Coming Up Roses

I am so stoked about how things are going lately.

I'm almost finished with the whole thesis process. My experiment and paper are officially complete. On Tuesday, I defend, and I'm anticipating that will go well and be fairly easy. After I have everything verified, I submit my thesis to the Graduate Department and am essentially done (save for possible formatting corrections and physical publication). So after this week, I will have significantly less stress and significantly more free time. Perfect timing for:

Warmer weather and more sunshine! I never thought I'd miss the sun living in Southern California, but I'm tired of trying to tweak my wardrobe for 40 minute walks through rain (to be fair, those walks will end after this week also!). I'm looking forward to some swimming, some camping, and seeing some friends who have been away at school. I'm also going to scrape some money together to buy one of the new bathing suits I've been looking at.

And I'll have the money to buy a new bathing suit since I'll start giving independent tutoring after next week. It's something I've thought about for a long time but never felt confident in actually doing. I mean, why would I assume I can explain things any better than a teacher or a text book? But after a long conversation with my parents (my mom is a teacher) this week, I feel much more capable and, frankly, marketable. Luckily, this is the one area where I actually have a contact who can help me get clients so I feel pretty good about getting work, too.

Things have been going well in the garden. I managed to save two sunflowers from becoming a bug's lunch and a third is struggling to come back to life. I have a fourth sunflower and one zinnia growing in my bug-free nursery and I'll be planting more seeds in a few weeks so we should have some nice annual additions this year. The roses we planted a couple months ago are all healthy and blooming already - pretty amazing when I think back on how they looked as bare root plants when we bought them. I also finally have a strawberry turning red before anything (bug or dog) managed to eat it.

Lastly, with my work on my thesis winding down, I've had more time for reading and music. I am most excited about finally installing iTunes on my new computer last month and this month I have a pretty substantial library to enjoy while I'm cruising the internet. I also went to a few used book stores and found some amazing books that I have been wanting to read for years. I started Women Who Run With The Wolves this week and I love Dr. Estes' writing. It tends to put me in another state of mind, which, admittedly, I don't think I'll be quite ready for until after this next week of thesis work.

All in all, things are looking good and I'm pretty excited about the progress happening in all these areas of my life.