On Ice

The sun was out yesterday!  Today the sun is also out!  It is amazing.  It was so bright yesterday that we were motivated to DO thing.  Well, not really important things, but things.

We had decided that the kids should take an ice skating class that started yesterday.  Crab Mama called the ice skating rink and asked them about the class including whether there was space.  They responded that they thought there was space.  We went to the rink and it turns out that the class was way overfull.  There was no way that they could take the class.  Nice.

We returned home and decided to skate on the pond, which meant that we have to move a bunch of snow.  I did that for a long time.  There are a few very flat spots on the pond, but the majority of it has lots of bumps in the ice.  There are even some sticks and bits of grass sticking up out of the ice.  Makes for adventurous ice skating!  Today we are going to try to hose off the area a bit to see if we can level it out a bit.  We shall see what a disaster that brings.

At work, all hell is breaking loose.  I have a huge amount of crap to do.  I have four reports that are due at NASA and NSF.  I have two letters of recommendation to write for students who I don't really know.  I also have a proposal due this week and two proposals that are due in a couple of weeks that I am not the PI of, but the people who are the PI are obsessive and want input on them 24 hours a day.  We have meetings to talk about them, then drafts ever couple of days that we are expected to read.  I don't think that I am actually going to see a nickle of the money, so my motivation to help is in the toilet.  I have to teach my class.  And, finally, looking at the reports that are due, and the severe lack of progress on anything that I am actually supposed to do, I should be doing some science.

I read my activity report from last year on one of my grants and thought - wow, I did some cool things last year.  Hmmmm..... not so much this year.

This leads me back to the thoughts on what my expectations are for the Post Docs that work for me.  In theory, I should be accomplishing three times as much as I did last year, since I have three "Post Docs" working for me right now.  This is sadly not the case at all.  I think that my productivity actually went down this last year.

My post from a few weeks ago about giving up and letting others do the science implies that they will actually get the science done and publish papers and such.  I am probably impatient about this stuff, but it seems like progress is extremely slow, and not much is actually being accomplished.  This is very frustrating to me, since I have the ultimate responsibility for the projects that we are working on.

Ok, I am going to StFU about this subject now.

I am out.