Roadside Picnic

It's done. Commencement was today, and I am a Master of Public Health.

And what a day it was. I got up plenty early to get over to the shop and get the Mariner checked out. Could have been a whole lot worse - broken flex pipe. Relatively inexpensive fix, but a few other issues were identified. These will probably be taken care of in Liberty. To their great credit, the shop here was able to get the repair done in time for me to drive to commencement, saving me the cost of a Lyft. I used one of Dad's cards to park for free at the Galt House, and got back to the arena for lineup and commencement.

Commencement was about what I expected, and I'm glad I brought something to read. My cohort was the very last group to be recognized, so we mostly made the best of it. We decided we would make slow walks across the stage, not crowd or rush each other, just enjoy our last moments as students. It worked. It was good.

Afterwards, lunch with Mom&Dad, and that was a good time. Mom's having some issues with mobility right now, so Dad went back to the hotel garage to get the Canyon and come back to the restaurant to pick her up. And this is where the trouble started.

After, oh, 20 minutes or so, I get a text from Dad - "I can't find the truck." I show Mom, we laugh, and decide that we'll both walk back to the hotel and I'll help Dad. No big hurry, we'll just mosey along at Mom's comfortable speed and when we get to the hotel, Dad will have found the truck and all will be well. This turned out to be a very good idea for Mom's sake.

Dad texted me at about 2PM. We didn't find the goddamned pickup until 3:45. Dad kept saying some combination of parking level and space, so, logically (at least to me), I tried to find it. Well, I did ... and no truck. And Dad says, "Okay, good, this where I was parked this morning before I went out to find breakfast for me and your mommy." And I'm pretty sure I heard that record-scratch sound from TV sitcoms. I managed not to yell, but did raise my voice above conversation level when I asked what. Dad figured that if he could find where the truck was, he could retrace his path to find where the truck is. As I am telling a story, you may have already guessed that this did not work. We found the truck. Pardon - I found the truck. And while I maybe overreacted, I felt myself sliding up my scale of anger. I was silent during most of this search, almost swore at Dad in frustration. Mom had started texting during the search. She was starting to get some anxiety hits. I do not blame her.

Got home a little after 4PM. Tried to take a nap before going out for Housemate's birthday to-do. Had just gotten stretched out on the couch when a serious motherfucker of a muscle cramp hit my left calf. Oh goddamn did this thing hurt. If I move my foot the wrong way, I can still feel a little bit of soreness. Okay, anyway, headed out to the restaurant. Got sick of waiting for flakes to show, so I started ordering - damned good cheeseburger, for the record. I'd had a vibe that this would happen - Diane showed up. About a half-second of eye contact, and, welp, my decision from about this time last year was vindicated like you wouldn't believe. Nothing there. Nothing. Anyway, some good talking with other party members, then off to the bar, and I waved off of that after about 20 minutes because I was just tired.

And now I'm on my couch for a few more minutes before crawling into bed. Tomorrow, I'm either binging on movies over at Village 8, or lying in bed all damn day. I have earned either one.

Friday night, a couple of Imperial Assault missions. Saturday, a lot of nothing. Weather was crap, didn't want to go anywhere near Churchill Downs, didn't even go out that night. Sunday, I think, was more of the same. Reading, some job-hunting.

The run-up to graduation starts today. There's a graduate celebration breakfast in a couple of hours. Pick up the regalia tomorrow. Rehearsal Friday evening, and commencement on Saturday morning. I guess everything is about as settled as it can be. People know where they're supposed to be and when. Just have to download a couple of podcasts.

Still waiting on one grade to post. GroupMe conversation with the HPBS cohort this morning led to the consensus that the instructor completely forgot about the class as soon as we all left the final session on the 19th. This has not made me regret the harsh evaluation I gave this class and instructor.

The thing is, as a person, and as someone with deep knowledge of the subject matter, the instructor is fantastic. She definitely Knows Her Shit, she just isn't a good teacher at all. We got very little feedback as to our progress in the course over the semester, and, well, here we are nine days after turning in our final assignment, and we're still waiting.

Wanna know what I did last night? Got out of class around 5:30, went home, renewed my WoW subscription and while 8 months of updates downloaded and installed, stretched out on the couch and read a hundred pages or so of Ancillary Justice, watched The Flash, then went to the grocery.

And felt absolutely no guilt whatsoever about any of this. One way or another, my MPH program is over. Now we wait on the grades to post.

One way or another, in about 29 hours, my run at a MPH will be over. Expecting grades to be posted by the end of the week. And there's the fear.

Claimed my Origins shifts. Lots of Pandemic variants for me, and some New Angeles to break the monotony. I've always pitched Crafty's pretty generous comp package when recruiting people for GenCon, but man, it must be nice to have Asmodee's money. For 24 hours on the clock over the five days of the con, I'm getting my room comped, an hourly rate, and parking and mileage reimbursed. That? That ain't bad at all.

I don't know what I'm going to do with myself after tomorrow night. Job search, of course, but I'm going to have free time. I can do nothing for a while and not feel bad about it. I can read more than 15 pages of a non-academic text at a sitting without feeling like I'm blowing things. I can renew the WoW subscription. I can ... play with trains. I can go somewhere for the weekend and not have to lug textbooks with me.

Madness.

Sweet Christmas, I can feel my shoulders loosening up.

Yesterday's presentation went well enough, and now we are done with that mess of a class. Have to go over to K-Wing (not the New Republic bomber) to pick up a hardcopy of the report for our MPH instructor. Got a couple of pages to lift from a previous term paper and edit into a report on the ACA and Kynect and Benefind this morning before diving back into my policy brief and practicum report.

Tomorrow is Thunder Over Louisville, the kickoff to the Kentucky Derby Festival. Big airshow and fireworks display, drawing about 650,000 people to downtown and the riverfront. Weather forecast is not good - heavy rain throughout the entire day and air temperatures in the upper 50s. I can't go - will still have work to do, and though I do love that kind of weather, I prefer to watch it through the window or from a nice sheltered front porch. I've seen a few of the aircraft participating already - a F-18 flying up and down the riverfront, and a P-51 and what I think was a Tucano flying over the neighborhood.

I've been coming into SPHIS early this week, getting here around 6AM, to make use of the quiet to get work done - heck, I'm awake before 5AM, so why not make good use of the time. It's actually very nice. I can lock up a conference room and just press on. Traffic is, unsurprisingly, very light and I get here before the full morning shifts at UofL hospital come in, so parking is easy to find. I've seen the ending minutes of some underground utility work on the corner, more ambulance runs than I expected, and other little moments. I'm going to miss this place, I think.

I'm looking at getting back into painting miniatures when I have free time again (which is in less than a week holy shit this is really happening). At the very least, I want my Armada squadrons to be more easily identified in the case of mirror matches, and, well, the red Imperial Guard paint job on TIE Interceptors looks very good. As I finally gave in and started playing Imperial Assault, I've got those figures to work on.

Nerdery.

Last semester, and maybe more so this one, I have had some straight-up panic attacks over the amount of work (particularly large papers and projects) required in this program. These have been mostly self-created, if I'm being honest with myself. I can handle the work; I just have to remember to handle it in chunks instead of looking at the entirety of the project. What I also have had to remember is, when I'm piddling around and procrastinating, is ... I like doing this stuff. I like diving into existing literature on the subject. I like figuring out how to pull relevant data out of different reports and studies and synthesizing something out of it. I like putting the words down. 

I have to do a lot of it in the next few days. This is what's still outstanding: Integration final exam tonight. Policy presentation Wednesday. Evaluation presentation Thursday morning. Policy report Friday afternoon. Practicum presentation on the 24th. Social Determinants group paper and presentation on the 25th. And that is it. One way or another, my grad school run is over in eight days. Long nights ahead.

I'm trying to stop griping about this final semester. There is nothing to be done, as Kim Stanley Robinson wrote. Just have to deal with the problems, hit the markers, and get out into the field. Put PhD and other considerations aside and focus on the local, the immediate, the things I can affect. Talk, seriously, with the faculty members who have contacts and experience, and can point me down paths I don't know exist.

In the wider world, there's a lot going on. Under Lord Dampnut's direction, the US is pushing for North Korea to be "handled." There's some reason for concern here - remember, of course, that Dampnut is unstable and aggressive and not very smart, and he's already attacked a Syrian airbase with a shitload of cruise missiles. (He also misnamed the nation the missiles' target was located in, while apparently focusing on the quality and size of the cake he was eating at the time. These fucking people.) North Korea tested a ballistic missile yesterday, but the launch failed; there was talk of a nuclear test (April 15 being a national holiday there), but it seems that nothing came of it.

After seeing the Spycraft 1 game at Conglomeration, and a talk with Erin about it, I've had a hankering for an espionage game start to rear it's head. Despite my love of Spycraft, I don't know that I'd use it. I feel like that's ground I've covered comfortably. There's the 007 clone, Classified, and something else I picked up along the way. Merle Rasmussen and some other folks bought the Top Secret name and product rights from WotC, and are launching a Kickstarter campaign to fund Top Secret: New World Order sometime soon. Always good to have options.

I need to go somewhere. Just go. Driving up to a truckstop 15 miles inside Indiana a couple of weeks ago was, I think, the first time I've left Kentucky since GenCon. Christ, I can't recall traveling anywhere besides my routes to Liberty since Thanksgiving. There's a day or weekend trip coming soon, either to celebrate or deal with the end of the semester.

Last week brought an uncomfortable realization. Two years ago, all of us in this cohort were strangers. I don't think any of us knew each other. We met on orientation day, then spent the first semester seeing each other every day before splitting into our concentrations, where smaller groups of us saw each other every day - well, four days a week in class, and regularly out of class to work or not work. And now things are winding up, and when this is all done, some of us will never see each other again. Marc's set on going back to Columbus. Marina's maybe heading to law school. Stephen's taking a year before dental school. I'm looking for epi graduate certificate programs. Katy's been mum about her plans. Jessica, too, but we're betting she chases down a PhD somewhere. We became a family, and as families do, we're about to scatter to the winds. I will miss these folks.

SPHIS reactivated the student ambassador position, so I've gone back to worth this week. No changes in the job, and other staff and faculty are glad we're back. The break was nice, as it let me put a stake in my practicum.

The X-Wing season wrapped up on the 31st. I backed into a playoff slot, and put together a fast-moving very agile squadron, but my opponent's big guns tore me apart in the first round. My buddy Ben S was our eventual champion, playing Rebel Alliance squadrons throughout the playoffs. Now, a few weeks of even more casual play, and probably some Armada and Imperial Assault games, too.

Classes are coming to a close. I'm not as panicked about things as I was a couple of weeks ago. Things look more realistic now. There is a whole lot of work still to be done, but I can manage it.

Weather's looking interesting today. Right now, it's a pretty day, clear skies and warm, but there are watches and warnings to the south, and they're heading this way. Just heard that Auburn University is shutting down for the rest of the day, and Atlanta is getting hit pretty hard. Our currently pleasant weather is expected to feed this mess when it gets close. Have talked with some of the cohort about skipping class tonight, because the front is supposed to hit about the time we go in and stick around through the evening.

This should be my last posting here. The new terms of service don't sit real well with me. I don't have any fear of posting up something that'll break the host country's laws, but for personal and political reasons, I'm not keen on involvement. I'm migrating over to Dreamwidth, with the same journal name, in case anyone wants to follow. Dreamwidth is importing everything from here to there, and I understand that to be a pretty complete and painless progress. Lots of people doing that, looks like, as my entries and replies are deep in a queue. No hurry. Do your thing, machines.

Eleven years and change here. Huh.

Spring Break was a bit of a wash, but it made a lot of progress towards completing my onsite hours requirement for the practicum. In fact, I'll hit that mark on Friday, and then I can put a stake in that motherfucker. Write up my report and put the presentation and poster together and that thing is done.

Still a lot of work to do. Graduation is less than eight weeks away, and I think the last day of the semester is 38 days out. With any luck, Integration will be done on the 3rd. One individual paper, one paired presentation, one team paper for Social Determinants, and that's done. Big ugly paper and project for Policy, and that's done. Train wreck of a group project and some niggling assignments, and Evaluation is done. Planning on many many long nights over the next month.

Had a talk with Dr. Wilson before class this afternoon. He wanted to confirm that the practicum was on track, and seemed pleased that I'd logged a whole lot of hours this month. We're going to have a longer discussion soon about me pursuing another degree in 2018.

I'm not exactly dissatisfied with the HPBS program, but I'm not in love with it, either. I've gotten as much out of my Management Systems electives as I did any of the HPBS courses, and Dr. Esterhay made a heck of a pitch for the new MHA program. It's interesting, and there are really good employment prospects there, but it's just not really something I can see me doing. I've ruled out a PhD or DrPH at this stage - that three-year process would put me just shy of 50 at completion, and I feel like that would be better as a career capstone with active retirement prospects. What's looking good now is an epidemiology MS. Epi was my first choice for the MPH concentration, and I opted out of it for stupid reasons. If the Epi department accepts my HPBS coursework as the bulk of the second-year elective workload, then I can pick up the MS in a year of classes and a semester or two of thesis work. Looking at job postings, I see a lot of epidemiology slots to be filled, and the paired Masters have to look good. More conversations to come.

Saw Logan over the break, in Baxter Avenue Filmworks' ridiculously comfortable recliners. It is a damned good movie, if more than a little bleak. Jackman and Stewart are phenomenal, and Dafne Keen ... she reminded me of Hailee Stansfield's turn in True Grit. Spectacular. If this is indeed the last appearance of Jackman and Stewart as Wolverine and Professor X, they have sure enough gone out on a heck of a high note.