Last gasp for 2010

Yup. No matter how much I try to pretend it's not true, another year has passed. 2010 is over! And here I am again, blogging on New Year's Eve. Even though I haven't blogged since September.

The back half of this year has been tough . . . since September. Maybe I shouldn't be introspective this year. Maa. If not on New Year's Eve, when, ne?

*sigh* Where to begin . . .

I was re-reading my last New Year's Eve blog, in which I was talking about the meeting with my boss to discuss my goals for the year. Well, that meeting did not go well. In fact it went so not-well it was like a personal attack on me, and that was so 180 degrees from all my previous goal meetings that I was . . . I guess 'shocked' would best describe my feelings after that meeting. But I also knew my boss was under serious stress herself, so I blew off the meeting as just her stress. After the meeting she didn't initially act any differently toward me, but things got more and more tense between us.

At any rate, she was unhappy enough that she has since left. She took a new position out east and left in September. That was great with me except for one thing. Before she left she did her damnedest to destroy my career. Yup. That also came almost totally out of the blue. There was tension, but I never expected she'd tell the department chair that I was not promote-able and send a letter recommending that I couldn't do my job and should look for another one elsewhere. To say that I was dumb-founded would be putting it mildly. And of course, this is the year I should be up for promotion to full Professor.

Luckily, it doesn't look like she's done me any harm in the long run, but it's been a tough Fall. My ex-boss antagonized enough people in the department before she left that people were willing to believe that she was not correct in her assessment of me. Plus, I have a lot of support in the department from other people I work with, who know my work ethic and my work in general. I have support from all over the US from colleagues at other universities and hospitals who I work with. So the department is putting me up for promotion, on the recommendations of the Chair and other professors in the department. The hardest part of the whole nonsense, once I got past the sense of betrayal, is that my new boss doesn't know me and only has the letter from my previous boss to go by. So I've had to spend a lot of extra energy proving myself to the new boss. I'm glad the year is over. Now we'll see if the University Promotion and Tenure Committee will accept everything even without a recommendation by the person who was my immediate boss.

Okay, enough of that! That's the old year. The new year is about to start, things are back on track and moving forward.

I got elected to the board of directors of my national organization this Fall, so good things have happened too. It's a three year term and should be fun, although a lot of work. I was also asked to chair the editorial board of a new blog that another of my national organizations is starting. Let's see, what else . . . I just returned a manuscript to my coauthor for a special edition of Biochimica Biophysica Acta, and I have a book manuscript that should be ready to go in within the next two weeks.

For a couple of months this Fall I was bringing work home every evening and weekend because a chemistry instructor in the med tech program quit and I picked up and finished teaching that class. I didn't have time to prepare for it at work, so I broke one of my cardinal rules . . that work stays at work. It couldn't be helped. I'm pretty well caught up now, so I shouldn't have to do that too often any more.

I'd have to say that despite a rough Fall, 2010 has been a good year for me. I've done a lot, learned a lot, survived a lot. I'm going as strong as ever and have a lot of new things coming up. Yesterday two new instruments arrived in the lab, so after the New Year we'll be validating and evaluating. These are the instruments I mentioned in last year's New Year's Eve blog that I needed to convince the powers that be that we needed. It took me a year, but we got them. Also, the positions that I was blogging about needing to be created are now created and filled. So despite everything, it's been a good year. If the promotion doesn't go through, it'll go through next year.

My family is doing well this year too, with two new additions, both grand-nieces. Coraline was born in May to my nephew and his wife, and in October Libby made her entrance to my other nephew and his wife. They're beautiful and we're all blessed. I spent Christmas in Colorado and got to see Julia and Coraline, then came home to Texas and Libby was here from Virginia. Of course they were with their parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles. Yup, I'd say the family is growing. And I did more family-oriented stuff than is usual for me, but the Holidays are good times to remember how important family is.

All the stuff that happened this past Fall has kind of over-shadowed the year for me, but it really has been a good year. The Utah trip with Monica was outstanding. We saw some really incredible things, like a fog rainbow that was more of a multi-colored fog halo, and the condors at Zion which are shown in the picture to the right, and the Shiprock formation looking like an actual ship floating because of low lying fog, and a really awesome sunset in northern New Mexico which is in the picture from earlier in the blog, etc, etc. The weather was absolutely perfect, we were there during a full moon so the moon was gorgeous every night and the stars are beyond beautiful when you can see them without city light interference. The hikes were wonderful, the shopping was fun . . . it was just a really great trip.

Another plus is that I got to go to Grenada twice this year. I went back in October and we played some more.

So all in all I'd have to say I don't have much to complain about . . . *laughing* even though I spent the first half of this blog doing just that. Oh well. I'll blame it on the New Year's Eve introspection / retrospection. And I think I'll stop now.

Have a great New Year!!!