Mental Health Miles

"Once more into the breech, dear friends! Once more or close up the wall with our English dead."

Or, if Shakespeare ain't your cup of tea, the american classic -

"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."



I hear ya, Mr. Corelone, Mr. Godfather, uhm Sir. As for me, I'm not being dragged back into the bloody mafia life, but I am being punished for something I did to somebody in this life or a previous life.

My grants are back. They're baaaack.



Thanks creepy Poltergiest girl, I know.

I came in Monday morning to 13 (ironic #) different rejection emails regarding the electronic submission of my 2 grants. The grants were confirmed as received ON TIME but this was apparently only half the battle. They still have to be re-accepted (or something).

Due to the buhjillian grants coming in, the system didn't get to rejecting them until a week later, then it automatically tried 13 times over the weekend to resubmit them, each time generating a new tracking number for the grant. The email says the following:

"A form attached to one of the forms in your submission is not the required form. Please verify that you have attached the correct form. For example, the RR Subaward Budget Attachments form requires that an RR Budget form be attached.- GG O&M"

This is helpful because it basically tells you NOTHING. Which form? Oooo (clap, clap, clap) this will be fun, its a guessing game! Shouldn't be too hard to figure out since there's only about 20 forms that could have a hundred different things wrong. Needle meet haystack.

Trying to get a little more guidance I called Grants.gov,
they told me to talk to: GrantsInfo@NIH
they told me to talk to: e RA Commons, they weren't taking calls, so I had to email them. The next day I called them and....
they told me to talk to: Grants.gov

Full federal government circle. During my circumnavigation I learned that:

1. A rejection email is not really a rejection.

2. A field calling for a physician's credential doesn't want you to enter MD or DO instead it wants their e RA Commons user name. Crystal, good thing you don't ask for what you really want there - that would be confusing.

3. The help desk ladies I talked to knew some stuff, kinda, sorta, maybe.

4. The best advice they could give is to detach and reattach every document before resubmitting. Maybe I can bang it on the side - like a TV - too.

5. You should NOT follow the instructions for resubmitting an application with corrected errors, because you don't have errors that need correcting, instead you just have....errors that need correcting.

6. Only the last tracking number you have is vaild. How then do you get credit for being on time originally if that tracking # is no long vaild? (help desk didn't know) and - here's the good one - Isn't that the opposite of tracking? (Oh yeah, she said, I guess it is)

7. I was a very bad person in a previous life.

8. The world is a vampire.

The monster PDF application form is very glitchy in its own right. I timed how long it took to simply detach a file once - 4 minutes. It has to really think about whether it wants to let it go I guess. I lost my progress 2-3 times due to glitches. Once I tried to save it when I got to a spot that glitched before. The save attempt glitched and I lost everything (trying to be safe in order to avoid losing everything).

I battled this for 3 straight days and decided to pull the plug on the Wednesday night Taco ride because I only have until Friday (or the grants turn into pumpkins). Then...you know what? Screw it, I'm riding.

Only 5-6 showed up, we didn't ride far or fast, but I enjoyed being out, even getting rained on. They were mental health miles -- and tacos.

As for today? Back into the breech. I think I might have it figured out now (of course, I thought that before)

Wish me luck.