Everything Comes In Pairs

So...the "brief" hiatus is turning out to be not-so-brief after all. Still not out of the woods yet, but I thought I'd pop my head up and provide a little status update. But first, thanks to all of you for the comments on my last post, and also to Okham for his nice email!

Lately, my life seems to have been taken over by pairs of things:

• 2 animal protocols. One renewal for my PI and one new submission for me. Mine is done and submitted. My PI's, which is gargantuan, is about 70% done and will be due at the end of October.


• 2 biohazard protocols. One amendment for my PI and one new submission for me. Both done and submitted.

The upside to taking care of someone else's animal and biohazard protocols first is that it makes your own much easier to write. It also helped that my PI actively encouraged me to...um, borrow relevant sections from his protocols for my own. The downsides are having to deal with the same bureaucratic nitpicking shit twice, and the irritation of having the review committees hassle you about something when the same paragraphs in your PI's protocols made it past the committees without comment. A bit of a double-standard, no?

• 2 grants. One is a P01-like group grant headed by a another professor in my department, and the other is a small foundation grant on which I am the PI. The group grant is done and submitted, and my own grant is due in early October.


• 2 presentations for funding agencies. One for the group grant and a group presentation for an agency to which my institution applied for funding. Both done, thank god.

The group grant and group presentation both reminded me of how much I hate having my workload and schedule being dictated by someone else. This was, of course, compounded by a lack of clear and timely communication, which resulted in too many instances of my having to unexpectedly drop everything else I was working on so I could get the Powers That Be the information, figures, slides, etc. they wanted IMMEDIATELY. Blech.

• 2 papers. Both are middle-author papers stemming from side projects. One has been accepted into a journal with a one-word name...whee! The other one did not fare so well--it was rejected without review and is now being reformatted for submission to a different journal.


• 2 technicians to hire. One technician has been hired, although he will not start for another month. The interviewing and hiring of the second technician has fortuitously become somebody else's problem.


• 2 instances of shit happening. A pinworm infestation in one of our animal rooms and being summoned for jury duty next week. Yes, this would be the week before my grant is due....

I can tell y'all have been doing lots of stuff too, judging by the ~900 unread posts in my feed reader. I'm thinking the chances of my ever getting caught up on all of them are pretty low. I don't suppose any of you want to write a Cliffs Notes-style summary post???