Thought for Today

I find myself wondering if I can charge someone with attempted murder, if he or she is so incompetent that it causes me to have a stroke.

Welcome to Total Drama Island!

Ever feel like you're stuck in a really, really bad drama series?

Like, one in which the main characters are embroiled in a web of intrigue and vile character assassination over project review processes? In which, literally, dozens of highly emotional emails are exchanged in a single 24-hour period, over how to format a compliance document? In which supporting characters are reduced to tears over generating a purchase order for mailing tubes?

How about the one where the phone ominously rings and the other end of the conversation features an eight-year old in complete hysterics over a lost mitten? Or the one where the main character is greeted at 5:45 am by the discovery that her 125-pound dog has suffered a cataclysmic bout of intestinal distress overnight?

I had a 2-hour commute to work this morning, in a white-out snow storm. It was the most peaceful two hours of consciousness I have spent this week.

I think tonight will feature a hot bath and a glass of wine.

Managing "Up"

Is there any tactful way to tell your boss that, if he's spending more time on the seating chart for a meeting than he is on the agenda, there's probably a big ol' red flag in there someplace?

Hmmmmm

I overheard a conversation today, wherein someone described me as, "quite a few years older than you probably think she is."

I'm not sure if I should feel flattered or offended.

Thought for today

HOLY TRINITY ON A SHRIMP TOAST, I NEED A VACATION!!!!!!

.

Rollin' and Tumblin'

That's mostly what's going on inside my head lately.

My job depends on having external funding, in the form of grants. In order to keep my job, I have to successfully write grants. And have them funded. Most years, this isn't a huge hairy deal. I write several grants each year, a couple of them fund and voila! I get to keep working.

This year is a bit different. I ended up putting a lot of eggs in a couple of very large baskets that would keep me fed and happy for about the next five years (and which are, incidentally, for projects I felt unbelievably passionate about). It took an immense number of hours, but the payoffs were worth it. At least that's what I thought at the time.

Now, I'm not so sure. I haven't heard about the biggest of these grants, and the two smaller (but still sizable) ones are probably tied to the success of the first one. If it doesn't come through, I could easily end up stranded. Not the best sitch for sole wage-earner mom...

Enter Plan B.

I got a call back in October from a large, public multi-national here in town, wherein the recruiter dropped a FABULOUS job into my lap. "Here you go." 20K raise. Stock. Fascinating work that I am well suited to do. They really need me and they would really appreciate me. The work would set me up to be working part-time as a consultant from home, making the same money, inside of five years. It's the key to my long-term plan.

Yeah, so what's the catch?? The travel. Probably 2 nights a week away from home and probably one week out of every six overseas.

I have a seven-year-old child who has some unique needs. And I have a husband who has battled depression for...well, just about forever. He tries. He takes his meds. But sometimes, despite best efforts, he falls off the edge pretty fast.

I love that this job will set me up to be doing the best for everyone in the next few years, but I'm wondering how much of the next few years (the last of the best of my daughter's 'easy years') it would cost me. I wish I could see six months into the future and know whether or not we'll all be OK.

But then I wonder how well I can care for a family while I'm out of work, or having to downsize to a job that only pays 2/3 of what I'm making now.

I have a week to make a decision.

I wish to hell I knew the right answer. I wish I had a sign.

Another Day, Another Death March

Dear Friends and Other Readers,

Please forgive what is likely to be another protracted absence from the Blogosphere. I am once again in a death march activity aimed at securing enough money from people who have it to justify my existence for another few years. I will rejoin you some time after Monday when w once again push the magic button.

In the meantime, can someone please explain to me why I am seemingly unable to write anything cogent unless I have a gun to my head? Every time, I swear, I'm going to get these pieces done early and every time, I can't seem to string five sentences together until I'm down to less than a week before Doomsday.

It's gotta be a pathology of some sort.

Edit: And for any of you who care, I actually HAD tickets to go see Three Girls and their Buddy tonight. Yes; I did. It starts at 8:00. Am I getting ready to go? No; I'm working. In fact, I'll be working until sometime in the wee hours of tomorrow.

I gotta get one of those jobs where you work 30 hours a week and make $125K. If you find one, let me know...

The Song that Never Ends

This is the song that never ends.
It just goes on and on my friends.
Someone started singing it not knowing what it was,
and now they'll keep on singing it forever just because,

This is the song that never ends.
It just goes on and on my friends.
Someone started singing it not knowing what it was,
and now they'll keep on singing it forever just because,



Can't you just see Lambchop's cute little fuzzy white face dancing around on the screen?

Now, let's contrast that with Sigourney Weaver, in her underpants, getting ready to take a nice chilly nap on her ride back to Earth, just as that alien pops up out of nowhere and scares the pee out of us.




Which one is my day, we wonder?

So late Thursday, we reached what I thought was the end of Phase I of Beanie's Death March Project, a six month romp through the bowels of modern medicine and organizational management. The end result of this little exercise in stress was a 497-page document that basically asks for money. Late Thursday, the "powers that be" pushed the magic button to send our solicitation to DC in hopes of being able to change the world at some future date.

Fast forward to last night, when the phone rang during dinner and my boss popped out of it, like that pesky alien.

"Did you read Section 4.1?"
"No, I was busy with sections 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, the commercialization plan, the management plan and the introduction. I figured 4.1 and 4.5 were the domain of scary dragons and I ventured not into them."
"4.1 sucks. It's riddled with clinical innacuracies."
"Did you call the guy who wrote 4.1?"
"Of course not; he clearly has no clue. Do you think we can pull the submission back and fix it?"
"I don't know -- never tried it. And besides, I'm not the person in control of the magic button. You have to ask the people who control the magic button."
"I don't like the way you've labeled figure 9 in 4.3."
"I thought you were talking about 4.1?"
"I don't like 4.3 either."
pause
"Sir, I'm tempted to hang up now, before I turn into a pillar of salt.

So today, the magic button people have pulled the submission back from DC, and I'm looking at another sleepless night fixing the mistakes of people who should have known better, at the behest of the guy who was begged to review this stuff LAST WEEK, but was too busy farking around with flow diagrams and other things that really didn't need his expert attention.

And I thought Halloween was still two weeks off.

Thought for Today

Some days, there just isn't enough coffee in the WORLD to make up for the lack of sleep...


Gentle readers, I will rejoin you as soon as this death march is over. Suffice it to say that coordinating a grant among 14 institutions, writing a clinical trial protocol, and moving a wheelchair-bound parent into my house, all in one weekend, might have been a little too much to take on.