As you now know, I've taken my blog underground for a while.  I need to be able to write without fear of who's reading it.  I can't do this until I get a job. 

Etc, etc, etc. 

I don't like any form of censorship, let alone the dreaded self-censorship, so you can, in fact, consider this step that I've taken to be an unusual one.  I'm trying really hard to get a job, and I've got several really promising prospects that I don't want to fuck up.

Since I've moved my blog, some of the things (like archives and comments) may be messed up for a bit.  Sorry.  It'll be back to normal soon.  I'll let you know when.

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(Click to make it bigger) 

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As I've already mentioned before, much of our time the past few weekends has been involved in cleaning out the basement and the garage, mostly in preparation for the inevitable move that's coming in the next 2.5 monts or so.  Doing so has, of course, required the sorting of our stuff into three piles: the keep pile, the yard sale (and Goodwill if it doesn't sell) pile, and the trash pile.  Fortunately, the keep pile has stayed the smallest, thus far.  That's kinda the point.

See, we both come from families of pack rats.  We both convince ourselves of material sentimentality that may or may not exist.  Most of the crap in our basement and garage, we'd completely forgotten about, yet some of it, the stuff in the keep pile, we still apparently like enough to hold on to.  We also both convince ourselves that things may somehow be useful in the future to us, even though we both know we'll completely forget we had said object if that bizarre need ever actually arises. 

We've been conquering this, though, one box at a time.  As we've done this, I've gotten a little disturbed by a few things:

1. We've been storing and toting around way too much shit.  I mean, seriously.  We're a young married couple.  We've not been around to collect this much stuff.  And yet, we have, and we're reluctant to throw it away. Thankfully, we've been getting past that the past couple weekends
2. A related note: we have so much shit right now that we're going to have a really large rummage sale.  People are seriously going to be wondering if we're closing out some old person's estate or something.
3. We have been keeping way too much shit that isn't worthy of even a crappy rummage sale.  The best evidence of this is the current state of our front yard.  I actually counted today because I was curious, and we have 17 giant barrel-sized trashbags out there (plus other big stuff), awaiting pickup. 
   
4. The fact that our trash "leaves" before the pickup comes.  Okay, that deserves its own paragraph.
   

I'm really a little disturbed by our neighborhood, because a number of big things we put out front to send away -- you know, stuff that's too trashy for our home (remembering that we're poor students who currently together live on one grad student stipend), and that we've deemed too trashy for a yard sale -- has gotten up and walked away.  It's not the bags or anything, and those are left untouched.  It's the big junk.   An old broken propane grill our parents brought us for parts to fix our other one (which also no longer exists)?  Gone within an hour.  The old really broken dryer we had with a fried computer, that I had taken apart and left in pieces, was gone within five minutes.  Not too long after we moved here, we had put out an atrocious entertainment center.  Solid, but really ugly.  By the time I had walked back into the house, it was marching across our yard into our neighbor's house.

One man's trash... 

Posted by Andy at 11:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've had a very interesting couple of weeks. 

I've had a few places show varying amounts of interest in me for faculty positions, which is good.  (Of course, my newest unintentional interest in collectibles apparently lies in rejection letters, which are starting to show up, as expected).  I am refusing to talk about the potential jobs much here because this is a public blog.  Of course, I work through thoughts by writing, so I will be keeping track of my thought process somewhere, just not anywhere that these prospective employers can read about it.

I've worked with Amy to rid our house of some crap that we don't need.  We're doing this in anticipation of moving.  We cleaned out our garage last Sunday.  Today was our basement.  Tomorrow will be our weeding out our clothing and my books.  Right now, our yard is full of trash bags, and the trashmen are bringing a "special pickup" on Monday morning.  This pile of trash will grow tomorrow.  We're also going to have a yard sale next weekend to get rid of usable stuff.  We have more clothes than a well-stocked Goodwill, and that needs to change.  Half the shit we haven't worn in years.

You should come to the yard sale!  It'll be fun, I think...

We also managed to purchase a dryer today.  I (finally) got a check back from part of my travel reimbursement for going to AAG last month, which was just enough to buy a practically-new-but-used dryer from Franklin's.  Once I put a cord on it, we're going to have dryer-dried clothes for the first time since like February.  When you have anywhere between four and seven fur-shedding dogs living in the house, AND live in a climate as rainy as Akron is, you need a dryer.  Having a dryer makes me far more excited than it should.

I've written somewhere around 70 pages of dissertation in the past week or so.  This is very good news!  I'm up to around 137 pages of dissertation, and am making serious progress.  I know, it's not done and I only have two months, but honestly, in terms of the actual writing process, I'm really only spent maybe two weeks actually writing thus far.  Now, I know exactly what I want to say, and I just have to put it on paper.  This thing will definitely be finished by July 15!  Hell, at this point, I'm shooting for June 15...

Amy's looking at the possibility of becoming a realtor once we move.  I really like this idea, because I think it would fit nicely in many ways with what she would like in a job (independence, flexibility, helping people, changing tasks), plus it would help supplement our income, which will be necessary given our (okay, mostly my) school debt.

All of these generally good things make me think that everything is falling into place.  With my generally pessimistic mindset, anything good that happens is always a major coup.  Right now, because I'm so pessimistic, I feel pretty good with how things are working.  Of course, in the back of my pea-sized mind, I'm constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, the major bomb that will disrupt everything and ruin all forward momentum.

Pessimism sucks.  Sometimes. 

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Today, I was asked to interview for a job in Mobile, Alabama.  That makes me very happy!  I'm going in June.  I will talk more about this later.  Maybe.

Also, since I've known this could be a possibilty for the past few weeks (and due to some other issues I've thought out in my head), I've decided to start eating fish.  Mobile has what's said to be some of the best seafood in the country.  So far, I like fish.
 

Posted by Andy at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We're randomly sitting somewhere in upstate New York right now.  See, one of our foster dogs, Sophie (above), was adopted by a nice family in Connecticut who wanted her badly enough that they paid for our trip to deliver her.  That was all well and good. 

We had an enjoyable drive up to Connecticut, cranking tunes on the stereo, talking about everything and anything, making fun of idiot drivers... you know, all the hallmarks of a good roadtrip.  My image of Connecticut, though, was harshened immediately upon our arrival in Danbury (just over the border), when we were forced to pay $4.05 for some gas, and then we spent an hour in a traffic jam.  Stupid Connecticut.

We got to the adoptive family's house, which was way out in the sticks in a place called Woodstock Valley, in the early evening, stayed a little while to make sure everything was okay. They immediately fell in love with Soph, and she definitely stayed put.  As we pulled out of the family's driveway, leaving Sophie in the rear view, I made a remark to Amy that we were 600 miles from home with an open weekend, a little cash and nothing to do.  Literally 30 seconds later, the "Check Engine" light of the Volvo comes on, and the car starts running like shit, no power to the engine, shaking, etc.  We were 11 miles from our hotel, so we babied old Virgil through those miles of darkness and forests to Sturbridge, Massachusetts, where we checked into our hotel and planned for how to get the car fixed.

We found a Volvo dealership in Worcester (bastardized by the locals to "WUHS-tur"), about 20 miles away.  We didn't know if Virgil would make the trip, so we called a few towing places, found ourselves shocked at what those scam artists charge, and decided that Virgil would make the trip.  For 20 miles through back country roads and small towns, through remarkably hilly terrain, we drove him hard down hills so he would mostly roll up the next (his engine lacked power).  We somehow, oddly, got him all the way to the Volvo place without incident.  They managed to get us in on a Saturday, and fixed the faulty ignition coil (my suspected culprit) and changed the spark plugs, which were not only noticeably fouled from the long trip with a misfiring engine, but the wrong kind to begin with.  $333 later and four hours behind schedule later, we were back on the road.

We decided to stop in a hotel for the night to regain our senses.  The Volvo's problems had left me more stressed than anytime since the Big Fallout of 2003.  By the time we were in New York, I was calming down a bit, but still.  We found a coupon at a rest area for a fancy schmancy hotel for $79, which made it only $10 more than the crappy Super 8s and Microtels that were the only other alternatives.  (Amy keeps asking, "what ever happened to the shady $30 roach motels you used to be able to find?")  A night of relaxing in the pool and sleeping on the ridiculously amazing mattress in this room really rejuvenated us, I think... more so than driving home and getting in around 1:00 am would have.

But the story unfortunately masks a bit of other news that I won't share specifics of, but will relate in some way.  While we were sitting in the driveway of the adoptive family, Amy pulled out my laptop to get directions to our hotel, you know, pre-Volvo death.  The computer connected to the family's wireless and my email program popped up with a message from a prospective employer.  The message, while announcing no specific news, was very positive and seemed to have positive implications, positive enough to otherwise ignite excitement if not for Virgil's dump-taking.

They are not the only ones interested in me, but it is the job for which I have the most excitement.  (But I refuse to release further details until I hear more things.)  Stopping at the hotel, relaxing a bit, helped me adjust my mind from frustration about losing a buttload of money on a car repair to excitement about the future.  This semester has been the hardest, in many ways, of my life.  Finishing a dissertations is proving to be no easy task.

But it's really nice to have a light at the end of the tunnel. 

Posted by Andy at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)