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.)

That's kind of hysterical, Steph. One for the files, for sure.

Oh, meara, that totally sucks.

Fuck NPR and PBS for talking over Corey Booker.

MSNBC too. That's when I switched over to CSPAN which is so much better.

A friend just had a guy in for an interview and told me the dude was literally checking his phone about 20 times. Granted it was apparently while he was on the phone with the higher ups and waiting for things to be translated to/from them, but my friend was still in the room and also..wtf. Seriously. Put the phone away.

Have I told you guys about the dude with the suit? We had a guy interview a few years back. His current job was in the same building. He wasn't really right for the position, which we kind of knew going in but he was a referral, so.

Anyway, a month or two after his unsuccessful interview, the head receptionist asked my boss about him, because he seemed a little strange. It turned out that he was stashing his interview suit in the closet in our reception area and coming up to our floor an using the guest bathroom to change in and out of it as he went off to apparently a whole lot of interviews other places.

How old was Truman? Kato will be 15 in about 2 months,

Best wishes for Sammie, Salsa, Truman and Kato. Darby's like Truman - she could be anywhere from 9-12 so it's tough to know what slow downs for example are weather, personality, age or potentially something to check out.

Man, Michelle Obama's speech last night was good.