little trip...

i went to bloomington today, first time of my life. nice little city, very much like lafayette but a bit smaller and a lot more liberal, obviously. and gorgeous campus! saw the iep director there, she was very nice and she signed my form, which i then took to the irb office on the other side of town. i should have something from there in about 10 days :( i'll never make it! i'll go to bloomington again when she's collected about 50 questionnaires, because that'll be enough to get an idea about the statistics. and hopefully umbc will also send me something next week, but by mail, so it might take forever to get here. i'm almost tempted to fly there, really, it'd be faster! bloomington isn't too far, only 2 hours one way, spent 2 hours there, and then 2 hours back. i'm still very tired tonight.

i called the translation people yesterday, and the guy's been in china for 3 weeks and promised to call today but didn't, so i'm going to call tomorrow again. i MUST start those translations even if i'm not done with the pilot (haven't started would be more appropriate, really), and it's going to cost me a lot of money for nothing, but otherwise i'll never be ready by august! dammit, this is really stressful. can't sleep at night. my cuticules are practically entirely gone. my hair's turned grey and i bought some color yesterday. i eat non-stop, chocolate and chips, mostly. i've had to force myself to rent movies and have to force myself to watch them, now, so i think about something else for a couple of hours every night. with a bag of chips, of course. plus i need to get another ones of these ultrasounds in august, and i can tell it's not going to look good, already. plus i worry about the bill for the first ultrasound, i'm sure it's going to be like $2000 and the insurence will cover 10% of it, or maybe 15% if i'm lucky. bastards.

got the keyboard i ordered on friday, so i'll be able to enter all the statistics and data and tables and junk on a normal keybord and not on a laptop keybord that doesn't have the number pad. that'll be nice. $20. i've put a mouse in my wishlist because it's a little annoying now to work with a normal keyboard without having a normal mouse and only the touchpad thingy.

oh and yesterday, i got a total of 3 additional IEPs! hehe. but i'm going to eliminate one just because they're on a quarter system plus the lady was being picky about my research questions, but i'm keeping two excellent ieps, one in nevada and one in california, with very nice directors who were very enthusiastic and kind. one of the programs has only 30 students, but oh well, diversity is more important than quantity! plus both of their irbs are super easy. in fact, i called their offices and one lady said i didn't need to do anything... and the other lady only wanted me to send her purdue's stuff. NOTE TO SELF or anyone else who wants to work with this kind of stuff: there are about 500 ieps in the US, so if one irb is too hard, drop that school and find another!!! when i think of the time i wasted (and i am still wasting) with some of those irb protocols...

i can't find my cigarettes tonight. smoked one about 2-3 months ago and i don't remember where i put the pack :( dammit, i really need a smoke!