I'm pretty much done with chapter 6 of my dissertation. I haven't had a lot of time to think about my SIMS data (collected last month) like the rest of my data, so I'm not that satisfied with my discussion section, but I'll get a chance to present some of this new data in a few weeks at our next research group meeting and get some feedback. As for the chapter, I'll sleep on it tonight and then tomorrow fix up anything I want to change, and then send it off to Tom to review. I should also send a copy to Rick, who runs the SIMS instrument. He seemed pretty interested in my experiment.

Next up will be to revise chapter 1, the background chapter, which Tom got back to me a few weeks ago. Then I need to start scheduling the actual defense. Looking at the deadlines and wait times (the dissertation has to be turned into format review 10 working days before the defense), I will most likely defend the first week of November. Two weeks for writing the final chapter (mostly arm waving), and two weeks for format review. I better get cracking!