Thursday, January 25th

Buying a house and trying to speed up your dissertation is tiring, and slightly stressful I find. I want to work quickly, but my progress is so slow. I am trying to figure out a good introduction for a set of studies that are difficult to fit into a theoretical introduction (and obviously the idea should have been to have a theoretical idea and then test it with some studies - we had one idea which was theoretically based, but somehow it does not quite fit the theoretical base well enough to make an entire introduction). And not having a key to your future house but wanting to buy kitchens, carpets and wooden floors is difficult when you need to let in people for measurements. We could have the key of the house were we not sticking to our principles. We were promised the key of the house before actual sale, but not told that we would have to pay a considerable amount of money a month to have it. So we said no. And now I regret it. The selling estate agent has been thinking about our no for a week so we can't do a thing until we hear from him.
Oh, and interacting with J has been a little difficult too. I finally ended up calling him because I am still waiting to put a study which was supposed to start running next week through the ethical committee. I called him and he said he would do it (and I could call him if I heard no more from him within 2 days), then I heard no more within 2 days so called him again, he said we should schedule a phone conversation, which we have done for tomorrow afternoon 3pm. That was about the time B and I were supposed to go and take wooden planks to our house to see how they look. So now poor B has to leave work earlier to do that before my phone conversation. He is being nice about it (said he would have done the same, I could have said no, but then I would have slowed the progress ? down even more). I just hope J is sitting behind his phone at 3pm tomorrow! And I fear there is some bad news coming, otherwise he would have finished the protocol and handed it in rather than asking me to call, I think. We'll see, I feel confident that he will not leave me in a fix whatever the problem may be. Tomorrow I have to concentrate on how to teach my bachelor students on Tuesday. People tell me it is possible to guide students into a direction of research. Trouble is, I have never done that before, I am not sure I know how to.
OK, so now I've put down all the worries. But I still love the house, it is a happy time too, just looking forward to living together. Or sitting in a kitchen shop with someone spending hours drawing a kitchen for you, including pots and pans onto the gas ring. Very sweet, but if you have already spent 5 hours looking at kitchens, and were hoping to go home, you wonder about the necessity of such details. And I look at B and have to grin, he has an entirely straight face but I know he is thinking exactly the same as I am "you don't have to colour in every part of this kitchen, we get the idea". I sat there next to him grinning.
Time for my couch!