An Introduction and a GIVEAWAY!

I have to tell you guys why I've been largely M.I.A. lately. It's partly due to my hectic work schedule, like I told you last time I posted. But there's something else. I have an announcement.

I have a new baby!

No, not that kind of baby.

I'm talking about my Etsy shop, Sticky Chic Boutique!

I make vinyl wall decals. You know, the removable kind that look hand-painted? They're all the rage in home decor. They're sticky, and they're chic. Get it? I knew you would. I have such smart, stylish readers.

Photo by Ashley Erin Photography.
Get the decal here.

I also make car decals, painted signs and subway art, and personalized items like water bottles and tumblers.

Photo by Ashley Erin Photography.
Get the tumbler here.

Photos by me (in case you couldn't tell by the inferior quality).
Get the beach bucket here.

Now that the shop is more or less established, I promise not to abandon you again. I love this blog and I love YOU, but what can I say, I love to get my craft on, too. I know, right?? Totally unexpected. This won't become a craft blog or anything, but you might expect to see a few more posts relating to crafts, kinda like this one.

Only now, you can buy the crap I make!

Or...you can win some of that very same crap in my first-ever blog giveaway!

That's right! To make up for leaving you all these weeks, I'm introducing you to my shop with a giveaway. The winner will receive ONE of the following (winner's choice!):

1. One custom tumbler, or
2. One 12"x12" custom wall decal, or
3. One custom kids' sand bucket and water bottle set

See how nice I am??

This is good stuff, you guys. You already know I'm beautiful and talented, and now in addition to allowing you to read my words, I'm allowing you to purchase items I have actually made with my hands. You're welcome.

Look! It's a Rafflecopter widget. Get to it:


a Rafflecopter giveaway


I love you guys, and I've missed you. I'm back on the blogging horse now, new and improved with crap for sale.

The winner will be contacted by email sometime after the contest ends. I know I'm supposed to give you some kind of to-the-minute winner notification schedule but that's not really how I roll. If you win, you'll know about it. Promise.

*contest only open to residents of the United States. Sorry, lovely foreigners! I love you but I can't afford to ship you free stuff!*

Reasons I don't like you: master's student edition

You guys.

I'm sorry.

That was like, an unprecedented dry spell, wasn't it?

I'm back now.

Here's the deal: May is Hell Month in the life of Alyssa.

See, my regular, full-time day job is at a university. One of my duties is editing and compiling the academic catalog each year. This wraps up in May so it's a very busy month in my day job.

My second, side job is as a Thesis Reader, also for the university. I proofread master's theses and doctoral dissertations before they go to publication. Students turn them in each year in, you guessed it...May. At the moment I have 14 of these (ranging from 50 to 200 pages, depending on the discipline and on the student and quite frankly, on the student's discipline), all due back by the end of the month.

Then there's my third job, blogging. And also my new Etsy shop (coming soon: an actual post featuring products from said Etsy shop and possibly even a giveaway!).

And oh yeah, I have a husband and two children and a home and laundry and what not.

So. That's why you haven't seen much of me.

Thesis reading is a fun job. By fun I mean not really fun so much as interesting except when it's not interesting at all and it's excruciatingly boring or worse, painful.

I've been doing this for 5 years now and I'm quite good at it. I can tell when I open one whether it'll be fun or interesting or boring or painful. Here are some of my red flags.

1. If your thesis is more than an inch thick, I don't like you.
2. If your major is anything in Education, chances are, I don't like you. And also I fear for the youth of America.
3. If there's a typo on your title page (YES IT HAPPENS), I really don't like you.
4. If I go to cross-check your references and I can't find John Bowling because he's on page 4 of the reference list, I don't like you. Anybody whose name begins with B should appear on the first page. If Bowling is on page 4 THAT'S TOO MANY REFERENCES FOR ME TO CHECK AND GUESS WHAT I DON'T LIKE YOU.
5. If your thesis contains more than 2 tables, I don't like you.
6. If your thesis contains figures, I don't like you.
7. If you use a lot of words like "t-test" and "bivariate" and your thesis is peppered with seemingly random italicized letters like n and s, I don't really like you. Yes I know what this stuff means but I don't want to and I blame you.
8. If you're a Psychology major with a concentration in Behavior Analysis and you've written a 150-page thesis about pigeons pecking colored buttons, I do not like you.
9. If your margins are wrong, I don't like you. Seriously. They're margins. If you can't handle setting your margins, I'm terrified of what else I'm about to experience.
10. If you didn't use APA to format your thesis, I don't like you. Yes, I was an English major and we used MLA, but that was more years ago than I care to count, and since then I've become thoroughly converted to APA. I especially don't enjoy having to learn Turabian overnight so I can proofread your thesis.
11. If you didn't proofread, I do not like you.
12. If you misuse hyphens, we will never be friends. I don't like you.
13. If you think "data" is a singular, I don't like you.

So. How has your May been so far?

The good news? In June I get paid for this nonsense and in June I WILL BE RICH. And then maybe I'll like all these people a little more.