Monday, June 11, 2007

1.5 hours writing, 2 hours reading/researching, 0.5 hours emailing, 2 hours administrivia.

Please welcome a new monitor for this week: Kristin Donnelly, in New York. I met Kristin through her boyfriend Josh, with whom I went to high school. Kristin works for Food & Wine magazine, and gets to jet around the country sampling local eateries and writing them up. Apparently, this glamorous lifestyle has its flipside of hours spent rating kitchen implements. Decide for yourself how envious you are on the F&W editorial blog, to which Kristin is one of several contributors. Thanks, Kristin, and welcome!

I made some changes to my outline and sent it off to one of my advisors, so that was a big step. I now clearly have a lot more outline to fill out. My four existing chapters (Intro, Theory, Colombia 1886-1914, Colombia 1946-1966) are getting more and more fleshed out. Now I have four more chapters to outline: one on police systems in Latin America, one on Colombia before 1886, one on Colombia between 1914 and 1946, and one on Colombia in comparative perspective. At one point, the first and fourth I just mentioned were going to be the same thing, but it's looking right now like I do need to introduce the idea of police systems up front, and then come back later to a structured comparison with other countries based on what I've found.

Refining this outline has been useful in terms of clarifying and simplifying my argument. I've been doing some judicious pruning, clipping off branches in the argument that don't go anywhere useful or that throw off the basic symmetry or balance of the overall picture. For example, I used to try to talk about the role of political parties in influencing local-level interactions with the police, but that's just complicating things overly much.

Anyway, more administrivia than I would have liked today, but it turns out I hadn't really finished transferring all of the relevant files from my home computer to my laptop. Excuses, excuses....

We ate at a really great storefront Indian place in the Village called Lassi on Saturday. Cathy had chicken with spinach and roti, and I had a stuffed goat paratha with cardamom lassi. Mine were interesting, and I'm glad I tried them, but Cathy's choice was a cut above: super-bright and fresh-tasting, but complexly spiced. All this from a French-Italian former pastry chef operating out of a five-seat storefront. I love New York!

4 comments:

Kristin + Phil said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kristin + Phil said...

Funny, Chris. I almost stopped by Lassi today. I've been dying to eat there and so far have only tried the fresh, fruity yogurty drinks (tell me, is lassis the correct plural of lassi? Perhaps we can create your pet peeve #41).

But enough about food and back to the task at hand. I think Mondays are great for doing admin work. Don't beat yourself up about it. Also sounds like you were productive on top of it. So overall a good start to the week!

Is the time stamp here in Eastern time? Because if you completed all this stuff by 12:30, then I'd say you are doing incredibly well. If I were you, I wouldn't even get started until then!

Kristin + Phil said...

Sorry. That first comment was one I posted before reading it over. Then I was too much of a dummy to figure out how to edit it. So in a panic, I deleted it not knowing that evidence would be left behind.

Chris said...

Hey Kristin,

Thanks! I only claim grammar-police status over languages I actually speak. :)

Too funny about the comments - thanks for clarifying, I'm glad I don't have an anonymous heckler!

Oh Lord, the timestamp is definitely Pacific time....