Saturday, December 12, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
Hot chocolate (and lots of parentheses)
...cures a multitude of ills. I've been making homemade hot chocolate the last little while. (Kim, you've inspired me!) And it's helping in the process of getting over the "ack, I'm still stuck in an apartment with my little family even though we're ready to move on and be real people" troubles.
In part through the hot chocolate, I've been having serious Christmas nostalgia and enjoying it oh so much. This year is the first that we've had the crucial combination of enough money and the disposition to buy a big tree (we've just never had them both at the same time). It's seven feet tall, hardly fits in our little apartment (though it's got nothing on the monsters that Dad would cut out of the tops of the pine trees in the valley, and then walk down the hill to the house...we have numerous photos of a giant Christmas-tree-ball with about 18 inches of human leg...love them). Ben did the lights (my Dad always did them when we were little, figure Bee can do with the same tradition) and then we all decorated. Today Bee decided that we should string popcorn on red thread and add it to the ornaments (almost all of which came from Gran....it's one of her funny Gran things to buy everybody several new ones each year) and lights, so that's what we'll be doing for family home evening. We've been listening to Mannheim Steamroller (another childhood tradition, thanks Mom for gifting us some so that we can listen too!) Christmas albums (really I can only imagine LOVING music this technology dependent because it's Christmas and they do a good job....and it's what we DID when I was little).
And possibly even more than the other stuff, this is the first Christmas in ten years that I've not had crazy deadlines hanging over my head making most of December totally unenjoyable (I guess there were two of those that were mission Christmases...so not the same sort of stress, but still, not really like home Christmas for sure). All I have to do is give my students their final and keep hacking away at reading my list. But I can enjoy Christmas during all of December because I have no page count to worry about, no final projects or presentations stressing me out.
Life is just pretty great.
In part through the hot chocolate, I've been having serious Christmas nostalgia and enjoying it oh so much. This year is the first that we've had the crucial combination of enough money and the disposition to buy a big tree (we've just never had them both at the same time). It's seven feet tall, hardly fits in our little apartment (though it's got nothing on the monsters that Dad would cut out of the tops of the pine trees in the valley, and then walk down the hill to the house...we have numerous photos of a giant Christmas-tree-ball with about 18 inches of human leg...love them). Ben did the lights (my Dad always did them when we were little, figure Bee can do with the same tradition) and then we all decorated. Today Bee decided that we should string popcorn on red thread and add it to the ornaments (almost all of which came from Gran....it's one of her funny Gran things to buy everybody several new ones each year) and lights, so that's what we'll be doing for family home evening. We've been listening to Mannheim Steamroller (another childhood tradition, thanks Mom for gifting us some so that we can listen too!) Christmas albums (really I can only imagine LOVING music this technology dependent because it's Christmas and they do a good job....and it's what we DID when I was little).
And possibly even more than the other stuff, this is the first Christmas in ten years that I've not had crazy deadlines hanging over my head making most of December totally unenjoyable (I guess there were two of those that were mission Christmases...so not the same sort of stress, but still, not really like home Christmas for sure). All I have to do is give my students their final and keep hacking away at reading my list. But I can enjoy Christmas during all of December because I have no page count to worry about, no final projects or presentations stressing me out.
Life is just pretty great.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Disappointment
So Ben and I had both applied for jobs at Miami University in Ohio, in the hopes that we'd be able to move home. It seemed perfect...both of us working at the same place, Ben in systems security and me teaching majors and minors and maybe even starting a theater production class.
The Spanish department interviewed me and wanted to hire me on the spot. I told them we felt like we needed to wait and hear about Ben, and they said fine. The guy in charge of hiring for the job Ben applied for has not responded in any way to Ben's phone and email requests for information about the status of Ben's application. I emailed the Spanish department to ask when they needed a final answer. The answer was, basically, "Well, before now. We had to hire someone else!"
Dang it.
There is, however, one bright hope. The Spanish department chair told me that they will be hiring another person for the fall, and that I should email him in March. So we'll see how that goes, I guess.
The Spanish department interviewed me and wanted to hire me on the spot. I told them we felt like we needed to wait and hear about Ben, and they said fine. The guy in charge of hiring for the job Ben applied for has not responded in any way to Ben's phone and email requests for information about the status of Ben's application. I emailed the Spanish department to ask when they needed a final answer. The answer was, basically, "Well, before now. We had to hire someone else!"
Dang it.
There is, however, one bright hope. The Spanish department chair told me that they will be hiring another person for the fall, and that I should email him in March. So we'll see how that goes, I guess.
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