Still here!

Dear blog/blogging friends,

I have not forgotten you.

However, I have been super busy. Bossman is....on a wee bit of a crazed boss cycle lately. I work loads. He scolds. I work more. He scolds. I am aware that this is directed at everyone in the lab.

Crazed Bossman is due to several things:
1. One of my labmates who has done AWESOME things got rejected from Science on a paper they'd been working on for months. Bossman really wants a Science paper.
2. Another labmate is now in the "running up against the departmental finishing time" zone. He is not ready to graduate. Bossman will not pay him after December but will not fire him. This is gonna be awkward.
3. We should hear back about the NIH grant for my project soon. We were right on the edge of "safe" with our score. This is making everyone nervous. (I will be fine on funding either way, but yeah, totally have already spent the pretty pretty money in my head.)
4. My mentor/the only other grad student on my project is supposed to graduate soon (aka by March)/is looking for jobs. She is fantastic, and he is cranky that I am not as fantastic.
5. The other second year has pretty much stopped working. Bossman has only barely given him crap.


I have also just recently obtained an undergrad!!! She is awesome. And is one of my former students that I really wanted. And it is so much fun/work having her.

I have three large projects. And yeah, they are eating away at me. We desperately need another grad student on my project. We will probably get at least two grad students---neither on my project.

I have been busy. And stressed. And I haven't been able to run recently due to injury/laziness/how damn tired I am in the morning and evening.

I am in lab trying to sort through papers that will get me least yelled at for when I give a short lit talk for group meeting.

Still loving the lab, the research, and even Bossman (despite his crazed tendencies), but I need a breather that I will not get for awhile.

And damn, do I want to be able to get a paper soon.

And I miss my friends and profs from undergrad. I miss Lab Mom tons. My personal life has been awesome, but yeah, nostalgia hit hard recently.

So yeah, please excuse me for the lack of posts recently. I'm busy pre-panicking about quals this winter.

Love,
BotR