The most exciting day

I've just made the electronic submission of the dissertation.

I have also printed out the copy which I will be taking for binding and hand-over in person in a few days time.

I had a lot of trouble with the 10 Appendices, which are in a mixture of formats, including Word and Excel. I got them to print nicely but then found that I am only allowed to submit 5 files electronically. Copying them into the main dissertation didn't really work because the formatting went all wrong. So eventually I batched them into four groups of roughly similar format so that I could submit just 5 files. This is the sort of logistics that brings down a dissertation. Microsoft Office was supposed to make Word and Excel totally compatible but they are not.

So that's pretty much it ...... except it isn't because I need to firm up the forward plan. My supervisor has suggested I should try to publish a version of my work in a journal. I would like to make it into a book. And then there is my partly-planned novel to pick up again. And that is a complicated one, so might take a few years. And might need a creative writing course.

Meanwhile ... we have another holiday soon. And a family party to make for Sunday.

And I've ditched Old Faithful and have a new hairdresser - Creative. She talked a good talk and it looks good now but we shall have to see how it looks in a few days time.

So watch this space -  there will be another project soon.

Scary

Its a scary thought that in just over a week I will be going to the campus with a printed copy for binding. So very soon, I need to accept that no further tweaks are possible and I have to freeze it and start printing. I've reduced the word count to just under the required 12,500 and checked and rechecked the references and citations.
We are only just a week returned from our Norwegian fjords cruise and in about two weeks we cruise the Duoro. So its all a bit of a flurry. A river cruise is different in dress code from an ocean cruise so it will take a bit of thinking through.

Holiday reading

Books I read on holiday - all these are recommended:
Sophie Hannah - Hurting Distance
John Le Carre - A Delicate Truth (this one is for Le Carre fans, but he has not lost his touch after all this time)
Belinda Bauer - Finders Keepers (this is the third novel, after Blacklands and Darkside - chilling thrillers)
Elizabeth Moon - Speed of Dark (told from the point of view of an autistic character but more nuanced than Curious Incident)
Emma Donoghue - Room (stunning original novel, perhaps the best of the bunch for me)