Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Phew, so glad that is over!

I know there are many of you out there, sitting around, cooling your heels, and waiting with bated breath to learn how to actually measure a junction potential. And that post is coming. It's just not this post.

This post is the final end of a big sigh that wraps up last week's Week of Not Very Much Fun.

-First, I spent the weekend before last worrying about whether I had left my bag (complete with laptop) inside our daycare center or outside in the parking garage. The first being probably ok, the second not so much. It's amazing the complete and utter lack of recollection 5 months without >4 hours of continuous sleep will do to a brain. Luckily, the bag was saved by one of the day care folks. So I didn't loose my 4 year old laptop with its broken hinge, on which I'm writing this very post to you good readers.

-Second, I was all ready to spend last week working on a data presentation for the lab on Thursday (which is fairly involved, given the size of the lab and long stretches of time between turns), as well as a 25 minute talk for the Neurobiology Dept. on Friday. But, fate intervened, as we got our paper finally accepted (good!!), but the editors asked us to turn the final changes around in 2 days (ok, doable, but starting to cut things close).

-The final straw was the girl coming down with an ear infection. She needed a couple days off daycare, which my wife and I split. She improved so quickly after the ped visit, and thank FSM for antibiotics. That basically killed the possibility of the lab data club, but I was able to get the final manuscript changes done and the talk prepared. Of course, with even less sleep than usual. I think this led to one assessment of my talk, which was "Clear, but needed more enthusiasm." Fair enough, but we're almost at the breaking point here people.

8 comments:

NeuroPostdoc said...

congrats on the paper!

Nat Blair said...

Thanks! It was a long, arduous road, not with the reviewers, but with the work itself. Good old TRP channels!

Dr. A said...

Congrats on the paper!!! And I hope the wee one is feeling better.

Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde said...

Good on you for the paper, and for making it through your week!

Daimo said...

Good work with the paper, mate. No doubt I'll be reading it soon.

Nat Blair said...

Thanks all! I hope you'll all write some scripts to automatically download the paper relentlessly.

And after feeling better for a week, the wee one last night decided to have a low grade fever, necessitating another trip to the pediatrician today. Looks like it's just a cold from the big brother, who tends towards wet sloppy kisses. Ah well, I can spend the time at home blogging and commenting.

No, that's spending the time doing analysis...yeah, that's the ticket!

Anonymous said...

Made me laugh- very like our house. My very, very mellow partner was driven to say last weekend he "was completely maxed out" after a kid meltdown. Wish I'd recorded it for posterity along with the desperate gaze.

Nat Blair said...

One thing I've discovered about having kids, and that it's put me in many situations where I've felt maxed out. And yet each time you struggle through it, come out ok in the end, and feel a bit stronger for the next challenge.

Lucky for us the our second kid has been so easy going, even when she is sick (perhaps a karmic payback for her being premature, and all the worry surrounding that?). And actually since this post, the poor little girl had both her ears infected.

This was not the case for our son. We called him the "Noncomplacent" child, and he's still like that. When something is not to his liking, he lets you know. When he couldn't talk, he'd just cry inconsolably for 2 hours straight. We'd just turn up music really loud (U2 and The Cranberries often worked) and dance and rock with him, all the while him redfaced with body ramrod straight. Colic, or just an ornery little bugger? Who knows.