yeah, i'm still talking about my thesis

Sorry I've been AWOL for a bit. I can't help but thinking that what T.S. Elliot was really talking about when he called April the "cruelest month" is the fact that school gets busiest right when the weather gets nice. And it has been quite lovely here.

It's pretty much been the same old same-old since my last post. I spent last week catching up in Macro, and got thesis comments back from my advisor last Friday. He was generally happy, but he did ask us to make one change to the data (a change that we had actually more or less suggested earlier, only to be rebuffed, but that's kind of a long and complicated story). It's just a minor change to how 2 variables are constructed, but it adds 2 years' worth of data that was being dropped from the regression (for mathematical reasons related to how regression coefficients are estimated) back in. Lots of interesting stuff happened in those two years, so it totally changed my results. I have to pretty much rewrite my entire data analysis section because my results are really different and because I now have demand-side endogeneity to correct for. I haven't done much of the rewriting yet, but I've re-run all of the regressions and redone all the charts. I had to give a "practice" defense presentation in Grad Seminar last night, and it went reasonably well. Once I rewrite the paper (revisions are due on Monday) I can revise and strengthen the conclusions/implications section of my presentation (it's pretty weak at the moment because I haven't thought about my new results enough to have much to say about them), and then just practice a bunch before Thursday (which is when I defend).

E has been staying with me since DWE left town on Saturday. It's nice to have the company, but it's made me realize how used to living alone I am (and how much time I spend naked or half-dressed in my apartment, which I obviously can't do with E around). But E is an entertaining and generally neat houseguest, and since he's working on his thesis too (and having many of the same frustrations I'm having), it works out well.

DWE has been at some big, important trade show in Aneheim since Saturday. It was kind of entertaining to have him drunk-dial me most nights at 2 in the morning (they drink free alcohol and dance and shmooze into the wee hours, apparently). I know that he's actually working pretty hard and that shmoozing people all day on very little sleep isn't all that fun for him, but of course my reaction is "how come you never take me out dancing?" He said that he would, which will probably only happen if I pester him repeatedly about it (which I'm perfectly willing to do). I pointed out to him that we had one night of dancing, at the Cherry Poppin' Daddies concert that we went to on our second date. "You know, back when you were still trying to impress me," I said. "Thank God I don't have to do that anymore," he said. Isn't he dreamy?

I did absolutely no work for most of the day today. I didn't even shower and get dressed until 8:30 at night (yeah, I know, what's the point?). I finally did the dishes and completed a few administrative tasks, and I might even work on my thesis or my job hunt a little bit. Or maybe not.