Disserting

I haven't been posting as much because I've done quite a bit of (gasp) actual work on my dissertation. I had this hare-brained plan of finishing a draft of my proposal by the end of this Spring Break week, and although I'm not there, I'm definitely closer. For one, I know the proposal outline and how it will play into the final dissertation. I've done a skeleton intro, a huge chunk of literature review (bleh, like pulling teeth. Every sentence has like 5 sources), and had some nice thoughts towards a methodology section. That will also be painful.

BUT, once I've done the literature review, the dissertation itself will be a careful weaving in of the "findings" with the literature review to create more chronological chapters. The end result will probably be something like 6 chapters: an intro, a stand-alone methodology chapter, and three chapters of results/lit review that follow the contours of Alatis's life: beginning as a child up through education, with history of Greek immigrants and foreign/second language education history of the time, his time at the Dept of State/Ed with the Sputnik, post-WWII years of policy, and his life as dean, with info on being a dean as well as the FL policy of the time. But all that lit review stuff will be WRITTEN, making it painful now but hopefully less so for the final product.

In any case, I'm having "Sunday dinner" with friends tonight and making Jamie Oliver's chicken poached in milk along with some mashed potatoes and salad. Friends are bringing some broccoli and dessert.

Here's a glimpse of my table layout for this evening (done my DH was taking apart the chicken to make it a little easier to cook, so I'm not doing the whole chicken poaching thing as prescribed by the recipe.)

From 2010-03-21

And the whole dining room, with the chandelier rescued from my parents-in-law's:

From 2010-03-21

I'll update you on the meal later! I also have a few more recipes to post that I've made over the past few weeks.