Am I busy? Oh, but let me tell you how.
Saturday was a crash course in house hunting. Imagine: Fifteen houses in approximately 6 hours. We (or I rather as Dr. Man is still in Residency State) put in an offer on a house. Talk about stressful. I signed us up to agree to pay a very large amount of money. I call Dr. Man to tell him and say, “I bought a new closet. It was very, very expensive, but the house was free.”
Sunday morning I get a phone call from the realtor telling me that the owner has asked for more time. So, I agree. The rest of the day consists of angst, housework, and lab stuff.
Monday I find out that the owner has countered with something (that I consider) extremely unreasonable. This is, after all, a buyer's market and I offered her full list price (but I did ask her to pay closing costs). Owner countered with “How about you pay your own closing costs?” I countered with, “Take it or leave it.” Most of Monday is spent with me getting things ready for hosting a seminar speaker on Tuesday. Monday evening I find out that the speaker has missed his first flight, then his connecting flight, then his rescheduled connecting flight. He decides to fly to NearbyLargeCity and rent a car to drive to Public U. I find this out from my fellow committee members and have to figure out the logistics of how Public U will pay for these detours.
Tuesday is the big day. I spend most of the day chaperoning the speaker to and from meetings with various groups of students. To explain this unusual circumstance (a visiting speaker speaking with students?!?), this speaker is being hosted by the Biochemistry Grad Students. As such, we decided to have a variety of students meet with the speaker as opposed to faculty members. We did have a time slot where various faculty members could speak with him, but for the most part (since we were doing the work) students met with him. He gave a good “big picture” talk. Then there was dinner and taking the rented car to the airport. (I'll have to blog more about this later.)
Today has been less stressful. I took the speaker to breakfast and then to the airport and pointed him in the direction of the plane. I went home, took a nap, and went back to work to finish things up. Now, just recently I got a call from my realtor telling me that the owner of the offer-house has just raised her asking price. She can consider my offer withdrawn.
Sigh. But on the good side all the reagents and things I need came in today. Including the construct that another group promised us several months ago. So, the next few days should be very eventful in the lab (and this weekend there's more house hunting).Labels: Academic Interactions, Life, rambling, work habits