Tomorrow I hand in my notice. I plan to start at the new lab on the 14th, which is a year to the day after my first "last day" at the Whittier, before I began my highly enjoyable (and not at all stressful, oh no...) volunteer period [>] I did not plan this exactly, but it is a pleasing little bit of poetic justice for me.

I need to talk to Human Resources and to Dr Langford to find out what paperwork is required, first, to end my current job, and second to begin the new one. Preferably with all my benefits rolling right over and remaining unchanged, since I'm not changing employer, just labs.

That makes it sound like it'll hardly be a change at all, very decieving.

There are too many things whizzing through my mind at the moment.

My parents are here, though they're late showing up at my apartment, Matt and I had dinner with them last night. I had some nice ideas for things to write here, but that all went out the window when I checked my email before coming to Blogger, and found a very important email.

I had been facing a weekend of wondering, as Dr Langford had said it was down to me and one other candidate, and she was going to ponder it over the weekend...evidently she changed this plan pretty quickly, as I found an email this morning offering me the job.

So...excuse me, I must just go take a cold shower, and pinch myself a few times.

They offered me the job...

Hey, cool, they came back!

*waggles finger*

That'll teach Blogger to mess with me.

Where have all my links gone?

The template remains unchanged, so I'm going to wait and see if this resolves itself. Then maybe I'll go buy HTML For Dummies and make my own template so there's nobody to blame but me when it screws up.

I have an interview tonight after work, something in the Medical Department, involving immunology, but he wasn't very descriptive about their research projects. I will find out tonight though! Then I have the second interview for the neuropathology job tomorrow, but I'm not sure of what time yet...

The interviewer on Thursday told me during the course of the interview that it's obvious to her I'll go on to grad school of some variety, I'm clearly too curious and intelligent to want to be a technician all my life...

Coming from a young 30-something PhD who holds a junior fellowship at UCSD, that's quite a compliment.

I've spent the past few years of my life being told in various ways that I'm just not cut out for academia, that I'm not motivated enough, or intellectual enough. Maybe it's time to stop listening to the naysayers and just follow what I want to do.

Like Alice & The White Rabbit All Rolled Into One...
I seem to have spent the last couple of weeks scurrying about thinking "I'm late I'm late"...or something along those lines. There haven't been too many instances of random potions and cakes instructing me to drink or eat them, which is good since my appetite has gone through the roof (probably the result of a drastic decrease in smoke inhilation) and I'm sure I would just blithely follow instructions and end up oscillating back and forth between ten foot two and three inches tall.

The Alice analagy also holds up with my mood, I've been extraordinarily touchy recently, just like so many of the characters in Wonderland, or Through the Looking Glass. It didn't carry across in the Disney adaptation, but Alice really is a bit of a spoiled bitch.

There has been a resurgence of the jolly old low self esteem. I feel slow and stupid, and despite remembering that I've lost a significant amount of weight, and am still toning up every week, I feel fat and plain too on the really bad days. I'm ready to move on from the job I'm in, which leads to the question of whether I'm good enough to get a position anywhere that I would want to work. Would a lab that strikes me as cutting edge and high-powered, with nice people working there thrown in as a bonus, even consider taking me on as their associate?

The answer to this seems to be "yes". I got an email about the interview I had on Thursday, asking me to come in for a second interview with the big boss (who was out of town last week) and mentioning that she hopes I feel that this position is right for me too...

Whew.

Another interview, with the Vice-Chancellor of the Pathology Dept. Or is it Vice-Chancellor of Neurobio...? Either way, I'm getting interviewed by a Vice Chancellor Good thing I own a second pair of smart pants.

My parents are coming in to town on Thursday, I suspect I will show them my apartment for about five minutes and then go to bed! Thank Heavens Friday is a holiday, I will be able to show them around town a little and relax from the chaos that started with the phone message last monday asking me to contact the Neuro/Path lab for an interview.

I still haven't varnished these darn chairs.

Eeeeeeeeek!

I have an interview today!

At least my parents are safe and sound in LA, I was on the phone to my Aunt when they walked through the gates, so I got to meet them at the airport electronically.

But...Interview! Eeeeeeek!

While I'm at it, listing everything that is making me busy this week, I'll add in the highly probable appearance of a Monica on my horizons on Friday, the most concrete arrival of my parents in LA today, followed by their descent to San Diego a week from tomorrow...and have I mentioned that I really need to vacuum? And do the kitchen and bathroom floors? Oh, and varnish the chairs too...

Nobody will care about the carpet fuzzies but me. Nobody will care about the carpet fuzzies but me. Nobody will care about the carpet fuzzies but me. Nobody will care about the carpet fuzzies but me. Nobody will care about the carpet fuzzies but me. Nobody will care about the carpet fuzzies but me. Nobody will care about the carpet fuzzies but me. Nobody will care about the carpet fuzzies but me. Nobody will care about the carpet fuzzies but me.

Why yes, I did have coffee this morning, how did you ever guess?

Whoah!

A nice restful do-nothing (and not feel bad about it) weekend turned into a very busy and productive beginning of the week. Not to mention the first week where I haven't been fried and ready for an extra day's sleep by Tuesday evening.

Yesterday I made some big steps towards putting my financial house in order, such as signing up for online banking, transferring the data into Quicken on my computer, going through and assigning categories to most transactions, tweaking how it's all categorised to suit me...basically playing with a new techno-toy. Now I have a pie chart telling me exactly what percentage of my takehome gets spent in cafes, and how much goes to karate, the statistical analysis possibilities are endless. Hopefully it'll help me budget and save more effectively too.

I also found the website where I can manage my work benefits, and, in the process of finally setting up my 403(b), I discovered that I already have a tax-exempt savings type thingy through UCSD. A compulsory one that all UC employees automatically have built in their names (and deducted from their paychecks). Thank heavens for compulsory automatic deductions, now I don't feel like quite such a wastrel for waiting almost 18 months to set up my retirement scheme.

A voicemail on Monday, and a conversation yesterday are also providing much busy-ness for the next 48 hours, a bit stressful, but overall a very positive thing, and I'm not going to jinx it by publishing any more information. It's just another jigsaw piece.

We Were Wildly Idle All Weekend...
Matt and I swapped undisclosed locations this weekend. Well, I disclosed the location before we set out, but only to check if he was up for a 2-3 hour drive at either end. He took me to the beach in front of the Hotel Del on friday night so we could watch the waves without crazy hippies leaping around nearby fires and trying to borrow his guitar (as is usually the situation on Ocean Beach). Then on to our local cafe, where a very strange looking man (no eyebrows except for the one tattooed over one eye, and his eyes appeared to be completely black) was alternating between a banjo and a guitar, then we went home, where we planned on sitting about with lots of candles lit, but fell asleep on the futon instead. Yes, we are wild and crazy sleepy middle-aged 20-somethings.

Then on Saturday we headed for Idyllwild. There was SNOW! Granite boulders, redwood trees, California oaks, a little creek...and I have to get working, so I can't write any more. But it was lovely, my pants didn't survive the granite and thornbushes though. Or sliding down a slope (made up of said granite and thornbushes) on my ass...

Nap-Time For Little Rosie...
Wow, I woke up today feeling a great need for further sleep, and decided to call in sick, then I didn't surface to conciousness again until after noon had been and gone. I guess I really did need that nap.

I think I've reached, or maybe just left, the far end of the counter-swing to my depression. I went from despondancy and not caring about anything, to taking a bunch of incedentals waaaaay too seriously, and paid for it with a month of on and off migraines and finally some monumental back tension. The massage I had on saturday helped that, but not until it had also provided me with some new and interesting aches of it's own, primarily from the high tension and all the "toxins" being released. There were probably a lot of those pesky toxins now I come to think of it, I have a pretty healthy diet, but I supplement it with a variety of metabolic poisons such as caffiene, alcohol, and nicotene, not to mention the toxic effects of stress, fear, and other emotional body-busters. I have an image of rivers of radioactive green toxins being released from my muscles and connective tissues and running riot through my circulatory system, until they either resettle into new posiitons or get flushed out by the stupid amounts of water I have been drinking since Saturday.

Now I'm eying up my second bowl of home-made raspberry mocha.

Fear not, this isn't me ignoring my own observations of the effects of metabolic poisons, I truly am turning over a new leaf. Smoking has been drastically reduced, and water intake is on the increase. I'm spending less time stressing over life, and more time paying attention to leading it, and fixing the problems. This site gets to see my continuted panics, because that's how I stop them from bouncing around the inside of my skull and get them out of the way so I can get on with things IRL.