I work full time and then some as an acoustical engineer. I'm manager of the acoustics research group plus I have a bunch of my own projects that I'm doing a lot of the work on myself (that's the fun part!). The atmosphere is much more like grad school with the insane hours, all nighters and crazy projects sucking up weekends to meet deadlines. There a lot of papers to be written and published and presented at technical conferences and coordination with subcontractors and customers - so there's a lot of travel. There's also a bunch of international coordination as I'm on several standards committees looking at and laying the technical groundwork for the regulatory agencies developing future standards for aircraft & rotorcraft noise, sonic boom and the NextGen air transportation system. I've been sucked into a black hole really.... And not having much success paring it down to 40 hours a week, though I've been trying since my CF DX earlier this year. It is fun and I enjoy the work... just wish there was less of it! <img src=""> I usually do work from home on Fridays.
Forgot to add - I have a housekeeper clean once a week. My hubby takes care of taking our daughter to her evening activities, I get her launched and off to school in the AM before I depart for work. We all share in household chores (trash, yard, laundry etc...) I try to spend quality time with my daughter, and we often do things together on weekends - like taking jewelry classes or other fun & relaxing stuff like that. There aren't enough hours in the day. Of late I've dropped (or am in the processing of extricating myself) from some volunteer things. Mostly my CF time is in the AM and I've learned to multi-task - like nebbing Xopenex while I blow dry my hair & put on makeup.... or later nebbing HTS while I do my AM e-mail check. Sometimes I do my nebs and acapella in the car while commuting. ~Juliet