Good luck, flea. It is summer, so academia is really, really slow.

I need to apply for a job that has been posted, but overhauling my cv, cover letter and various diversity statements seems damn daunting at the moment.

I had a terrible visit to our vet last night -- it started out great because we met a littermate of Salsa's in the waiting room, but then they kept me waiting for over an hour with no apologies until I said something, and the new doctor that I saw was not impressive. She was a terrible communicator, and said something negative about the high-cost previous estimate that had been prepared by another doctor there, but her estimate for basically the same surgery was at least 50% more. The only explaination she had for me was, "I used a different anesthesia in my figures." No comment about why, etc. Long story short, I called our old vet for a second opinion because I was so uncomfortable with how every member of the staff handled things last night. Which is too bad, because our old vet is on the expensive side, but we loved them, so.

You all know I am a little crazy when it comes to my dog, right?

Speaking of, Sue -- what happened with Poland??

I second this! I will be in Krakow at the beginning of October, and my family won't be coming so Sue should visit me there.

I hope you are able to get some answers fron your old vet, Sparky. ~Ma for Salsa.

Nah, that sounds no good, Sparky. You want to feel good about your vet!

Man, I actually have too many decent candidates for my current open position, after just phone screens. A couple with very specific relevant experience, and a couple more without, but with other attractive qualities. One of those latter is an internal candidate, and I will feel bad if I don't hire her, but she may not be the best candidate!

I have an author who is trying to throw shade ON US in the Acknowledgments section of an article. (The type of article has a limit of 75 references -- which is already too damn high -- and the authors had about 90. We asked them to cut 15 to meet our limit, and they did, but then they asked to insert an Acknowledgement statement that said "Due to limitations imposed by this journal, we are unable to include all the important papers relevant to cardiac stem cell regenerative therapy. We apologize to the investigators who have made significant contributions to this field whose work should not be left out because of space limitations.") Uh, NOPE and fuck you.

These clowns are exceptionally late in returning their article already -- they treated the deadline as a negotiation. Actually, they didn't even negotiate. When we sent the article and gave them a deadline of July 22, they replied and said "We will return it on July 26." When I replied and said no, we have tight deadlines, please return it on July 22, they replied and said the best they could do was return it over this past weekend. And then they just didn't return it or reply to emails or phone calls...until today. Which is the original day they told us they would return it.

I hate people like them. Haaaaaate.

Salsa, we think, will be fine. She has been getting skin tags, that grow really quickly. The current one is her third, and removing them is expensive, and biopsies make it more expensive if we decide to do that. So, yes, I'd really like the vet to take some time with me to decide whether to biopsy or not, and to discuss with me the reoccurances -- the expense we can handle, but it is really traumatic for Salsa to go to the vet now, and have general anesthesia and post-surgical pain, so I'd like to talk about mitigating that for her.

Ugh, Steph. They shouldn't have accepted your journal's offer; it's not like your limits were a surprise.

Deadlines are mere suggestions. I have authors regularly tell me they won't be able to make the deadline. All righty then. Our software has a menu that allows us to select the reason an article was behind schedule, and "Late Author Response" gets used a LOT.

Vet~ma for you and Salsa, Sparky. It's important to trust and have a good relationship with your vet.

Ooh. Haaaaaate those people, Teppy.

One of the big metrics on my performance that is easily measured is "did the reports get sent to our client on time". Which occasionally is a PiTA, if the person submitting it to me is busy or slow or late or needs lots of revisions. But yesterday the project manager sent the monthly overview to the client and I saw there were FOUR reports listed as late, and was dismayed...and it turns out it was totes my fault, and three reports from MAY never got sent in because they were outside the usual process and it didn't occur to me. Ugh. So easy! All I had to do was forward an email to our admin saying "hey, post this" but I didn't. Argh.

Well heck - just had another surprise nap. It has been a while since I've dropped into sleep out of the blue like that. Now I have a nap hangover.

House cleaners come tomorrow and I still don't have the house picked up as much as I'd like. Ok, it mainly isn't my spaces but still. Grrrrrr.

We apologize to the investigators who have made significant contributions to this field whose work should not be left out because of space limitations.

That is hilariously petty.

Deadlines are mere suggestions. I have authors regularly tell me they won't be able to make the deadline.

To be fair, I think our turnaround time is ridiculously tight, but I'm not in charge; I didn't decide to make it that tight. (I also don't think authors are told how tight the turnaround time is when their articles are accepted, but, again, that's not my decision. I occasionally let my coordinator know when an author is angry at the tight turnaround time, so she can pass that information up the ladder, if TPTB even care.)