New Job

I just received some positive news from a job interview. They want to hire me which is great. I was out for the interview arriving on the Thursday then interviewing from 9 in the morning until almost 1 in the afternoon. It was a long interview but since I was not local, they couldn't exactly call me back in. The job sounds somewhat similar to what I am currently doing only with more bench work and experiments. This will be nice as I think I have fallen into a paperwork rut. It was also nice to come out to visit with my fiance. Living so far apart has been hard on both of us and I will be happy when we are closer together. This job is the step that will get us closer physically.

The interview was last week but since the Investigator was leaving for a long trip the next day I wasn't going to hear anything until today. That was one of the longest waits ever. We are so happy, but now comes the fun part of figuring out moving logistics and timing everything. I had hoped to be able to leave before the last New York business trip but I think it would be for the best of the lab if I did the trip and ensure the project doesn't fall apart before I leave. I so can't wait to get out there.

Slowing down?

I don't have a lot of stuff to do at work lately. I know there is a pile of stuff coming up, mostly in the form of paper work, but after that I really don't have any projects I am actively working on. My one project will be sending me out of town shortly on a business trip which is never fun. So I feel like I am slowing down. I get home and have no desire to do anything at home. I sit down and watch episodes of stuff I download for viewing and knit. I am working on a large lace project. I have a few things on back burners that I hope will come through soon. I don't have the motivation to work on them from home, plus my internet connection disappeared so I work on them a little at work. Hopefully they will bear fruit soon. I also have a new white water meetup group I started and I am waiting for that ball to start rolling on that one. I am already up to 100 members in about 2 weeks, which is great, but we have to wait for the water levels to drop before it is safe to get out on the river in any large numbers. Right now there was so much rain that the river was at flood levels. I am still planning on going out Friday night with some people, on a flat water, protected section. Then again on Saturday morning as I need the exercise. I really do need to get out of this funk I seem to have slipped into but it is hard. Work is no longer challenging, nor interesting. The economy sucks so I can't just find another job and move on.

I have started a new writing project. I have already fleshed out most of my outline, at least enough to give me a good start. I have started writing each point as a section and have about three sections finished now. This is almost 6,000 words. I haven't actually done much work at the writing group gatherings as I keep forgetting my iPod cable. At first the iPod was the storage location for my outline. I finally moved the outline to my google docs and then I couldn't get a connection the last time I was at the cafe. This week, there was no writing gathering as no one was able to make it. I went home and watched more stuff while knitting. Oh well. At least I have some kayaking friday and saturday, plus a beer meeting saturday afternoon. The I leave on a business trip which are always boring. At least I will have plenty of time to get some writing done.

Crazy Co-worker

I came to work today expecting to not do much. We are only scheduled to work Monday and Tuesday this week before the New Year's break. Unfortunately I noticed someone had brought up some experiments that had to be dealt with that day. Apparently there was a miscommunication between some of the team members. This left me and another cow-worker in the position of having to do the experiments so we wouldn't lose the data point. Since we had worked 2 months on this, it wasn't an option to just drop it. So we rushed to label some tubes and started working on the collection points. NEedless to say, our very relaxed day became a very busy day because of this. We have decided in future to make sure everyone is aware of what dates we need to do these on as this was a very long day. Oh well. At least we managed to get the work done before 5:00.

Business Trip

I am once again up in New York on a business trip. This time it is quite cold up here, especially compared to what I was getting weather wise in DC. I tried to bring enough layers but the wind is just biting. I am actually up here alone the first two days as my co-worker was not feeling up to travel and in fact, her doctor told her not to travel. It is better for her to be home then suffering here. The work isn't that hard and I have been here enough times to mostly know my way around. I was also lucky in that we didn't have that much to do up here this run, and everyone who works up here is always very helpful, so I was given a helping hand by everyone. My boss was only able to come the night of the second day and he helped on the third day. This turned out to be really good for me as we managed to wrap everything up early so I changed my flight and left early too. I think he had a good time showing off some of the data we have managed to get from previous work up in New York. The data looked quite nice and the lab is hoping to get a paper out soon on this. At least now I am back to warm DC which had cooled off since I left.

With three days in New York and only a couple of hours of actually work I needed to do, I was left with a lot of time on my hands. So I managed to really put in a lot of work on my word count for National Novel Writing Month. I have participated for the last 2 years, this being my third time. I wasn't going to participate but I decided it is good incentive to get something done. And I have been meaning to write up my trail adventure and compile it into some book form. I just hope I have enough material considering I didn't finish the trail. I'd rather not leave the book in a half finished state, so I will have to come up with some ending.

Brookhaven Again

I had to go up to Upton NY for the spring set of experiments. We also have a summer set and fall set. Big fun there. The summer run dates just came out and we got stuck with a Friday and Saturday as the boss responded a whopping 3 hours after the schedule came out. We had been warned that dates move fast, but we were unprepared for them going that fast. So in the future we now know to response immediately to avoid getting weekends. So basically one whole weekend in June is now shot. There was the small hope of getting out Saturday night after the run, but we have a 24 hour harvest point to deal with so leaving early is out. At least part of the team might be able to leave a bit early. Oh well. I will have to talk to the boss about getting off a few days to swap out for the loss of that weekend.

We actually went up to Upton without the boss this time. It was interesting to not have him around but I think next time we will bring him along. I think he was sad that his teaching schedule didn't allow him to go on this trip. Or rather maybe he had hoped to go so as to avoid the teaching schedule. Oh well, the mice were of the right age so that was that.

Busy workday

Work has started to get really busy lately. I think some of it has to do with the mice but even in the lab I have been finding myself more busy, running around to get things done. TIme is starting to become scarce. Either I am doing more work or I am not working as efficiently as before. I think it is a little of both. I am trying to set up part of a preliminary project and I am not sure how to go about it, so that is taking some time to figure out. It is nice as this is new for me but it is a little bit of a time sink. I also have to decide if I have time in my already busy schedule for masters classes in the fall. I have been trying to do this for a few years now and have finally been in one place long enough to move forward with it. Unfortunately, there are many things I want to do outside of work that are more fun and/or interesting. While advancing my education, degree and job would be great, it has become less of a priority. I feel like I am now working just so I can get out and afford my weekend hobbies. If I could make reliable money doing just my hobbies, then that would work out even better.

ASU trip

I have a business trip coming up in Arizona. I am not really looking forward to it mostly since I took the suggested flight plan without thinking about it. So not only do I have to leave the apartment by 4:30 am I am also missing one of the last kayak rolling sessions. I will only have one more after that and that will be after a 2 week lag. Hopefully I will remember everything. I will be picking someone else up and we will be able to tool around Phoenix together. But neither of us know what there is to do in Phoenix. As far as we know, or have heard, it is a town of retiree's. We are also staying in Tempe so I am not sure how far away Phoenix is or if there is anything more to do in Tempe, which is a college town. We are also working on Monday which is a holiday here. I am not really needed for this trip but thought it would be good to put in an appearance. I had also hoped to do some hiking or backpacking but I don't know the area well enough to go on my own and couldn't find anyone from the gear testing group in the area. Oh well. Maybe some other time I can get out there for a real trip not associated with business.

Back from a business trip

A few of us in the lab had to go up to New York for work. We had hoped that the new guy we hired to take over this project would be able to take over the whole project. Instead we have the horrible situation occurring where the boss and I have to hold his hand through the whole project and in the end, we spend (ie waste) more time trying to keep an eye on him than we did before we hired him. He is clueless, has no initiative and is rather spaced out most of the time. It took three tries before he had a half way decent working protocol that we could follow. We found out over the course of our experimental run that there were mistakes, typos and errors in the protocol. On top of that, even after the boss asked him to add space for comments and notes, there wasn't enough space. It is a good thing he attached a few sheets of blank paper to the back of the protocol. But in the end, if he had planned out the protocol design more carefully, we wouldn't have needed the blank sheets.

Since we were working both with mice and cells, this was going to be a tough run, and it was. We arrived Sunday afternoon and did as much set up and labelling as we could in preparation for a Monday morning run. On Monday, I ended up getting a phone call from the clueless one asking why I didn't tell him to pick up his badge. Apparently they move things like that when offices start to open, so if he had picked it up when he was in the building earlier rather than waiting, he wouldn't have had to hike across campus to get it. I pointed out that not only did I not know they would move such items, but he could have walked back over and asked for a lift rather than make everyone late for our initial training and dry run. We have to put up with this guy for another 4-6 months. I am hoping he finds another job and just leaves.

Slow Week

What a slow week this has been. I really don't have enough to do at work. Because we have a new researcher who doesn't have much common sence, I feel like I have been babysitting and keeping an eye on everything to make sure stuff gets done and gets done properly. I will also have a new student coming in soon who will take over some of the routine tasks I currently do leaving me with more free time. My boss realizes I need more to do but it is a little hard to assign something until we get a new receptionist, and I am able to stop my babysitting duties which likely won't happen anytime soon.

I received my Amazon book order, finally. I placed the order about 2 weeks ago, just before the 'Queen of Candesce' was released. Somehow USPS didn't like the shipping address I gave and rejected my order. So I had to call up Amazon and figure out what happened. I ended up having them redo the order and send it to me for the same dates I would have received it. This meant they charged me for shipping, but they claimed it would be refunded. When I received my order, lo and behold, there was a shipping charge. I had to call again and ask that it be refunded. I don't think they would have refunded it if I hadn't called them up. But in the end, I got my order around the same time as was expected and for the same price. Now I have reading material to go through. I need another bookshelf.