Tentative Dissertation Defense Date

I took the suggestions from my blog readers (you all) and my co-adviser and e-mailed my committee members asking for their out of town schedules for May and June. This was met with opposition from my primary adviser. He states again and again that people don't set up defense dates until the draft is in the committees hand. This is what my husband did and he ended up graduating later than needed because one of his committee members was out of town for three weeks. I wouldn't mind doing this if I didn't feel like my schedule was so tight. We want to move the first week in July and I'd like to defend before then. In addition, I don't live in dissertation town anymore so I'd like to buy a flight when the flights are cheap and not two weeks before the defense date.

I just got back from my advisers office and he reluctantly agreed that I could ask my committee members to keep free the dates of June 25, 26 and 27. This means that by the end of the first week in June my draft must be to my committee, which is less than two months away!!

I should feel good, right? I don't. I feel like my adviser won't care to meet this deadline and will keep pushing back my defense date. I also feel like I wasn't strong enough when we just met. I pushed the stress onto my husband stating that I didn't want to move the first week in July but my husband wants to (needs to). I shouldn't have said that. I also said that although our lease ends on July 9th we could likely extend it for a week or so. I stated that we'd like to get to home state because it will be easier to find positions once we are there. My husband isn't getting good responses, I mean ANY responses from the people he'd like to work with. I also said that I could probably fly out here to defend from home state but that is not ideal I shouldn't have offered up that scenario. I felt like I went in strong and said this is what needs to be done and when my adviser didn't seem happy about it I waivers and came up with excuses for my strong opinion.

Even though my adviser may not try hard for me to complete a final dissertation draft by June 6th, I will. I can only control my own actions. I also will e-mail my adviser every day just to keep him on track.

I'll post some goals here to keep myself accountable.
-I progressed a lot while here in dissertation town on manuscript "0" from masters thesis. I now have everything I need to resubmit. I will give my resubmission to adviser on April 25th. A week from today.
-I finished collecting some data while in dissertation town for my final chapter (3-S) of my dissertation. I will have all the figures made and a good outline by April 30th.

I'll revisit chapter 3-S once the figures are made but hopefully it can be fully written by May 5th. Then all my chapters will have been written and I'll have five weeks to make revisions, write the abstract and conclusions (think I'm doing kinda a list form of significant conclusions, as each chapter has a detailed conclusion) and reformat.