Saga of a writing man

So yea, I am writing my dissertation. I think it's going okay, but probably a lot slower than I would want. The total is up to about 45 (new) pages, but because the topic changed so much from the last 110 pages I wrote in 2006, I estimate that I can only use about 50% of the old stuff. Today I didn't leave my apartment until 7:15 p.m., and that was to go jogging. Other than 2 short telephone conversations and a few words of invitation (& declination) from the guys playing soccer as I jogged past, I haven't even spoken to anyone today. How's that for exciting?! Tomorrow I'm going to force myself back to my "office", which turns out to be one of the brown booths in the "schooner room" of the student union. Yes, my office at the cushy Nat'l Weather Center has far too many distractions and not enough 'white noise'. So despite the large numbers of people who pass by my booth at the Union, I'm pretty much distraction free and can focus. Of those 45 new pages I have written, about 30 of them have come from the union. Here are a few other thoughts on my mind tonight:

- I am getting nostalgic. Even before leaving. I've had people over to my apartment for dinner 4 of the last 7 nights, and 2 of the other nights I was either at a party (Celia's on Saturday) or at Wildwood 6:11 (on Sunday). Tonight I flew solo.

- Even though this period of time is my favorite (the weeks bookending [or "couching", that one's for you Anneliese!] the start of fall semester classes), primarily because of the opportunities to meet new people, I think God has asked me to continue investment in the relationships I've already been blessed with, instead of actively seeking out new ones. Of course befriending the Uni Reading "6" was a blast, and I enjoyed my chats with the Uni-Hamburg students on Saturday. But as I have perhaps two more months in Norman, I really do want to pour into the already-established relationships, strengthening them before I go. Is this normal?

- I am, however, very excited about joining up with Mr. Nathan Crain and Mr. Bob Pillow - and others - for a bible study over heroes of faith. It should be pretty much nothing short of awesome, since I really enjoy those guys, and I enjoy studying the word of God. Can you get a better combination? :-)

- Writing gets to be a chore. When I awoke today I read an email from a NOAA colleague describing one of his methods of quantifying TC activity. And I really like his method -- it is not used as often -- so I spent most of the day recalculating my statistics using his method. I didn't get much anything new, which verifies the robustness of each of the activity quantifications: count, ACE, PDI, and sTCd. It was a nice result. My personal goal is to have the chapter on the MJO basically complete by early next week --- we'll see how that goes since I have yet to create any of the figures (can we use Google Earth in a dissertation??! Is that scientifically acceptable?) or tables.

- I should really take (and then upload) photos. I don't like reading all-text posts, and yet this is what I give you guys. Thanks for slogging through!