Good news!

Ancient manuscript got accepted. GlamorMag manuscript has been resubmitted. I’m waaay internal on that one, but Crazy Man has been taking a very active role in the resubmission. Translation: he’s been talking to me about it nonstop for weeks. I’m sure we’re all super glad that’s done. Fingers crossed that it gets accepted. I’m optimistic.

We finally found a tiny, tiny difference in Duckling 2’s reagents. Today we find out if correcting that difference fixes everything. I’m also optimistic about that.

I’m still super optimistic about the grant related to Duckling 2's project. The grant based on the Golden Child’s project is out the door, but as I've said before, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell it gets funded. Ever. Grant number three is likely commencing this week. This one is based on Duckling 1’s project. I think it may be the most likely of this batch to get funded. I’m considering volunteering to take charge of this one as well, mostly because I think Crazy Man is completely burnt out, and I’m tired of hearing him whine and be pitiful.

I think other FGS has finally found a little motivation. We both have lots of bits and pieces of data about a certain protein and its regulation, all of which is sort of tangential to our other projects. I’ve been encouraging her to do a few more experiments and call it a co-first author. She needs a first author pub to defend (co-first counts), and I need to dump this data somewhere, so our powers combined and all that.

I also have some exciting experiments planned for this week. If I manage to pull out even a smidgen of data I’ll have something to write my meeting abstract around. I’m also getting a cool new reagent this afternoon. Hopefully I can do 3 quick experiments with that and finish out another first author paper. I think things are really starting to look up.

Updates

The crazy just keeps coming! Here’s my update on the things I had to get done in the next two weeks from my last post:

• Grant got out. I think it actually ended up being pretty darn good.
• I decided to table the meeting abstract until the late deadline. I won’t be eligible for a travel award, but I might still be mostly sane.
• Gave my talk and it went surprisingly well. Very poor faculty turnout though, which was kind of disappointing.
• Decided to put off committee meeting until I have a bit more data for the project I was originally planning on talking about, especially since Crazy Man hadn’t asked about it,
• Didn’t really generate new data for my talk. I ended up talking about a different project. But I did discover that I have some pretty cool data while putting my talk together. I actually made some summary figures that were pretty nice.
• Crazy stupid experiment hasn’t happened yet. I tried to optimize some conditions. Failed. Psycho Engineer is really trying to push forward the resubmission, which has turned into yet another epic battle of wills between him and Crazy Man. I just sit back and watch.
• I did manage to revise and resubmit Ancient Manuscript, resulting in a wonderful trip to Lush.

Of course, 25 new kinds of crazy have cropped up in the mean time, not the least of which being that I broke my shoulder. Doing any sort of bench work is a real pain when you can’t raise your arm more than, oh, say, 20 degrees to the front. A week after I slipped and face planted into the wall I can get my arm parallel to floor with only moderate pain. Doing lab work sucks. Physical therapy starts next week.

I think I’ve decided that Duckling 1 is not unteachable. Rather, I’ve come to the conclusion that she simply can’t multitask. At. All. As in, doing PCR to genotype 10 mice is a full day’s work. The sad part is I think she’s operating at full capacity. Since she’s new in the lab, her success rate as far as real experiments still isn’t very high, and Crazy Man is really pressuring her to generate all this data for this grant resubmission and she really doesn’t do well with pressure.

Speaking of Crazy Man, he has been in fine form lately. And he has decided that we’re submitting another grant on Monday, and the one related to Duckling 1’s project two weeks after that. The first one relates to Golden Child’s project and I firmly believe it will never, ever get funded. Period. I think the grant on Duckling 1’s project probably would do well if it had all the data he wanted. Too bad it doesn’t. And probably won’t unless I do all the experiments. Which isn’t fair to me or Duckling 1.

And now, me and my broke ass shoulder are going to attempt to do some science. By the way I do NOT recommend trying to do cell culture with your non-dominant hand.