- After almost three months, we are getting our place back to ourselves in one more week! Awesome Tenant is moving out of the basement suite for the summer (at the very least), and Mr E Man's divorcing friend is moving down there on May 1st. This is great timing and has the potential to work extremely well for all concerned. (Although Divorcing Friend is going to have to work hard to be as awesome a tenant as Awesome Tenant, who brings us home-made cookies along with the rent money). DF has done his utmost to be a helpful and non-intrusive house guest - he's washed lots of dishes, fixed our old PC, and even made us pancakes one morning - and has generally succeeded. However, the weekends when he's had his seven-year old son with him have been a little too noisy and chaotic for my liking. And I really don't like sharing our one and only bathroom. I'd also like to be able to talk stupidly to my cats again when I come home from work, without worrying about who's listening from the other room... yeah, he laughed a LOT at my "Boogie Woogie Schmoogie! Who'sh a good kitty? You can has treats!" routine one day...
- I have finally figured out how to describe my job. My actual title is essentially meaningless to most people. I've tended to use “Grant Writer”, although it only describes about 10% of what I do. I’ve now settled on “Grant Wrangler”, which gets me up to about 80% and better captures the exertion required to get the damn things into the right places at the right times, and in the best possible condition. Blog post tags are now being modified to reflect this change.
- As of this morning, the shower room is back in business! I no longer have to endure the attractive helmet hair-frizz ball combo look, but can wash my hair upon arrival and look somewhat like a normal human being again (although my forehead dent is becoming gradually more visible, at least to me. Hmmmm).
- While I am still coughing, today has not (yet) featured one of the gag reflex-triggering coughing fits that have marked the last week.
Books I read in October 2024
7 hours ago
I called someone a "Customer Wrangler" the other day when they had a particularly distressing set of emails where no one was listening to what each other were saying, and now they want it on their business card.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if customers are easier to wrangle than grants? Or than the people who write the bulk of the grant text?
ReplyDeleteHaha, now I'm going to imagine you herding grants on the long trail from PI's office to the NIH, eating slop beans at night and wearing a bandana around your mouth during the day to keep the bullshit out.
ReplyDeleteUncannily accurate! Except it's not usually the NIH. Canadian cowboys are basically the same as the American ones though.
ReplyDelete