Femme Friday – Grant Writing Edition

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So there’s this grant proposal I’ve been tinkering with on and off for the last few months, but haven’t really pulled together yet.  I thought it was due November 15.  I met with my boss Wednesday to discuss ways to frame our project.  She reminded me of some administrative paperwork I’d need to do before the 15th.  When I started that paperwork, I realized that the deadline was actually November 1.  You know, next MONDAY.

Then I realized that the grant proposal is due in a different time zone, so Monday there is Sunday here.  Then I realized that my recommenders can only fill out the recommender form after I submit all my crap, so I should really submit it by today or tomorrow if my mentors are going to have any chance at all to fill it out.  Then I realized how absolutely unreasonable it is to ask my mentors to do recs in a 24 hour window with less than three days notice.

Luckily I have the best mentors on the planet.  When I suggested waiting until the next round of submissions so that they would have a reasonable amount of time to do a recommendation, they told me NO WAY DO IT NOW WE’LL WRITE YOU AWESOME RECS SUPPER FAST SEND US DRAFTS OF YOUR PROPOSAL AND WE’LL GET BACK TO YOU WITHIN HOURS!

So, I’m submitting a grant proposal really soon thanks to my awesome mentors.  There’s going to be a lot of writing in the next few days.  Obviously, this calls for an outfit that inspires confidence and seriousness.

Unfortunately, deadlines don’t leave time for ironing wrinkly skirts.

Redirect – Yoga edition

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After almost a month of breaking my morning yoga routine because of migraines and busyness, I pretended that all my looming deadlines didn’t exist this morning and got back into it.  I sounded like a bowl of rice crispies with a megaphone, but it was lovely.  Despite the time I “lost” doing yoga this morning, I was more energetic and productive afterwords than I have been in about a month – the amount of time I’ve been skipping.  So, unless I have a migraine and absolutely cannot, I am going to practice every single morning.

Yoga also helps with a pretty serious side effect of the incredible amount of time I spend with a migraine – a feeling of dissociation from and betrayal by my own body.

I started doing yoga regularly after meeting Karen of donutszenmom.  Her daughter is one of my favorite people in the whole world, and Karen might be the best parent I’ve ever met.  One of the things that I think makes her a great mom is that she is so much more than a mom.  I think a lot of mothers forget that, or surpress other parts of themselves.  She also has a delightfully wicked sense of humor.  I recently liked this post on doing things that are hard and this post on a visit to the eye doctor.

Redirect

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Today I’m stuck doing a bit of data analysis that I think is useless, but it’s faster to do the analysis and show how pointless it is than to explain to my advisor why it’s pointless.  Plus, there’s a teeny teeny tiny chance I’m wrong in my predictions about the outcome.  That would be embarrassing.

While I’m kicking around some Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation data, you could be reading much more interesting things than this blog, like Clarissa’s Blog.  Here’s a funny teaching anecdote and a book review with some very insightful comments on female authors to get you started.

Redirect

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I haven’t had much time for writing substantive blog posts lately and right now is no exception.  In fact, the next month probably won’t be an exception.  I know this is pretty heartbreaking for you all.  So, until I get back to my regular awesome blogging, I’ll be pointing you to some blogs you may not read that you’d probably enjoy.

First up is Lady Quantum.  Lady Quantum is pretty fantastic and was one of my first crushes.  Her blog makes me laugh a lot.  To get you started I recommend this post on what working with fancy scientific instruments is really like and this one on how shitty being a grad student with a chronic illness can be.

Storm

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I’m still busy, though I haven’t gotten overwhelmed enough to distract myself/procrastinate with some serious blog posts.  But I did find this song for you to listen to: