So she's not a dude?

I was being a bit Scrooge-y last night, so this didn't exactly make my evening:

"I'm looking for a new book on the Civil War."

"...OK...do you know who the author is?" (note - there are a number of books about the Civil War)

"I think it was published this summer."

"OK, lets narrow this down to books about the Civil War published in the last year. By any chance, do you think this is by Drew Gilpin Faust?"

"Maybe, I just heard this guy wrote a great book about the Civil War. Is he any good?"

(oh, jeez) "Dr. Faust is a very respected Civil War scholar and she's the first woman President of Harvard University."

"oh."

That's it? OH? ***smoke, grrr, smoke***

Writer's Block Friday

After yesterday's excitement today seems very blah. My office isn't being drooled upon (leaky water tank on roof caused serious wet carpet and ceiling tile issues) and UNESCO isn't handing out any accolades today.

I am once again inputting (verb?) data for our study. I'm way behind, so I need to work fast, but ... it's ... so ... mind-numbing. I can hear my brain cells die of boredom. The only reason I have to do it is because you have to be trained to recognize catheter-related blood-stream infections (CR-BSIs - crabbies, for lack of a better term). I'm the only one of the research team, besides the boss, who can do this.

I also need to start working with the burn unit on some observations of practice (in the tub room of all places) and MRSA cultures of various sources. I get to observe in the tub room because I'm the only one who won't faint or toss cookies. For anyone who doesn't know, the tub room is where the burn patients get scrubbed down, debrieded, and re-bandaged; there's lots of screaming and it smells really bad. I would be started on this already but the unit manager hasn't emailed me back, yet.

I've started back into the Newbery Project. After The Story of Mankind and The Voyage of Dr. Doolittle I decided I couldn't take all the Euro-American-centric viewpoints all together in order. It was a bit much. I'm going to come at it from a different angle. I've been wanting to re-read The Westing Game for a long time so I'll re-start with that one; plus, the movie adaptation for The Tale of Desperaux is coming out so I picked that up, too. I'll get there, by hook or by crook!

Why is it always me?

So I'm not completely sold out - the boss forgot to talk to me about pausing surveillance to do the analysis, which is for a clinical department dataset so at least that keeps the money going in the same direction. If I had as many meetings as she does I might lose my mind, too, some days.

The bean counters get very itchy about mixing clinical money/projects and research money/projects.

The reason why I would be temporarily pulled is because I have the best skill set to do the job - meaning I'm the only one around that can program, run, and analyze data using the statistical package and is currently on the clinical department payroll, even for only four hours a week.

Which leads me to wonder why it's always me? Why am I the only one who can get the job done when required even though there are however many other people who work in this division and technically have the same degree that I do? You start to feel like the department bicycle after a while.

Oh dear, NaBloPoMo

November crept up again and I forgot about National Blog Posting Month (not to be confused with National Novel Writing Month - NaNoWriMo). So I'm about two days down to start. Rats.

So in work news, I think I might have been sold out by my boss. I'm not sure (this is my real job, not the bookstore job). The department where I have my office in the hospital, not the College of Medicine department that owns my soul, has contracted with me for four hours per week of infection control surveillance. Mostly surgical site because that's pretty far behind. Today one of the ICPs mentioned that I would be stopping surgical site surveillance to do some analysis for a crani/bone flap study. Huh? We had research meeting not five minutes before that and not one thing was said about me switching to that - considering that the clinical department is paying me to do four hours per week of stuff for them. And surgical site surveillance is stuff for them.

I need to talk to the boss ASAP before the woman leaves for four weeks' vacation in Europe.

See next post for update on situation.

Where's my crayon sharpener?

I just wrote the worst professional letter in the history of the hospital. So bad that I deleted it before anyone else could see it and started over again. I sounded like a kindergartner with a broken crayon.

Gahhh!!!!!

This is all probably due to the fact that my neurons are still disrupted after some seriously strange dreams. I finished The Club Dumas and Requiem for a Dream and there was some strange stuff floating around in my head. The Club Dumas was OK - the denoument was a bit of a let down because I'd been expecting something spectacular and even the crazy guy summoning demons was fairly sedate. The writing flowed very well, even in tranlsation, so that was nice. Requiem for a Dream was seriously one crazy book about some very messed up people. Selby knows of what he writes and his vernacular writing style really made the characters' speech patterns come alive and differ from one another (Sara, Harry, Marion, Tyrone). The last 50 pages were just excruciating which is probably the way Selby meant the book to end.

That's also why I probably had a dream about a satanic, one-armed heroin addict.

Current book-in-progress: Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason (read some great reveiews and just had to go buy it); I'm still chipping away at the Harold Bloom; started the ARC for the First Look Book Club (on chapter 2 - seems OK)
Current knitted item: trying to decide if I want to add a bit of a pattern to the cuff now that it's past the ankle or not
Current movie obsession: I work too much - no time to watch movie :(
Current iTunes loop: I've been listening to NPR today - I think the programming is starting to repeat from the morning (does it always do this?)

STRESS!!!!!!

Anymore these days, when I get really stressed out it all goes to my stomach. It gets upset, doesn't want to digest anything, etc. etc. The worst part is that it will growl for food then pretend there's no room for food because of all the acid reflux. Prevacid is wonderful.

I'm stressed because we're starting a new clinical trial Monday. And I have to consent every admit to both units because the trial is at the unit level, but the patients have to consent so we can access their medical record. And I have to keep all the product stocked on both units. And answer all the questions. And do all the ICU unit surveillance (which really ought to be done by the medical staff). And do whatever random crap the boss asks for. Sigh. It really stinks because there are three RAs and I feel like everything gets dumped on me because the other two have a tendency to mess stuff up (which brings up the other question of why they're still working for us, but don't get me started). The clinical trial really is a good thing because we're trying to do good things for patients but it is very labor intensive. All my labor. No one else's.

And...I'm stressed because I got rear-ended two days ago, right when we were finishing the inservices for the clinical trial. If you haven't heard this story, truth can be stranger than fiction. The guy who rear-ended me was driving a big, old pickup, so lots of damage to my car, minimal damage to his, and he plowed into me at a red light. I couldn't even accelerate to get out of the way. The cop was going to cite him and let him go until I pointed out the guy had been driving about 20mph in a 40mph zone without headlights before he hit me (this was about 6pm, so it was dark out). So the cop asked me to wait in my car and went to talk to him again. Then another cop showed up and they gave the guy a sobriety test. Then an ambulance showed up and took the guy to the hospital (I was thinking, "Damn, that guy got wasted pretty fast").

This is when it starts getting really weird.

I realized that both cops left in the ambulance with the two paramedics. WTF? Then this other woman got out of the front seat of the second squad car - she had witnessed the guy side-swiping a vehicle up the road and the cops brought her down to my accident to identify the offending vehicle. So the cops left us there at the scene of an accident. By ourselves. After about 5 minutes a third cop showed up to sort us out. Then he realized that my ID, registration, and insurance had gone off to the hospital with my responding officer and the guy's paperwork was left in the squad car (brilliant). So I got sent on my way (1 hour late for my shift at the bookstore) with assurances that my paperwork would be returned to me shortly.

Ha.

At 9:30pm I had to call dispatch and remind them to send my identification (I mean, what the hell was going on?). So my responding officer showed up right before we closed. Turns out the guy who hit me had a stroke while the cops were administering the sobriety test - holy crap. When I pointed out that he had left two women alone at an accident scene with two empty squad cars (one unlocked and running), he was completely dismissive of my concerns that something could have happened - we had adequate warmth and he didn't think it was neccessary to tell us both officers were leaving and another squad car was on the way. So long story short, I got really pissed off and compained to his watch commander. Now, Sgt. Clarahan was understanding of my concerns, which mostly centered around his having abandonded the victim and witness of an accident scene with no information whatsoever and then being rude when compained to; so we worked that out without having to go up the food chain.

So...gah! My car, the new car I've only had for maybe six months (that we got a really great deal on), has about $3000 damage. Luckily, none to the frame. I'll let the insurance companies duke it out.

Current book-in-progress: I finished Why We Read What We Read so just Middlemarch and Idylls of the King
Current knitted item: I went back to the blue sock because I don't have to concentrate on it (I turned the heel last night).
Current movie obsession: Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead

Help! I've been buried by boxes!

ouhh, ouhh. Or however you spell Tim Allen grunts.

The product for one of our clinical trials arrived today. All two pallets of it. So it took three trips using the receiving dock's trolley to get it all upstairs (and part of it is in another RA's office). The receiving guys wouldn't let me use the motorized pallet driver. Meh.

If I wasn't tired after ballet class (my body thought I was kidding when I said we were going to Deanna's class today) I certainly am now. And I still have to go out and swab my new patients. And then try and find an article about red and white in Tennyson's Idylls of the King because that article is from 1967 and isn't available online through MLA or anything. And then mediate disputes on BNBC because people can't seem to behave themselves.

Who said life is dull?

Current book-in-progress: Middlemarch, I am only 17 pages from being done with A Temple of Texts
Current knitted item: Second pair of socks, Christmas stockings
Current movie obsession: Hot Fuzz is hilarious!

I am just, well, ...

...bleah. I've spent the last month trying to catch up from being out of town and haven't done a very good job. I am inundated with work and I can't seem to concentrate on much of anything. Except knitting. I've made considerable progress on my tank but I've been having trouble reading. Or even watching TV for that matter. My couch-potato skills are not working right now.

So instead of reading books, I've been buying quite a few of them. Confessions of a Spoilsport by William Dowling was a really good sports memoir about how Division 1a sports is ruining higher education; got a few more Barnes and Noble Shakespeare titles (Hamlet, King Lear, and Julius Ceasar); picked up the Portable Professor What a Piece of Work is Man (lectures about the seven great tradgedies of Shakespeare by Harold Bloom); the Wrinkle in Time boxed set; Michael Dirda's Classics for Pleasure; Ulysses (stop snickering). Someone stop me please!

In research-related news, I found out that we got the CDC grant that we applied for back before Easter. The acceptance came while I was in Europe. This means there are two ginormous, grant-funded multi-year studies to design and submit to IRB as well as the two clinical trials we are starting at Christmas. And the boss has yet to hire new grad RAs so it's just me doing all of this right now (oh, and the other RA who is useless, so let's not talk about that).

In other news, my youngest brother gets married this weekend. I don't even have a date. Meh. I'll go play with my neices.

Current book-in-progress: Wide Sargasso Sea for BNBC Literature by Women November, Classics for Pleasure, I finished re-reading the UK versions of TN1-4, Death in Venice and, oh, everything else I've started but not finished recently. I'm also entertaining a review of The Red Tent because Anita Diamant will be online at BNBC in November.
Current knitted item: After ripping out the aforementioned crappy dart shaping, I finished the front (the re-done darts look very nice) and I'm past the shaping on the back. Just a few more inches until I need to decrease for the straps. Then I really need to start on Christmas stockings. Oh, but I have to knit a scarf instead (I hate being volunteered for things) so I'm going to knit it with cotton yarn. Ick.
Current movie obsession: After dumping my digital cable (friggin' Internet still costs about $50, then basic cable another $50 - WTF?), I bumped up my Netflix. So I've been drooling over the nearly 400 movies in my queue (is it obvious that the selection is better than anything at the local rental places?) and have recently become obsessed with the Masterpiece Theatre adaptation of Gaskell's North and South. Richard Armitage is so gorgeous - in a few years he could be the next Rochester if there are any new Jane Eyre adaptations. N&S is probably going to be my next acquisition.

Current favorite-screw-up-by-other-research-assistant

As some of you know, one of my (least) favorite tasks at the research job is to take over a study from another RA. My main reason for (not) liking this is because the study is usually screwed up in some way - data collection, study design, bad analysis, you-name-it. And then I have to fix this, which neccessitates pointing out what is wrong to my boss which then makes me feel like a rat.

Like the current POS, er, study I am trying to fix so the fellow can get her article out of it and get herself a job. 2/3 of the data was collected by the fellow, the other 1/3 was collected by one of my fellow RAs (who no longer works for us because she moved up in the world and got a new job). The data collected by the fellow is pretty robust, few few mistakes and most of those are entry errors I would have caught during analysis (i.e. getting the date wrong because your finger typed 2006 instead of 2005). The data collected by the RA....ai-yi-yi (I should have known this was coming because this same RA made tons of data collection errors on another study that I'm trying to piggyback a new analysis off of - and I find myself essentially recollecting the previous data because it's full of holes). My personal favorite mistakes so far today? The one where the RA listed the subject as being male (when the subject is really female) and the next subject on the list was listed as deceased at the end of current admission (when she was both an outpatient as the time of study entry and had completed a physician's office visit two days ago). GAAAAAAHHHHHHH!! An undergrad could do better than this (and would be cheaper, too).

I promise I'm really not an obsessive-compulsive science rat, but I'm not attaching my name to ANYTHING that could potentially suck this bad. This is why science gets a bad rap - sloppy work. Sloppy. Sloppy. Sloppy.

Current book-in-progress: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (for the SF group, and I'm a little behind, but I just got the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Award for Translation winner by Pevear and Volokhonsky, so I got kind of excited about it again.
Current knitted item: The shrug - I'm working on the ribbing for the first sleeve.

Work is just a synonym for HEARTBURN

Last week I pulled serious overtime on my research job (I quit counting at 50 hours on Thursday) and it pretty much sucked because I was tired, stressed, consumed far too many Tums, and since I'm salaried I don't get overtime pay. Activity #1 was helping the boss get the very large CDC grant finished - if we get this I get a raise, if we don't get this....well, the boss will be difficult to live with for quite some time. Activity #2 involved getting some numbers out of a study one of the ID people started and another RA analyzed - let me just say that it was completely set up wrong and I managed to get something useful out of it by Friday morning. Activity #3 occured Wednesday and Thursday because our clinical monitor from 3M came to close out our clinical trial - she bought us some seriously nice lunch at Atlas downtown to thank us (ps, Connie-the-monitor is very nice to work with, too). Basically, I worked like crazy and didn't do shit for my class last Monday evening - faked an entire evening of Faulkner discussion (bad, bad, bad). And I'm pretty sure that none of the other three RAs that work for the group did anything even remotely stressful. I hate being dependable.

To remedy the overworked attitude, I took yesterday off to read about 200 pages of the class assignment for Monday. Yup. And I finished Bound to Please and Reading Like a Writer. Go me.

Current book-in-progress: Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night (only 100 pages left now) and The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Literature (oy - but good).
Current knitted item: Eyores. I eyeballed my sock yarn, too.