T-37 hours.

This is entirely for my benefit so that I don't forget something important in the midst of my sleep-depped stupor tomorrow. For those of you keeping score, this is what I need to do before I sleep tomorrow night:

*Title/Copyright Pages
*Acknowledgements
*Abstract (not the most elegantly written 195 words ever written, but it'll do)
*Table of Contents
*Short Titles page
*Works Consulted (mostly done--need to check through my actual MLA Style Guide to make sure I have all the formatting right, but at least all the info is there)
*Conclusion
*Come up with clever chapter titles
*Use people's comments to help edit ch. 1
*Ditto ch. 2 (First pass only, will get to Shoshana's comments tomorrow)
*Restructure the HECK out of ch. 1
*Edit restructured ch. 1 so it flows with something vaguely approaching elegance
*Write concluding paragraphs for chs 1 and 2
*Fevered last-minute read-through to catch any glaring mistakes
*Fiddle with the footnotes to make sure they don't break off in the middle and continue onto the next page--stupid Word doesn't do that for me, so I have to do it manually.
*Get the fucker bound!

Okay. I'm off to bed for a whopping three hour long nap, after which I will get up and do it allllll over again. Yay.

*yaaaaaaawn*

Well, I'm upright again, I guess, 40 minutes or so later than I planned on waking up. Keeping my fingers crossed that food and caffeine will prop me up a little, because I feel like thrice warmed over arse at the moment.

30 hours until this fucker's due. Let's see how far I can get before I drag my butt to Kinko's and get it bound.

Erm, the thesis, not the butt.

Right.

Because this was exactly what I needed last night...

Shine
Cyndi Lauper

Shine I'll stand by you
Don't try and push me away
'cause I'm just gonna stay
You can shine I won't deny you
And don't be afraid it'll all be ok

Do you know my name
Well I ain't gonna take
that big time line
won't be beat by a lie
Gonna call out to these embers
waiting to ignite
Gonna pull you up
By your love, by your love
and tell you

SHINE I'll stand by you...

I can see the frown you wear
All around like some faded crown
Like a watch over wound
Gonna call down to this diamond
buried underground
Gonna pull you up
by your love, by your love
and tell you -

SHINE I'll stand by you...

When it's said and done
What you need will come
and time won't let me
Let you let me waste it this time
shine...

Fuck

I didn't save to my IFS space last night, just to the local desktop, which gets wiped after you log out.

About 7 hours of revisions are gone. Completely gone.

I was up until 6 in the morning, and everything's gone.

I just... cannot even deal with this.

(no subject)

I was wrong.

It wasn't 7 hours of revisions, it was closer to 11. I just keep sitting here, staring at the screen in a daze, and my brain won't work and the words that were there last night are gone and this is just one fucking thing too many this semester. I jsut want to give up, but my stpid pride won't let me and the tears are coming again in the middle of the biggest computing site on campus and I don't care. How could I have been so fucking stupid? No hard copies. I didn't even e-mail the stupid thing to myself! What the fuck? If the computer had crashed on me or something that would be one thing, but this was completely my own fault. I feel like throwing up.

I really don't think I can fix this in time.

*deep healing breath*

Okay.

So.

I went and talked to my thesis advisor, who, being the best advisor in the whole wide world, calmed me down and helped me form a plan of attack:

1. Take a break of at least two hours in which I calm down, spend time with a friend, eat something, get myself into a better mental state.
2. Do any of the cosmetic stuff that absolutely needs to be done--fix citations and typos and whatnot, and retype the abstract (thank Gods I have a hard copy of that, at least)
3. Recreate as much as the rest as I can, realizing that's it's already basically turn-in-able, my argument is good, and the revisions I have left, while they'll make the writing stronger, aren't necessary to the argument as a whole.
4. Know when it's time to cut my losses, get the thing bound, and be done with it.

All of which was very sensible advice.

Anyway, through sort of an odd set of circumstances I ended up meeting quixoticdancer for lunch, which was wonderful. We really are the same person, it turns out, except I'm taller. And!And!And! it turns out that she may single-handedly have solved my jobless terror for this summer/next year. I don't want to say anything else until I know for sure, but if this works out it will be the best thing to happen to me this whole craptacular year.

And here's the thing... if I hadn't lost all that work, if I hadn't posted those panicked LJ entries, quixoticdancer wouldn't have invited me to come visit her at the library, might not have thought that I'd even be interested in such a job. If this works out... kinda makes you wonder about that whole "things happen for a reason" idea, huh?

Sanity: returning

Okay.

Nap: Check
Nutritious dinner: Check
Phonecall with mommy: Check

I'm giving myself until midnight to finish this. Anything left to do at that point will just have to stay undone.

This time tomorrow, I will be sitting in Ashley's with a drink in my hand. Possibly several.

Gotta make these last few hours count.