It's been a while...

...and so much has happened.

One of my best friends from high school got married. She's the first one of the four of us to get married. Yes, it was high time that one of us made the leap. We're 28 after all. My mom had two children at that time. If you'd asked me when I was 10 what I'd be doing when I was 28, I'm sure I would have said that I'd have a couple children myself. But marriage and children have had to take a back seat when you go to college, then grad school and get a job. It's been the same for all of us and it seems to be a trend with my entire high school class.

But when one of your high school gets married, it makes you feel terribly grown up. I often like to pretend that I'm still 22 - 22's a good age. You can get into any bar in the US, you've finished at least the first part of college but you're still considered "young." I don't think I look like 28 either - and I definitely don't feel as I thought 28 would feel.

Back to the wedding: It was beautiful. The first part was on a boat on the Lake of Constance; then we stopped at a church in Germany and the reception was in a hotel in Germany. The bride looked gorgeous, there was lots of good food and there was some dancing - not enough for my taste but what can you expect when you're surrounded by physicists. ;) Haha.

The whole time I had this gnawing feeling in my stomach tough; would I have a job next year? where would I be next year? was I "just on vacation" as I liked to pretend or was I unemployed? We all know it's never a good idea to get on the wrong side of your supervisors - it's a small field and people in Student Affairs talk...would this one "bad-fit" ruin my entire career?

It's tough when everyone keeps asking you, "How are things in the US?" "You're in Florida now? How do you like it?" I gave a lot of vague answers and was glad when I could hide from people and their innocent questions.

On Thursday - the day prior to the wedding - I had gotten an e-mail from one of the schools I applied to telling me to keep an eye open for an e-mail from one of the Associate Directors from that school. Was that good news? It was a bit too vague for me to really rely on it. Of course, thanks to the time difference, there was no e-mail yet when I left for the wedding on Friday. The good thing about weddings is though that they are a great distraction. ;) I managed to barely think about that e-mail...but of course the second I got home, I turned on the computer. And there was an e-mail. It said that they wanted to call me and asked when would be a good time to call to give me an update on their Hall Director search. Good news??? It was still a bit to vague for my liking. Yes, they probably wouldn't call to tell me that I didn't get the job. But you can't count on that. I was trying really really hard not to get my hopes up.

It was a LONG weekend. It also didn't help that it rained most of the weekend and we were stuck in the house most of the time with the exception of a duty round as I like to call them - those are when you walk around town in horrible weather because there's nothing else you can do and you feel the need to go outside. Our family are quite the experts regarding those. LoL.

Monday morning I got another e-mail. The phone call would be coming that afternoon. I waited anxiously next to the phone.

I got an unofficial offer (just waiting for the paperwork to go through HR before it can be made official) and I accepted. :-) I'm no longer unemployed. Now I am really on vacation and I can forget last year...well, maybe not completely because you can learn a lot from the negative experience you've had; even if it's just learning how you wouldn't want to do things when you're in charge. But it feels good to be able to breathe freely again and to look forward to the future....