Evaluations

I had my annual job performance review today, which I've been dreading, as my productivity has taken a nose-dive since the kid arrived. Here are the data to illustrate what I mean:

When you subtract the time spent pumping milk, cleaning and drying the beast shield and walking back and forth from my office to the lab, that leaves about 4 hours remaining in the day for actual work. It's been really embarrassing, actually, I keep thinking that to can get X done in a day (because I got X and Y done historically pre-Alden) and now I can only get through about 20% of X before I have to abandon the project in order to milk myself. Compounding the problem is the fact that I lack the presence of mind to remember exactly where I left off when I return to the lab, leading to many an incomplete DNA prep (I forgot the lysis buffer TWICE!) and partial digest. RAPDs have not been working for 3 weeks now, despite numerous attempts and I left the Hg vapor bulb on Mike's epifluroescence scope all weekend (ACK!!!). Really dismal performance on my part. So my heart was pounding at the mere idea of an appraisal. However, the verdict was (shockingly) positive. I even walked out of the meeting with merit raise. Naturally I met this news with incredulity. How, I asked my supervisors, could they justify this? Apparently, they're impressed that I came back to work "so quickly", despite my sleep deprivation/spongy brain. In Britain, Willie reminded me, I'd still be on maternity leave for a full year. He and Susie think my "dedication to work" is admirable. That slays me. Ah, the sweet promise of low expectations. All I can say is thank god I work for Brits! An American would have fired my ass months ago.

On another note, I'm sorry for the long posting delay. We have been hosting out-of-town guests for the past week or so and will continue to do so until next week, so things have been crazy busy. Updates, if any, will be spotty until our guests have gone. Lots more info to come then, I suspect.