Well, we got the proposal done. Just in time for the last FedEx pickup last night. It's not perfect, but I think we have a good chance of either getting it funded, or getting it back with lots of specific suggestions about how we can fix it to get it funded.

One big thing I learned. Never use Word's stupid drawing toolbar to make a diagram. Not only is it kludgy and awkward, you will discover at the last minute that such diagrams are incompatible with the RTF format of the NIH proposal forms. (Fortunately, I was able to salvage the situation by taking screenshots of the offending graphics and using the Gnu Image Manipulation Program (a.k.a The GIMP) to crop them and save them as TIFF files that could be imported into Word. But I've learned my lesson: no matter how "quick-n-dirty" the diagram is, I'm using Macromedia Freehand.)

And I have a happy client: they want to know if I'm available for more work. I told them I'd get back to them after I've had a few days to catch up on other stuff and figure out what's going on with my permanent employment situation.

Speaking of my permanent employment situation, I spoke with my future-boss-of-choice at Company B this morning. He said that he'd hoped to make a decision by now, but he had to wait for human resources to do their thing. So, good news: I'm still in the running. Bad news: no notion of when I can expect a decision.

Hurry up and wait. That's the way it goes.

Anyway, an amusing side-effect of the manic work schedule of the past 10 days or so is that I've been dreaming a lot. Spending a large fraction of my waking hours assimilating new information leads to particularly vivid dreams at night. (One of the many theories about the physiological function of dreams is that they're involved in whatever process the brain goes through to consolidate learning.) Many of these dreams have, not surprisingly, involved coping with long incomprehensible bureacratic forms or intractable Microsoft Word documents. There was one that didn't fit this pattern that I found rather amusing:

In the dream, I was taking a road trip with Daniel and Marissa to visit my sister, Stephanie, who had just started a new job at a college in Madison, WI. (Note: In real life, Stephanie will be finishing up her Masters degree in counselling in May. She's job hunting for a position in student advising, though as far as I know, she hasn't interviewed anywhere near Madison. Though she is at a conference in Minneapolis right now.) For some obscure reason, we got lost in downtown San Francisco along the way. Not just any downtown San Francisco either -- Scary Downtown San Francisco, with strange liquid metal skyscrapers rearing to impossible heights above us, hemming us in on a narrow stretch of empty black asphalt that ran for miles to meet a listless ocean the same color as the skyscrapers.

I recall Marissa saying, "Wendy, we can't get to Madison by driving south," as I drove along, looking for someway out of this skyscraper canyon before we drove into the sea. (And yes, I know, in real life San Francisco, south is the only direction that wouldn't take you to a large body of water, but, hey, I was dreaming, okay?)

Then somehow, we got out of SF, and we arrived at this incredibly huge bookstore, and we were greeted by a dozen affectionate grey tabby cats and a large posse of miscellaneous friends and relatives, including just about all of my Clarion classmates.

I woke up feeling that everything was right with the world.

But I would have liked to have stayed asleep long enough to actually find out what happened when we all got to Madison. I've never been to Madison.

Right now I'm going to go to lunch, and relish the absence of deadlines hanging over my head.