). Then I was up even damn longer to get shit ready for the next week.
That next week was the last of my action research project work. Teaching, busy, all this time trying to get my paper and all that junk ready as it was due next (which is now this) week and not really making progress. Been taking lots of naps during my planning period. Oh, one day last week stretching I hurt my shoulder. This was a couple days after working out. Hopefully it's finally feeling better now, but maybe not. Maybe it's still messed up. It hurts the worst in the morning (yesterday morning was the worst yet). Saturday the band practiced again. With the recording finished and sent off for duplication all we had left wast just to practice the songs. As I had my stuff to work on, it wasn't a long practice. We'll need to make up for that this coming weekend.
My PowerPoint presentation was due to be submitted Sunday night. At the start of the weekend I had 10 slides for it and ended with 28 slides! This weekend was a crazy mass of papers everywhere and sorting and scoring data and stuff. My paper was due Tuesday night. My oral comp exam was Wednesday. At my work's christmas party I had won a free comp day so I took Tuesday off (my students actually flipped out in disbelief when I wasn't there a day). Spent a good 12 hours writing on my paper. That started off at around 20 pages or so and eded up with 45 (that sounds more impressive than it actually is, 'cuz at least 20 or so were fluff like table of contents, references, appendecies, etc.). I actually finished at a reasonable hour. Unfortunately, I was so wound up I couldn't really get to sleep for a while anyway. Yesterday I took my exam, as I'd said. After the faculty meeting, I got home just in time for it. It was a phone interview. I logged into some program that showed my presentation on my and my evaluators' end and they called me. I heard some people's were short, but mine lasted almost an hour. I really didn't get a chance to practice for it or anything. I know I flubbed on it a bit. At one point they asked about a source and I had to flip through and keep going back and forth through my paper to find what the source was and took a long time to find it. I kinda probably messed up one part of it and they asked a lot about that and expressed a bit of confusion over it. Fortunately, that was one of the things I addressed in my "things I would do differently" and "suggestions for future research" portions. Also, I had bar graphs for my data. Over the connection those pictures came out distorted as hell. They looked a bit like Autechre album art or something. Not my fault or anything, but weird. I just had the original up on my computer and described those slides to them. Also, after saying goodbye I hung up but then it sounded like one of the professors was just starting to say something else. Oops. Mary Beth commented on the lakes underneath my armpits when it was over.
So then grades were due today so I had to be up finishing those, but I'm all freaked out over the exam I'd just taken. I kept looking online at the course's website over and over for information on it. It came today about two hours ago in a phone call from my professor (note: she wasn't one of the people giving the exam, pretty sure she couldn't be). But she let me know I passed and I've been excited and happy and all that and stuff. Now, it's technically not over yet. My actual paper has to be graded and I have to pass that. I don't think that will be too much trouble and what I suspect is the biggest hurdle is over. Yay! Yay! Yay!
