In with the new and out with the old - thankfully.

Thanks for all your input. I'm going to try adding a little more science to the mix!

Despite the moving purgatory that HippieHusband and I have been in for the last few days, I managed have my first day of work. Moving purgatory is the state you are in when you have moved into your new apartment, but none of your stuff has arrived. And the things you need like a fork and knife are still in the moving van, but thankfully you have three spoons (WTF?).

HippieHusband and I spent the last few days in an empty apartment sleeping on this terrible air mattress, eating mainly the Annie's version of Kraft dinner, with the occasional meal at a wonderful restaurant. But because we had no access to internet, our entertainment consisted of this game we made-up called, "You are." The idea was that you described the other person with a word where the first letter began with an "o." It could have been any letter of the alphabet but for some reason, the letter "o" was what we used. It could only be a scrabble-legal word. So one example is, "You are obstinate." It was telling that we fell asleep on the bedroom floor, playing this game.

The second aspect of moving purgatory is all the stupid administrivia that you need to sort out when you move states. Things like new drivers licenses, car plates, emissions check, new insurance, etc. And we spent 4hrs in a DMV just to get new drivers licenses. I swear I think they must make the DMV employees pass psych tests because there were some people that made me think, "Really?" Maybe those people should stay at home then the wait time would be shortened by 3 hours.

The last aspect of moving purgatory is the work related anxiety. HippieHusband is anxious to get our lives settled and sorted out so that he can be doing something meaningful, ie looking for a job, being interviewed for a job, getting a job, or working. I, at least had a job.

My first day of work was less nerve-wracking than I thought it would be. After taking me to lunch at the Faculty Club, my new supervisor gave me the grand tour of the joint departmental resources, the lab, my office, and introduced me to all the relevant people, including the other postdocs, got me keys, a mailbox and an email address. All this in the matter of a couple of hours!

This supervisor is definitely more on top of things than Dr.Add'EmUp. Furthermore, she is all about the plans, which I love. So we'll be sitting down next week to determine what our goals should be for different time frames: 3mth, 6mth and then longer both in terms of the project and my career. Frankly, although Dr. Add'EmUp always said he wanted to mentor me - nothing concrete ever materialized.

My supervisor, as is the case with most academics, is a little quirky, but really smart, nice, super organized, extremely enthusiastic about the work, and in our discussions about her work shown that she is extremely collaborative. It's this last aspect of my supervisor's nature made me realize that I hadn't heard back from my collaborator about our little critters that were supposed to be fedexed after I left SmallTown. So I sent our lab tech an email and got this response,

So, it turns out that our budget has been frozen for about a week and while other professors are experiencing this, our problem is different. We are considered "overdrawn" because Dr.Add'EmUp hasn't converted excess salary over to supply money.

Quote from Dr.Add'EmUp today: "How did we overspend?" Apparently he hasn't been looking at the weekly budget spreadsheets I've been sending him (since February) or reading my warning emails.

As you can see from my email, things at the lab are normal. :)

I remember when we were told about the excess salary, back in May, because it came at a time when our lab tech sent out warning emails saying we had next to nothing in the lab supply budget. And it was such a relief because we all knew that that excess salary should cover the supplies for the next year. Yet at our weekly lab meetings instead of converting the salary into supply money, Dr.Add'EmUp suggested that we "tighten our belts" and "be more creative" about our getting supplies. Let me tell you, you can't be creative about the basics of labwork. How do you substitute things like petri dishes, agar, or salt? Maybe as a theoretician he thought we could simulate these?

Furthermore, now that I've left, Dr.Add'EmUp has an additional salary to turn into lab supply money. So I'm left wondering why the fuck he didn't convert the money? Ah well as HippieHusband says, "It's not your problem anymore."

I simply sighed and smiled.