Ph Egypt D

Andrew turned in the revised copy of his dissertation today. Judging by how good I feel about this, I think it's safe to say Andrew is feeling pretty darn relieved. That's how Ken Rogerson said he'd feel when he finished, that there wouldn't be any sense of triumph or accomplishment. Rather, it would feel like a burden had been lifted. More of a "Phew! I didn't die!" than a "Look at what I did!"

Of course, I did look at what he did before he submitted it, just to make sure there weren't any glaring errors (which, of course, there were): repeated words, omitted words, superfluous words, poorly formed lists, incorrect declensions. Common errors like that will find their way into anyone's writing.

My favourite mistake, however, was the following. I can't give it precisely in context because I don't have his draft on this computer, but it basically went like this:

In the middle of a well-crafted, erudite, complex and lengthy paragraph I found a beautiful, complete sentence that made perfect sense. Egypt. This was followed by another logical and acceptably written sentence.

I actually burst out laughing when I came to that little mistake. In his defense, he had just discussed an example of something that had happened in Tunisia and the following sentence was an example of the same thing happening in Egypt, so the little "Egypt," that found itself sandwiched between those two sentences was probably a remnant of an early outline or something. But still.


When I showed it to him he also burst out laughing and we haven't been able to let it go all night.

We've both been inserting "Egypt" into conversation just for fun. For example:

"We'll have scriptures and prayer when Mom comes," he told the children while I was finishing up my editing work.

I walked downstairs and announced, "I am here. Egypt. We can start now."

Or while we were unpacking boxes I offered to take a stack of boxes to the garage and Andrew handed me the boxcutter and said, "Oh, you might want to flatten the boxes first. Egypt. It will make them easier to carry."

I'm really too tired to tell whether it's actually funny or not...