It's scary times for this researcher. My K grant resubmission gets reviewed tomorrow. The K grant that could move me into the short-list-for-an-interview pile by job search committees. The K grant that could strengthen my negotiations for a TT faculty position. The K grant that could give me money to start my lab. That K grant. And my obsession with eRA commons (where one goes to find out how their grant is reviewed) has already gone into overdrive.

Not that there's anything I can glean from the commons website right now - I mean, the grant hasn't even been reviewed yet. Yet I'm still able to find plenty of information over there on which to obsess. The list of reviewers on my study section, for instance - there are notable differences from the one that reviewed my first submission (obviously). What do these differences mean??? And then there's the googling of paylines for the K grant mechanism at my institute. What's a good impact score going to be? Not that anybody really knows, since the K grant paylines have yet to be determined. The council meeting date isn't even until January, 2011. Is that stopping me? Of course not. I can still look at last year's cutoff, as well as peruse the current blogosphere rumor mill.

This obsession will undoubtedly steal my mind's focus until my score is posted sometime this week or next (likely next). Thankfully, I have a dissertation and manuscript to edit for labmates, providing some suitable distractions while not at the bench. But things will be a bit different on the home front this weekend. Hubby and I are going out for our birthdays (we share a birthday - how cute is that), and he'll likely have to pry the HTC Evo from my cold, dead hands before he'll get me to stop browsing the web at dinner.

So is the life of a somewhat-OCD scientist.

It's nice to know pregnancy hasn't changed everything.

This can't be healthy.