Getting back in the swing of things

Sheesh, it's been a while. Miss me? (If a blogger blogs and no one reads the blog, is it still a blog?)

This blog is on my mind because my aunt sent me a link to a blog post about a PhD in pictures (http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/). It is never good when I get directed to a new source of information. I end up reading and reading and reading. Probably a procrastination technique, or something. Anyway, this guy had a list of recommended books, which is going to cost me a lot of money. I do like to buy books. He also recommended blogging as a way to practice writing (along the lines of the 10 000 hours of practice required to do something - Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in his book Outliers). So there you have it: I'm not procrastinating, I'm making my thesis better. Except that the way I write on this blog is nothing how I write formally. But I'm sure that's just a minor technicality.

I'm gearing up to start back on school work in October. My plan until then is to clean clean clean and organize my house. I'm really not sure how this is going to go. I have to get the 4 year old and 7 month old busy somewhere (can you say grandma's? - we call her Baba, it's a Ukrainian thing). Then I need to do a bunch of programming simulations, get some results, write them up, defend, and graduate. Sounds simple enough.