I was going to start my own thread to say what an awesome story this is and how much I enjoyed it, but I thought I'd give the data problem my two cents (although as I was reading, I didn't notice the issue at all).

If you want to treat data as a singular thing, try going with "a data set", i.e. "her data set was imperfect" rather than "her data were imperfect." Choosing data sets or sets of data can make using plural verbs a bit more smooth as well. "her data sets were imperfect" (although that last option doesn't entirely work with the context in this case).

But, yay to Rodney/Cadman. I love the five things format, but I found myself wishing for much more of each vignette. Hopefully this pairing will continue to inspire you in the future :)