I have had a weird pounding headache since I got up yesterday morning.  No, I don’t know why I have a headache.  This is quite unlike the type of headaches that I usually get.

I feel generally drained.  I’ve actually been on the verge of tears a couple of times the last day or so, and that is uncommon for me.  I know that I’m slightly overwhelmed at work right now with just coming back from vacation and trying to sort out and prioritize what I need to do.  (I think I’ve mentioned that no one does my job while I’m gone.)  I’ve also had some problems to troubleshoot and straighten out, and I have found myself very annoyed at some of these situations.  They’ve happened because our systems aren’t in place properly at work to assure that certain things get done the way they should.  Most of it comes down to communication.  (Doesn’t it always?)  Anyway, I stayed until 5:40 today, just trying to deal with “one more thing!”  Then I couldn’t take it anymore today.  I’ll dig into the problem pile again tomorrow morning.

And if my nextdoor neighbor, who is a microbiology professor at the University, asks me one more time to come speak to her class about Team Diarrhea, I’m going to walk across the lawn and smack her.  I finally told her in an email yesterday that I am not up to pulling together a presentation with PowerPoint slides and all that.  I’ve got too much on my plate at work to even think about one more thing that would require preparation on my part.  I feel guilty because I like my job and I’d like to tell other impressionable minds about my job, but I don’t have it in me to add another thing to the list right now.

And then there is this whole deal with one of the University of Minnesota Food Science departments.  They’re researching ways to isolate pathogenic E. coli strains from mixed culture.  When this started 18 months ago, my involvement was [suppose to be] limited to supplying them with specimens to work with.  Oh my goodness, it’s been so much more than that, from troubleshooting their methodology to veriifying their results.  And now a draft of the research paper has been written and the student who has been working on his Ph.D. with this project wants me to go over his paper with a fine-tooth comb and make any comments and corrections.  This involves me actually going through all my data on all the couple of hundred specimens I’ve given him from my specimen bank and compare that data to what he’s saying he got using their detection methods — and there have been quite a few discrepancies between our methods which may be due to different methods or it may be due to lab errors and faulty technique.  That means I’ve got to compile all this data because he didn’t give me that breakdown.  He’s tossed around numbers and statistics in his paper and I have to figure out where he’s coming up with this.  I may have to go into my supervisor’s office and whine that I’m really not on staff in the Food Science department at the U of MN, and I’m really not his “research advisor,” and this is really their responsibility to deal with.  Just one of those things that could reduce me to tears in short order right now.  A task like this takes a lot of organization and quiet time to devote to it, and just where it that suppose to come from with stacks of culture plates on my bench?

And I think I need to stay away from certain Internet contacts right now.  I’m dwelling on others’ problems too much, and I can’t do anything about their problems.  Their problems are bothering me far too much.  I can’t solve those problems and I can’t even give those people a brisk shake, even when they so deserve it!  Time to back off and disengage for a bit.  I’m not even getting any reciprocal friendship out of it.

It’s 9:30 PM now.  I’m going to set up the coffee, brush my teeth, and crawl into bed.  I hope that the dose of Tylenol I just took works a little and tomorrow morning will find me feeling a bit better.