CIHR grant deadline time is such fun! Especially when half the PIs on the two grants you’re working on are out of the country, in timezones that severely hamper communication, and half of the rest are freaking out because their email server has been down for over 24 hours! The internal signature deadlines add even more fun to the proceedings! Fun like working all day on Sunday (from home, at least) and then staying in the office until 8pm on Monday, turning down offers of free after-work drinks in favour of working on budgets and budget justifications, and sending out increasingly desperate pleas to PIs for feedback and final decisions!
Oh well, at least the unexpected outbreak of sanity regarding the use of scanned rather than original documents that first appeared during the Olympics last year has persisted, and I don’t have to go to campus…
Here’s some ridiculous packaging I encountered today, to illustrate the sense of frustration I’ve been feeling all week:
If I had the right tools on hand to cut through the piece of plastic preventing me from removing the scissors from the packaging, I wouldn't have needed to buy scissors, now, would I? SHEESH!
(also: don’t ever go to an arts and crafts supplies store if you’re in a rush. Go to the drug store that also sells scissors, even if it’s three times as far from your office. At least it won’t be full of lovely happy smiley SLOW people having a lovely happy smiley SLOW time chatting to the lovely happy smiley SLOW cashiers about their lovely happy smiley crafting projects).
Breathe in… breathe out… breathe in… breathe out…
Right, and here are some photos from my lovely happy smiley birthday snowshoeing trip on Saturday, to keep me going until my time becomes my own again after the February 28th submission deadline!
The sign speaketh the truth
That reminds me, I have a 40th birthday party to plan for September...
All this approximately a 30 minute drive away from my sofa! I really must get out there more often – especially on gloriously sunny days with clear views of the mountains, city and ocean, when the beautiful powdery snow is piled up like giant marshmallow pillows but it’s so warm you don’t need to wear your toque or gloves!
(Photos from the subsequent (larger, louder) pub session not shown, to protect the drunk because we were having too much fun talking, eating, drinking, and watching hockey to take any. Also not caught on camera: me tripping over my own feet and faceplanting in the snow TWICE because I forgot I was wearing snowshoes. In my defense, the first time was because I’d just been offered some cheese by someone standing a few steps away and got a wee bit over-excited; the second time was just because I’m an eejit. Oh well, at least I didn’t ask the rentals guy “where should I put my normal shoes?” upon being handed some snowshoes, unlike Mr E Man. Although I probably only escaped this fate because I have my own snowshoes and didn’t need rentals).
I promise not to drink any more caffeine today.
Happy Belated Birthday! So sorry I haven’t been able to come to any of your partys! Did you have to wait an ridiculous time to get up to seymour? I tried to txt to warn you….
ZOMG – I totally forgot to respond to your text! Sorry! It was all just so exciting…
We were on Cypress, not Seymour, and it was packed there too – we had to park on the main road rather than in the lot, and when we were buying our trail passes someone behind us told us they’d run out of rental snowshoes! Three of us had our own, but Mr E Man and another friend didn’t… luckily, when we went to check the situation out for ourselves, they’d just had a large party return their shoes, so we were all set up and ready to go within a few minutes.
p.s. we’re gonna try again for curling next year. I’ll get Mr E Man to call in, like, October, to avoid the crazy 3 month (WTF?!) waiting list.
I feel your pain. I am inundated with requests for letters of support and suchlike, as usual. Fortunately for me, the sum total of all of this seems to be far less than the dumpload of work you’ve got to deal with.
As for winter sports, I was considering doing some slush-surfing in the street outside my house.*
*possibly not true
If you start practicing now, you’ll be well placed to compete internationally! (At slush-surfing, not letter of support writing). With global warming and all*, surely it’s only a matter of time before it’s at least a demonstration sport in the winter Olympics?
*during the Vancouver games, when it was ridiculously warm and the venues were losing snow at an alarming rate, a journalist looked up the current temperatures in all former Winter Olympic host venues, as well as Sochi, who’ll be hosting next. It was only below freezing in one of them – Trondheim, Norway. They’ll end up having the hold the games at the South Pole!
Happy belated birthday Cath! Looks like the snowshoeing was a blast.
Hope the grant stress subsides soon. Just remember, this too shall pass…
oh, that looks positevely wonderful!!!! (no, can’t spell today. Been up since 4.30 at work… don’t ask) More photos of lovely snow, please?
Happy belated Bday!!
And good luck with keeping the cool and not turn into a running around crazy waiting for people to answer emails etc!
An \eejit\? Didn’t I see that on Henry’s Iphone Scrabble?
more likely on Stephen’s Father Ted post!
Good luck with the final push before grant submission!! The first part of your post reminds me (again) that I’m so glad I don’t work in our institute’s grants-and-contracts office….
And your birthday weekends looks absolutely lovely. Happy B-day, Cath.
Thanks SB! It’s been a hellish week (I’ve not been feeling well either, on top of all the stress), I’ll be working all weekend, and I can’t wait for Tuesday when it’s all over – for this round at least!
Chall, the full set of photos are on Facebook! Thanks for the birthday wishes, and I don’t think I’ve gone crazy yet, although it’s hard to tell 🙂
Bean-Mom, yeah yeah, rub it in why don’t you! 🙂 Thanks for the birthday wishes – it seems like an awfully long time ago now…