All is as well as you could imagine...

Man half of the McNelsons here...

I've been doing a TERRIBLE job of contributing to this blog. And I guess the reason is that I don't really have anything NEW to offer. Same old, same old.

Life overall is pretty good but it could be, and it will be, A LOT better when I finish this [insert string of expletives here] PhD.

Rather than even try to explain, I could just sum it up with grad school is truly "the snooze button on the alarm clock called life". [ref phdcomics.com] Alternatively, aside from what Kristy has been posting about our awesome daughter, my life is dominated by my dissertation. I have made so much progress, but until it's done, I must just keep progressing. You know it's bad when you don't even want to talk to anyone anymore because that would require explaining why this [more expletives here] thing is still going...well there's a million reasons that you don't even want to know about.

Anyways, I am still alive, although at times barely. Making Amber smile makes me smile, I have a wonderful wife who is amazingly supportive, and the 3 days off I've taken to snowboard this year have all involved fresh powder and even one air where I was actually high enough off the ground to briefly scare myself and I experienced the joy of landing it clean, and riding away full of adrenaline smiling ear-to-ear. Little moments like these make me confident that I'll be able to re-integrate into society when I'm done, but not until. It's do or die until it ends, even if it ends badly, at least it will end. A neutral motto that is keeping me going.

So sorry for being so despondent. If you know anyone else who's done a PhD, they can explain the horrors of finishing to you, or maybe their justification of why they didn't. I'm sure at the point where I'm questioning why I'm even bothering...but apparently that's just "part of the process" and indicates that I am getting near.