happy easter

As you might imagine, things have perked up a little regarding my thesis. The data from IMED was not what we had asked for, but it ended up being okay. Actually, it ended up meaning that I had to go back and change a bunch of dates in our data that were apparently wrong, and then recreate all the variables we need in Stata, which was a pain. But not nearly as much of a pain as I thought it would be, and now our data is correct and will probably yield more interesting results, which is a good thing. On the other hand, I ran a few of the preliminary tests to identify supply-side endogeneity, and I seem to be finding that there is some, which is bad but not the end of the world.

So I don't know if things regarding my thesis are really any better, or if I've just decided to accept them how they are because the thing is due in a week and I still have to figure out how to test for demand-side endogeneity and finalize my results and write between ten and twenty more pages and create a couple more charts, etc. Regardless of why, I'm feeling better, and even sort of looking forward to working on it.

Yesterday I didn't get any work done on my thesis, mostly because I spent most of the day either preparing for or attending a barbecue that one of my classmates and her husband had. I had a really good time, and I had enough to drink that when I got home, I couldn't exactly do anything productive besides maybe some grading, and I didn't even feel like doing that. I've been trying to go to bed earlyish lately, but I haven't been sleeping well, so either I wake up in the middle of the night for a couple hours, or I take something sleep-encouraging like an allergy pill, and it puts me out for ten hours. Yesterday I could have gotten up at 9 a.m. (early in my world) when my mother called me and spoke to me in a loud, animated voice (she claims she wasn't yelling) about the very expensive call to Paris on my (i.e. her) cell phone bill. But I went back to sleep afterwards.