Inverse Correlation

...between happiness (success?) in my personal and academic life.

A few updates:

1) In the words of the Boss: My relationship is going down, down, down. We're going down, down, down. How do two people who love each other so much make each other so miserable? There will be many follow-up posts to this particular topic.

2) I have stopped both eating and exercising, which has translated into a net loss. This has also translated into many people telling me how fabulous I look. I'm torn between being flattered and offended.

3) I did not receive the NSF grant that would have funded all of my dissertation data collection. The grant that I spent months, and months, of work and frustration and meticulousness and pain on. I received an email telling me this about five minutes before my boyfriend (ex-boyfriend?) sent me an email saying that he didn't think he wanted to be in a relationship now, he wasn't saying not *ever*, but just not now. Leading me to the conclusion that things requiring so much tedious work and effort are probably not worth it.

But...

4) I finally bought an airplane ticket to Berlin (for the first part of my data collection).

5) A day later I found out that I received another small grant, and the small grants I have gotten up until now come out to about half of the NSF grant. So I'm getting there, baby step by baby step.

6) My program chair, spurred by the quite positive reviews that my NSF grant received considering that it was turned down, told me the department would fund my entire trip to Berlin.

7) My dissertation is coming along quite nicely. This is, I believe, the first time that I have ever been able to say that.

And, unrelated to any of this, 8) I bought an iPhone! Coolest invention ever. (Thanks Mom!)

So, I'm off to Berlin in exactly two weeks. I'll be gone for a month. Couldn't think of a better time to get away.