A mentor, a stupid woman and chicken pox?

I have selected a mentor. I even went up and talked in person to him instead of sending an e-mail... how unscientist of me! To actually walk up the two flights of stairs to his office as opposed to sitting in my quiet secluded little office. I chose Dave. Mullet man. If I suddenly cut my hair into a really bad mullet, someone inform me that my mentorship has taken a turn for the worse.

Dave is a really great guy, a newly promoted Scientist V. He is young-ish (early 40's I think). From Idaho, married with two sons. Great guy. Hard worker, but down to earth. And fun to be around and talk to. My only hesitation albeit minor is that he knows a lot of the people I might happen to talk about, and I might not talk about them with the acolades that he might expect. If this comes up I will have to remind him that we do have a confidentiality agreement. He was quite excited to be presented with this prospect to mentor a young scientist. He went further to tell me that I really should feel free to come and talk to him whenever I want, be it through a formal mentorship, or not.

I feel as though I have made a good choice. I am happy with my decision and I hope that Dave can help me work through a lot of my work confusion I am dealing with now.

Then there is stupid chick I work with. Wanders into my office this morning. She just wanders from office to office to talk to people all day long. I will *never* have her work on my projects because she does NOT work. She just yaps with people all.day.long. So she plops into my comfy leather chair and starts yapping and yapping. One of the last things she touches on is that she talked to my former team lead Tom the other day and told him exactly what I thought of the reorg... ok, what exactly did I think of it? I don't remember talking to stupid chick about it because she was out on maternity leave. She had it dead wrong! So here she is blabbing to my former boss about how I was forced into it - and he knows that isn't true. Is he smart enough to realize she is talking out her ass?

Then there is the chickenpox... I went to see Leif in daycare today at lunch. He nursed, was a little fussy, we are both sick with colds. Then he played on the floor some. His teacher went to change his diaper and showed me a little bump on his bottom. There have been three cases of chicken pox in daycare, everyone was exposed most likely. Is that little bump the start of a week at home for Leif?

Ugh.