Yesterday sucked. Today I made up for it.

Yesterday I actually had to go in to work, which made the day not so good. For starters, I had to go there because I had non-writing things to deal with, so the day was inherently less productive than I wanted it to be. I had an abbreviated talk with Dr. Boss about the fate of manuscript 1 (now he is really worried about getting it out on time, arg) that made me feel good about the writing, but kinda crappy about the timing of everything else. He won't be able to pay me unless I commit to TAing in the fall, which I don't think will give me enough flexibility to find and take a job, so the end is really in sight now.

Then I had to run up the hill to get some drugs from a transplant surgeon for some experiments I had planned. He works in my field, and if he weren't such a nice guy, I would consider him a major competitor. Which is why it totally shatter my confidence when he seemed slightly worried and confused about why I had bothered doing all the experiments I've done on my project, and the conclusions I'm going to be able to draw from them... ("But do you have some other side project besides those two screens that didn't work? Something else to talk about at your defense?" "Uh, no. That's pretty much 5 years of work in an egg shell...") And then I tried to get some work done at my desk, but people kept coming by with weird questions, that given my seniority I am supposed to answer. It makes me feel like a jerk to be so irritable (Really? You want to know where the alcohol waste goes, and you thought because I have my headphones in and haven't looked up for 20 minutes I would want to tell you about that?), so the best solution for me is to work from home. For me and everyone else. But when I got home (late), I didn't have any energy to do anything but whine about how I haven't found a job to Matt. Ick, what a lame day.

But today, I decided I don't have time for sucky days. I am hoping to get ahead of my writing schedule, and get back into the lab for a couple of days and finish up the easy experiment for manuscript 1 (since we are worried about the timeline now). I got up, took my breakfast in front of my computer and decided I have so much to do, I can write whatever I feel like, stop whenever I get stuck, but just keep writing (I think I am better at editing than first writes). Yesterday, I had barely 6 pages of "content" and 23 references. Right now I have 15 pages, 1 figure, 2 tables and 70 references. I am kinda feeling like a rockstar right now. And I do mean unshowered.

Unfortunately, I am going back in to work tomorrow, so I expect less progress, but hopefully I can clear up a few things with Dr. Boss- like this table that I have running on to a second page, how will I know when to stop? And is the figure a bad idea? And should I try to get back in to do that experiment? And if so, do I really need to keep coming in 3 days a week for all these meetings? Wish me luck.