I had an interesting chat with one of my committee members yesterday. I ran into him a little after noon yesterday and he asked me how things were going, and if I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I was frazzled and trying to finish an experiment quickly, so my internal censor was off and I responded, “Which tunnel?” He wasn’t pleased. I explained how Tom was wanting to change the focus of my research — again — to look at the imprinting center, rather than the other gene we had all agreed I’d look at in my last committee meeting. I sort of sighed and said something like, “I thought we were pretty clear at the last meeting that I’d look at Frat3,” and he looked at me very sternly and said, “No, I think we were very clear.”

I have a meeting scheduled with Tom tomorrow afternoon to talk about this a little more, then I think I may need to have another committee meeting. Yes, I’d use the same techniques at both loci, and yes, the new goal will probably be a more interesting story, but still…it’s yet another change. Those two reasons were there three months ago. Why didn’t he bring up these objections then? Back in January my committee wanted me to figure out a “safe” project and we’re just coming up with this now? It was actually my understanding at the time that this work was done and the manuscript about to be submitted back in January, so I’m very frustrated that I’m just finding out now how many holes there are in it.

Grumble, hiss, spit, grrr. Enough venting of the ol’ spleen. Time to play a little more WoW and hit the sack for an early start tomorrow. Hurrah, Friday!

Also, one of these days I’ll get back to our Roadtrip summaries. After all, there’s still the story of the Maker’s Mark distillery tour to tell!