Happy Thanksgiving

Hope you're day is filled with good food and those you love.

My kind of Sunday

• Laying on the couch catching up on blogs and drinking coffee.
• Breakfast w/ friends who are in town for a conference (haven't seen them in a year!)
• Catch up on work
  
• FOOTBALL

Oh, and it's pretty warm here. Would not know it's November.

What's up for your Sunday?

Couple of Updates

1. I noticed many of the links to the blogs I recommend were no longer active. I've deleted those that I know were deleted. If you are a follower and would like me to put you up there, please leave me a comment and I'll add you.

2. Work is still crazy, better with my colleagues back but still crazy and probably will be that way until COB on Wed.

3. I don't miss my supervisor. Project Director (who takes over when my supervisor is gone) is decisive and responsive Shit gets done when they're in charge and I am a HUGE fan of shit getting done.

4. I was so excited to be able to sleep in on Thanksgiving, then I remembered my nephew is playing in the varsity football game. So much for sleeping in, at least I can do it on Friday. :)

I don't wanna be the boss

My supervisor is visiting home town far, far away for the next month.

My two equal status colleagues have been out of town for a work related meeting for the last two days.

We have a MAJOR, non-negotiable deadline close of business next Wednesday.

And I had jury duty yesterday (which I postponed from the time this project's first draft was due). Luckily, there were no trials needing jurors yesterday so I was out 1.5 hours.

My work life is insane right now. Everyone needs me every second of the day and I have a number of tasks that I need to complete (and can't delegate to anyone else) on this major project. Needless to say, I'm spending all my time troubleshooting everyone's stuff and getting none of my own stuff done.

My equal status colleagues return to the office tomorrow, I can't wait! I'm going to push the rest of the team off on them so I can get some work done. :)

Home!!

I got home last night, it was a relatively uneventful flight except it was super foggy at home and I didn't realize we were landing when we did. Was glad it was just the plane tires hitting the ground and not the entire plane! :)

I've realized that traveling for work sucks. When I first took this job I thought it sounded like an adventure but the novelty has worn off. I primarily travel for conferences and each time has been with a different set of colleagues.

I went to quite a few conferences in graduate school and my experiences always equaled a really good time. It was an opportunity to learn new stuff, present my work, get some time away from the office and hang out with people I really liked. This is the complete opposite of my work travel experience.

• Although some of the conferences I have learned a lot, it's not as intellectually interesting to me as the ones I went to in grad school and this last conference was not all that informative for me.
  
• I always feel the pressure to both attend sessions and do some actual work (unfortunately the work does not go away while I'm away and there really is not anyone else to do my work while I'm gone). So I end up conferencing from 8am-7-8pm and then going back to my hotel room to work for a few hours and when I'm on the West coast, that is just a disaster for me.
  
• I am very fortunate to have great colleagues... but they're not my friends. I have a good time with them sharing meals and having someone to hang out with during breaks but it still feels very lonely.
• I've been a co-author on a few of the presentations that we've given but I it's not as rewards as presenting my own work. I've mentioned previously here, here and here about the crazy restrictions I deal with at work which takes away a lot of the joy of sharing what we do.
  

Moral of the story, I am so glad that right now I don't have any work travel plans in the future! I am working on a conference proposal right now but it's not until late next summer and maybe by then I'll be okay with traveling again.

Not so swank

The hotel I am staying in wants you to think it's very swank, and the lobby and the fact that all the "taxis" that leave and arrive here are actually Escalades or Town Cars may have you fooled until you go to the room and you realize

• The toilet seat is cracked in two places, and you wonder how it even stays attached.
• There is a wet spot on the carpet in front of the sink for no apparent reason.
• The lighting in here absolutely sucks, even when I have every lamp on it's still dark as hell
• The TV doesn't have a timer and finally
• There is a disco right next store and apparently on Friday nights you don't even have to walk over there because it's just as loud and base rocking in my 9th floor hotel room as it would be at the bar.
  

I am traveled out, can't wait to go home tomorrow and so thrilled I didn't forget my ear plugs!

FAIL

So much for my 30 posts in 30 days attempt. As it turns out I could not get onto blogger from my blackberry and I thought about writing emails to be posted when I got back from my trip but I was NEVER alone. I was traveling with two other people and just never found any alone time.

I was home for 2 days/3 nights and now I'm traveling again. I'll have more time to blog on this trip because it's for business and I have my own hotel room. But my lap top is about die right now so I'll have to post more later.

How do deal with rejection

Post Doc Mentor (PDM) and I submitted an abstract based on a manuscript we have in progress for a special issue of a sub-field journal. Basically the process was send and abstract, we'll review them and then pick our favorites to submit a full manuscript to be peer reviewed.

It was my idea to submit and PDM told me that they believed we were underselling the paper but that it was a good way to kick us into gear in finishing the paper so we submitted.

As it turns out they rejected us. It was a nice rejection letter, they got way more abstracts than they expected and encouraged us to send our work to this journal or another journal as they thought it was worthy of publication. I sent PDM the rejection letter saying bummer, we should submit to the other journal they thought was better suited for us.

PDM's response:

we should be relieved -- (name of journal we submitted to) sucks. it is always better to
spend the time getting the paper into a good journal that people actually read.

I was laughing my ass off when I read PDM's response. I should mention that PDM is extremely successful, amazing publication record, ivy league job, very well known and liked in our field so they kinda know what they're talking about. :)

I almost wanted to send PDM's response back to the Special Issue editor. LOL

Surprises

I hate them. Seriously, in this very pathological way. It all goes back to my need for truth, when someone surprises me all I can think about is the fibs they had to tell to keep it a surprise and it eats away at me.

My 16th birthday was a disaster, my parents threw me a surprise party and the entire time I was miserable.I kept thinking through the conversations I had with my best friends and boyfriend for weeks before the event and the many lies they told me in order to keep this secret. You should see the pictures from the party, I was miserable.

It even extend to an inability to throw other people surprise parties. I threw hubby a surprise party for his 30th birthday and it almost gave me a heart attack. In order to pull it off I had to tell hubby that I was planning a surprise and he needed to not ask me questions. :)

Now, I realize what I'm going to say next makes me a hypocrite: I love to surprise other people!! :) Hubby and I have made a habit of it after living out of State for 6 years we had to disappoint enough people who invited us to events that whenever we could we would show up and surprise them (don't worry not for weddings or events that a head count was really important).

Our favorite experience was showing up to hubby's BFF house for his New Year's Eve party. Nobody knew we were coming (we were not even invited because Hubby's BFF just assumed we wouldn't make it given we were home the week before for X-mas). The look on Hubby's BFF face when he opened the door to see us standing there was precious! He started screaming for his wife who came around the corner and also started screaming. :) Hubby's BFF still talks about it as his favorite surprise ever.

This weekend I get to do it again. My sister and I are driving 9.5 hours to attend a friend's 30th birthday celebration! We're leaving on Thursday and coming back on Sunday, it is going to be a blast. We're staying with another friend who RSVPd for 3 (see making sure we don't screw up the headcount) which birthday girl assumes was Friend, her hubby and son. I can't wait to see the look on her face, even if it does make me a hypocrite. :)

Work Travel

If you follow my blog at all you know that I travel a moderate amount for work, usually for conferences or conventions. I am traveling again next week and just found out that our coordinator forgot to book our rooms so we are not in the conference hotel!! As a matter of fact we are in a hotel that is 3 miles away with limited shuttles between the two hotels!

This fact alone makes me want to cancel the whole trip (alas it's not just me and I'm actually presenting so that would be super uncool). I will be there from Wed through Sat and I can already see what a huge pain in the ass this is going to be. Usually I go to my room often throughout the day, if I don't have a session I'm particularly interested in or if I need some downtime after an intense talk. I also usually have to work a bit during the day which means not only will I not have the opportunity to go back to my room and rest, but I'll also have to carry my lap top around with me. I am so not looking forward to this, something tells me I'll be attending less sessions than I usually do.

I have only stayed at the non-conference hotel once before in my career. Hubby came with me for my first poster presentation and although I liked the smaller boutique hotel we stayed in I vowed to never do that again!

Oh and god help them if they don't have a bath tub!!!

30 posts in 30 days

I really do enjoy blogging but haven't been very good about it the last couple of months so I've decided to give NaBloPoMo a try. Thus ,today begins 30 posts in 30 days. It will be a challenge as I am traveling a lot this month but I believe I'll be bringing my lap top with me and can even post via my blackberry if I don't have a computer handy.

Wish me luck.

If there is anything specific my readers would like me to talk about please feel free to add a comment to this post and I'll see what I can do.