Phinishing

On Oct. 19 I submitted a complete and final version of my dissertation to my Univ. Of course, since then I've been notified that I made a mistake on the title page and need to resubmit that... but the point is that I have finished my PhD and will have my degree conferred in December. I'm finally done with grad school. I can stop calling myself a grad student (and start calling myself an unemployed PhD!). It's a huge relief and I'm proud of the work.

At final count, I clocked in at 225 pages of text, 262 total pages, 4 chapters (plus intro and conclusion) and 96 figures.

I have to say, I have never missed my home Uni so much as I do now. It's hard to celebrate when the people who went through it with you are so far away (and when you can't drink. damnit). I also want to make a quick shout out to the Goat, Frankie B's biggest fan, my nun-loving-former-office-mate, my former-student-now-in-the-UK, and a whole host of others who helped read drafts and listen to me whine over the years. This wouldn't have been possible without you - and please send me your work so I can return the favors. For any slugs reading, we'll have to do a modified celebration in the spring when I come for graduation w/ the fam in tow.

In addition to the PhD-finishing, I finished my job applications. Now I'm in the waiting period before interviews are announced sometime in late November. I've had a couple of google pings via Academia.edu, which means people are googling me. But for the most part, I'm much less obsessed with this job cycle than the last. Of course, now I need to put together teaching portfolios, but I'll start working on that at the end of the week. I need to at least draft syllabi for the classes I've have claimed I'm ready to teach (History of Print and the Book, Crime and Punishment, etc).

I've also been finishing up a lot of craft projects. I'm about 95% done on the nursery. In order to keep the baby talk to a minimum, I'll have one big baby-craft wrap up post in the near future. But most recently I put the finishing touches on a quilt.

Oona approves this quilt sandwich.

The finished version.

I'll take better pics for the upcoming post, but here is is for now. It's Elisabeth Fransson's New Wave - a deceptively easy quilt to make. I used large stipling for the actual quilting. Though I love sewing, I'm definitely a better knitter than I am a quilter. The binding is wonky (too big and a bit wavy), and I'm still getting the hang of free motion quilting (probably b/c I do it so infrequently. But I'm really proud of the clean and modern look of this quilt and the way it highlights the fabric.

For those keeping track, I have 24 days until my due date. I'm a PhD, I'm on the job market, and I'm almost done with this pregnancy - this having-a-baby-shit is getting real.

Fall baking

Sometimes you come across a recipe that looks fantastic, but the timing isn't quite right for it. Maybe you're too busy, or it's too much work, or you don't feel comfortable deep frying things even if it means those things will result in homemade chocolate creme filled doughnuts. So you bookmark, or in my case Evernote the recipe and swear come back to it. For example, I saw this recipe for pumpkin challah on WhatJewWannaEat around Rosh Hashana. I wanted to bake it immediately - pumpkin? challah? 2 of my favorite fall foods - but I didn't have the time and we're still rocking temps in the low 100s. It's hard to get excited about spicy, savory fall flavors when it's that hot and you can't bear the thought of turning on the oven.

But every now and then you get a recipe (and temps in the 80s. 80s! It's almost sweater season!) that just screams "bake me now!". Yeah, it's a little bit like your loved one showing up at your house in naught but a trench coat. No matter what else you had planned, you know in that moment that everything else is off the table.

This is what happened when Smitten Kitchen posted a recipe for pumpkin cinnamon rolls.

I thought about saving these for later, but at 6 last night I was running out for cream cheese and butter.

The recipe is pretty easy to follow - although as is standard with me and yeast doughs, I was worried I ruined the dough. I decided to make a 1/2 recipe and the dough was too short for my dough hook. I made some mods as follows:

-1/2 recipe. Use the paddle in your mix master on "stir" if making a 1/2 batch.
-added a full egg, 2 Tbl milk. I need more moisture in the dough in this environment.
-dough took 2.25 hours to double.
-rather than use a rolling pin, I patted it into a 8x11 in rectangle (despite being sticky, this was really easy)
-baking took 30 min.
-no powdered sugar or vanilla, so  whizzed my remaining 3/4c of white sugar in the blender for the icing and added a dash of maple syrup.
-9 rolls fit nicely in my new Emile Henry baking dish (thanks, Kitkat!) without getting squished. Truth be told, they're a bit on the small side, so L and I had one regular roll and split a smaller end piece for breakfast.

Pumpkin cinnamon roll + verve coffee = heaven

These are amazing. Hands down my new favorite cinnamon roll (though I don't actually make rolls that often, maybe once a year?).

Here are some additional mods I think would work well:

-1/2 white and 1/2 white whole wheat or WWpastry flour would be interesting to try and up the health quotient

-I only needed 1 Tbl butter for the filling. I'd consider adding 1/8 -1/4 c. apple sauce and cutting down a bit on the sugar. This would also make them slightly "healthier" (still bearing in mind they are cinnamon rolls)

-1/2 the amount of icing.

Some brief thoughts on the Job Market, round II

-Writing cover letters still sucks. I'm not even sure it's easier than last year, though I have had some really good support from my faculty.

-Striking the balance between researcher/teacher is really challenging.

-I'm much less obsessed than last year, which IS making things easier. I don't have the frantic desire to check the wiki. My heart doesn't go into palpitations every time I get a notification that someone searched for me on google or academia.edu . I'm still pretty strung out about getting these as perfect as possible, but I'm able to let go of them a little bit more than last year.

-I'm debating between booking flights to the AHA under the assumption that I will have interviews, and waiting until I actually hear back. Pro flight booking w/ travel insurance: get cheap flights now. Anti-flight booking with travel insurance: I have no idea what my interview schedule might be, and really don't want to pay to be at the AHA and in New Orleans with L and a 5 week old if I only have 1 interview on the last day.

-I'm a little nervous about buying interview clothes post-partum, but I guess that's what spanx were invented for.

-Finally, I can't wait until this baby is delivered and I can confidently have one of these:

Finishing a dissertation and being on the job market w/o the support of the occasional drink is a real pain in the ass. (so menfolk partnered with womenfolk: give your lady extra support if she decides to go the route I have).