a slow news day?

"ok, so we need to think of things for you guys to do while i'm out next week," my boss told me this morning when she came in. i looked at her blankly. if my boss is out we can't do a single study visit. now that the study's up and running, now that all the kids are in, all there really is to do is study visits and sample-shipping. (you know, shipping things like bags of air or vials of frozen piss.) if there aren't any visits there aren't any samples. on those days i blog. ok, so every day i blog. but on those days i blog a lot.

i had this moment where i thought, as i've been thinking a lot lately, i hope that my boss doesn't think that i'm totally superfluous. it's not going to happen; my boss is someone who looks out for her staff. if you see a post in two months that's me crying onto the keyboard because i've been fired, please disregard that last statement.

in other news, i'm having a hard time figuring out what this week's column is going to be about. it's not that life is perfect (is it ever?) or that there aren't plenty of things rolling around in my head. it's just that i don't know if some of those things are ready for semi-mass-media. it's always been a strange line, this backing away from the personal life, soft-pedaling what i'll let readers see. when i started this blog, as those of you reading from the beginning will remember, it was just my organs and blood and guts on the table. but back then, that was how i felt, how i was all the time. nowadays i've sewn myself back up, and i'm not quite as willing to reopen that hurt and self-doubt.

but it makes for much better columns.