That Was The Week That Was

The past week was a bizarre mix of good and bad. Consider the following:

1) My colleagues and I obtain three grants from various branches of the US government worth a total of $1.6 million over two years (good).

2) Two other grant applications get submitted ahead of the deadline (stressful but amazing that they went in comfortably on time: this is almost a career first for me).

3) The Food & Drug Administration calls to announce an unannounced site visit to my workplace (a biotechnology company) this coming week (stressful; all staff are in hyperactive mode if not blind panic getting ready for this inspection).

4) At iaido, the activity I do for stress relief, my Sensei collapses four feet in front of me with severe chest pain. The "heart attack" turned out to be an aortic aneurysm which is A Very Bad Thing because of its pessimistic prognosis (stressful, sad and depressing).

5) On Wednesday I managed to leave a super-dooper-purchased-in-UK-and-very-expensive saucepan on medium heat all day. I came hope to find a distorted steel skeleton sitting in a puddle of molten aluminium (its construction was complicated and a work of engineering genius) on the range top and the cats were improvising gas masks and not impressed (stressful and annoying but a relief that I didn't burn the house down).

As the song from the old TV show goes "That was the week that was, it's over, let it go..." No problem there. Now roll on Monday...