Fresh Wallaby Juice

… posting has gotten a bit sparse… I’ll pause for a moment while you gasp in surprise…

Why do I always move by letting the schedule slip until I’m doing everything at the last minute? I know the answer to that one - lack of ability to say “no” to myself and others; I just hope I can get it under control. “Others” in this case was all work related: My boss suggested that I stay on another month after my contract ran out at the end of June, while I was in town anyway and while I was working on the latest draft of this paper we’re trying to get out. “Free money,” I thought to myself. “What’s the catch? I’ll finish the paper in 10 days or less…”

Uh-huh.

Then he asked me to work with a newbie grad student, up here for the summer doing a stint in our lab before classes begin in August. (She sure picked a doozy of a deep end for her first dive.) I mostly said yes because she was going to work on (has been working on) a project that I’d always thought sounded interesting. It’s the one bit of work in the group that’s very distinctively analytical. (Of course, analytical chemists had good reason to give up on this particular pasture - remote sensing of fluorescence - some time ago, but he’s convinced that he’s got what nobody else had.)
And her interests - like my own - are a mixture of analytical and materials science. And she’d gone to a small liberal arts college of distinctively conservative bent. And she is feeling rather out of her depth and very uncertain about being here. I sympathize… and she’s done quite well, actually.

Now the paper’s finally back in the boss’s hands (court?), the student’s finding her lab-legs (like sea legs, but with a rubber apron), and the clock is running out fast on getting my stuff packed up to move. The trailer is scheduled to get loaded up on Friday; I’ll crash with my friend up the street over the weekend and then chase the trailer^* down there on Monday.

Which is why I’m perched atop a pile of boxes, taking the time to write this instead of finishing the packing. Did I mention I still need to do another night of experiments? This for another paper.

Yes, really really need to make sure that life at “Hobart” goes differently. No more last-minute stuff for me! *crosses his fingers*

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^* Mom & Dad: Yes, I’ll do so safely.

Tags: hobart, moving, work