Passion

I skipped over some stuff with my last entry (which I posted to G+ first, and then decided I wanted archived, so I put it here too).

Jim got his second paycheck from Knight. It was for negative $1400. He quit. They said he had reported his work "late" and that he would get paid "in the next check", but they couldn't tell him how much he'd get paid. And he had been told three or four different deadlines for the reporting, so it was hardly his fault that he missed the real one.

We bought a Prius. It's a 2005, and it's gold. I hated it for the first day, but when I finally got a chance to drive it on Sunday it immediately won me over. It's fairly comfortable. It has automatic windows, locks, and transmission (well, sort of. it's got Prius transmission). It's like driving a computer - if you have the key in your pocket, the door unlocks automatically when you approach the car. You get in, still with the key in your pocket, put your foot on the brake, and press the round Power button, and the car turns on. You move a lever until the display reads Reverse or Drive, and then move your foot to the gas and the car goes - all with the key still in your pocket. It's insane. It's like driving a spaceship.

We named her Serenity.

Jim went to a meet and greet for SideCar, his new company, Friday evening. It's a ridesharing company that is essentially a taxi service, but cheaper, more reliable, faster, and WAY less creepy. It's all coordinated through smartphone apps. I tagged along in the passenger seat Friday night while Jim gave rides around the city for a couple hours, and it was a lot of fun. We got to chat with interesting people, and we made like $100 in two hours. I think this'll be a much better job for Jim, at least in the short term.

This weekend was supposed to be a mess in the city, so I flipped through event listings on the web to see if anything in particular looked like fun. I found a listing for a steampunk/Oktoberfest combination dance, and we decided to go. This meant we had to put together costumes, so we went wandering around our neighborhood Saturday morning to find thrift stores. We got some decent costume pieces and cobbled a look together, though we didn't have any accessories or anything (no goggles or awesome boots or leather of any kind). The dance was a lot of fun. They had victorian waltzes in addition to polkas, plus a few set dances they taught on the spot, and we had a blast. I even got to wear my nice dancing shoes, which I haven't done since the wedding. We got some fliers for some other events by this group, and we'll definitely be going to more of them.

Sunday we drove Jim's semi to the nearest Knight lot, which was four hours away, in the central valley. Serenity averaged just under 50 miles per gallon (she's meant for city driving, not highway, but I still think that's pretty impressive!). Jim and I played "what's that crop?" on the way through Gilroy and the surrounding area. It's a little sad that we don't recognize fields of bell peppers or strawberries or garlic on the spot. If I had a kid I would insist on having a garden and making the kid help grow our food. Maybe once we get a house I'll start a garden anyway. I should be mature enough by now not to kill plants just by looking at them.

All in all, I'm loving living here. We've settled, I think, and I feel better than I've felt in years. I'm in better shape. Running and biking are enjoyable - my body RESPONDS to requests for action, in a I CAN DO THIS kind of way instead of a OH HELL THIS HURTS kind of way. It's giddying. I feel happy. I am home, and things are of course not perfect, but I made it back to California, after a thousand million years away, and it keeps getting better and it's going to keep getting better. This is good.

I got a job in San Francisco!

I started looking for a job after we got back from the honeymoon (I'm married!) and got a few calls back right away. One lab had me do a phone interview, then set up a video conference with the entire lab so they could all ask me questions, then asked me to fly out to California for an in-person interview. They had me in the lab for an entire day, talking to people as a group and one on one, and then took me out to dinner two nights in a row. Through all of that, they were friendly, interesting, and casual, and they seem to like me as much as I like them, so I was thrilled when they offered me a job. It's a really similar job to what I have right now, with a little more focus on mouse colony management and less focus on hiring other people or ordering supplies or training undergrads (they already have a manager; they just want a tech to help breed and to do experiments). They study the immunology of multiple sclerosis, so I've got a lot to learn...

Jumping back a ways, the wedding was amazing. It was perfect. It was exactly the kind of small, casual, intimate gathering I had hoped it would be. My favorite people were there with very few exceptions, and I got to wear a pretty dress and eat delicious cake. And, you know, the marrying. I've got a Jim now. Permanently. Mwa ha ha!

I had deeper, more introspective stuff to write about all of this. Last night. And then I didn't write it down. So now I'm sleepy, and my brain is muddled, and I'm overwhelmed with the emotional onslaught of everything that's happened since February (when lab became a much different beast without my graduate student around) and everything that is going to happen between now and August. We're leaving Michigan on July 30th, and I start my new job August 6th. We don't yet have a place to live, and Jim doesn't have a job, and we may or may not have to find a new home for TinyCat, but things are in motion and five weeks from now I'll be in California. Home.

Things I'm grateful for today:

1. This winter being really, really mild.
I know this is a bad thing overall. Climate change = bad. But on a selfish, personal level, I am so, so grateful that this winter has been warm and easy to endure. It's the first winter in several years I haven't sunk into depression, and it's really nice to be in early February and not feel like I want to drive into a tree.

2. My job.
I have a really flexible job. Some days are difficult and challenging and hectic. Some days are quiet and I have a lot of free time. I almost always have a lot of choice in what I'm doing minute-to-minute, and I feel very lucky for that.

3. This beer.
Today was one of the longer, more hectic days, and came with a lot of frustration. I'm grateful for the financial stability that lets us keep beer on hand and that I don't have Celiac disease and I can enjoy this beer at my leisure in my own home.

I looked in the mirror this morning and felt like I've lost a pound or two around the stomach. I don't know if that's true or not, but I have been walking a lot lately, so maybe. I look forward to living somewhere that I can/have to walk everywhere.

I finally sent my resume to my coworker's friend at Google. She gave me the contact info in December and I spent about four weeks actively freaking out over the sad state of said resume. I finally got it into decent shape and then spent several more weeks just sitting on it, lamely, petrified with fear. Fear of what? Rejection, probably, though it's a lot harder for them to say "yes" instead of "no" if you never send them your resume... So, anyway, today I finally sent it in. And then I looked up a 3D printing company in San Francisco and made first contact with them, too. Yay! Go me. Job Hunt 2012: California has officially kicked off.

 Look! An entry!

I got a new job.  It is an awesome new job.  I will no longer be formatting, copying and pasting, and writing diplomatically phrased emails to idiots.

I will be a lab manager for a research lab at the University of Michigan. I'll be in charge of some undergrads who will be in charge of some transgenic mouse colonies. I'll be keeping the lab running smoothly and safely. I'll be doing my own research project. :-)  I start at the end of June.

Lately I've been made kind of painfully aware of how not anonymous the internet is, so I'm trying to be as diplomatic about this announcement as possible. There are things about my current job I do like, and I will miss my coworkers. (Most of them.)

But really, I am absolutely thrilled about this new job. It is an AMAZING opportunity, and I cannot wait to get back into science and research. I MISS doing research. I miss being on the cutting edge. Just being around the cutting edge. SEEING the cutting edge.  I miss the university environment and the culture of academic thought. I miss being challenged every day.  I miss being able to get up and walk around as part of my job, and not being stuck sitting at a computer all day every day (I've gained weight since I moved to Michigan. Not a ton, but 10 pounds feels like a ton on my frame).

This does push back plans to move to California. /cry

Yesterday I went to Jim's parents' house to go swimming. The weather was beautiful for the first time in over a week (damn you, you stupid rain. stupid midwest cold rainy summer of annoyingness!), and I desperately needed the exercise.  Of course, they ended up inviting me to stay for dinner, so I got to hang out with his parents and his brother and sister. It was a fun evening. I threw a frisbee for their three dogs for about an hour (one of the golden retrievers will take flying leaps into the pool, over and over and over again. It's hilarious. We finally had to put the frisbee away because she was wheezing and still trying to leap into the pool), and then did laps for a while. I definitely feel less sluggish today.

It occurred to me that these people will very likely be my in-laws someday. I don't know why this didn't occur to me, y'know, a year ago when we were talking about rings. Maybe it's because yesterday was actually the first time I've been over there without Jim (other than when we lived there, obviously, though actually Jim was almost always around even then).  It's a very interesting thought, like some part of the nebulous future has kind of gelled up a little bit.  It's comforting, but disconcerting at the same time, in kind of the same way deciding on a graduate school disconcerted me. It's... you know what, this is probably worthy of its own entry.

Jim is taking me to Mackinac Island for the weekend (or so he says. he won't even be home until tomorrow morning, so we'll see how the schedule turns out in reality).  I've been to Mackinac the town, but never the island, which is apparently a second small town that's very old-timey. There are no cars on the island. I'm not sure why this is a big deal, but every time someone mentions Mackinac Island, they mention that there are no cars.  I think it has to do with the Michigan "cars are god" mentality; lack of cars is a huge thing.  Anyway, said town/island are also famous for fudge, and I think I can make Jim take me on a horse-drawn carriage ride, and this weekend is the start of some sort of Lilac Festival, so it should be a good time.  

In gaming news, I've been playing Oblivion and WoW.  Oblivion is interesting in that it's taken a lot of the good parts of Morrowind, added in a few new good things, and then a few new ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE things.  The inventory and stats interface is just freakin' awful.  They also removed the teleportation spells, but they made it so you can instantly travel to certain key areas on the map you've been to before. They turned lockpicking and speechcraft into minigames, both of which are just awful in implementation, but I do like the concepts in theory.  I also seem to just completely suck at playing, so almost every mob I've encountered so far (other than like, rats) has been really hard for me to kill. I'm clearly doing something wrong.  But anyway. It hasn't fully pulled me in yet, but, as with Morrowind, I find myself wanting to play it just so I can level alchemy (why yes, I do need to get back into bench science) and spellcasting. Sigh.

In WoW I've been playing pretty casually, working on some random old-world goals (like getting every cooking recipe in the game, including that annoying purple one that takes you through an extremely painful quest line and reputation grind), leveling a few alts, and actually reading quest text. The next expansion is going to drastically change the game world, and I wanted to see the Alliance side of things before it goes away.  I also stumbled across a guild made entirely for low-level dwarven hunters, so I created one and joined up and it's been a lot of fun so far (and it's made me want to play my level 80 hunter more). They have a large event planned for tonight, so it should be interesting to see what they came up with for 300 level 19 hunters to do.

Other than that... Not much is going on. I made a small silk shawl/scarf thing last month, but haven't knit much else. I've been reading a little bit, but nothing really notable.  Jim is gone a lot, and I miss him.  Claire is going insane with the weather being warmer and the porch door being open. She's started clawing the screen. It's far enough gone now I'm almost not bothering to stop her anymore; we're going to have to replace it either way. Sigh. That cat...
She actually woke me up the other night trying to chew on some dangly earrings I'd fallen asleep wearing. That's right. She was trying to chew on them while they were IN MY EARS.

It's overcast again. It better not rain in Mackinac this weekend.

I applied for a job with the title "Freelance academic writer" (http://detroit.craigslist.org/wri/1088900328.html sounds legit, right?) and got an email back telling me to go to some website, enter a special applicant ID number (which they provided), then fill out the following forms and THEN I'd be able to upload my resume (which I'd already sent them...). So I go to the website, type in said applicant ID number and whatnot, hit submit...

and it takes me to a freakin ad. "Fill out this survey to win a $1,000 gift certificate to Walmart!" and I then have to go through 3 pages of personal info for the Walmart thing, before it takes me to ANOTHER page forcing me to give my address to two MORE random places and fill out THEIR surveys, and I still haven't seen anything about uploading a resume or applying for said job, or anything at all really about the company I'm trying to apply to...

Screw you guys. I am not completing your ridiculous gauntlet of email thievery and trickery just so I can apply to your stupid job. I don't want your job if it means I have to work for a company that forces its APPLICANTS to sign up for stupid internet shit.

I am so angry right now.

THIS is why I still haven't found a second job. Half the jobs that are actually out there are just fucking scams.

I made it to Michigan, as most of you have probably already learned/guessed. It's a strange thing to have moved... east... to the cold barren wasteland of Michigan... but I'm no long in a long-distance relationship, and that's TOTALLY awesome. Living with Jim is very very easy.

I had an interview on Thursday but won't hear back about it until week after next. If anything exciting happens I'll definitely update here... but otherwise still no job.

Jim is going to start a D&D campaign with our mutual friends up here, so it turns out I got here just in time to make a character and jump in. Our first adventure is tomorrow and I'm really excited. I learned a few things from the six or eight weeks playing in Utah, so hopefully I've given my character a slightly stronger start for this campaign.
Jim also has a group of friends that decided to start up a campaign D&D-like game called Earthdawn, so at the last second we flipped through the handbook and created characters (mine is a 17" tall creature with wings, whose basic class description can be simplified to "warrior". I cannot WAIT to roleplay a 17" tall warrior) and went to the first adventure last night. There are NINE people in the party, which is just freaking absurd, but the people are all awesome, and the DM seems like a good DM so far. I laughed so hard the whole evening. They seem like my kind of people.

So at least up here it seems like there is a pretty decent social network, which is nice.

Not much else is new. I'm really, really, really, really, really sick of moving. I hate having things in boxes, scattered across different states. I hate not knowing how long I'm going to be in a place. I hate not knowing the streets. Hopefully I can be here for a while.

I miss Claire.

It's been a long week. I've worked at the ridiculous bookstore twice, and had a really annoying interview with a human resources company (oh lucky me, I will be allowed to be part of a stuffing assembly line for four days after christmas). Wednesday morning I DESPERATELY needed coffee, so of course after purchasing said coffee at 6:45 am, I took a corner too fast and spilled it all over my feet under the gas pedal. LOVELY. I went back to the gas station and the lady behind the counter gave me a refill for free after I told her I'd spilled the first one, which was super awesome and very friendly of her. But still. It was not a good way to start out the day.

On the bright side... the car has smelled vaguely like cat pee for two months, and now it smells like gas station coffee. Which is, you know, one step up. Maybe I should buy some really expensive kona coffee and spill THAT in there.

ANYWAY.

There is a new boy in my life. I feel some guilt about this (quite a lot, in fact). It is, however, largely overshadowed by my absurd happiness. I had forgotten what it was like to be happy. It's... fantastic.

In other other news... I finally got my healer druid to 80. It was painful. I miss my hunter and will be leveling her as quickly as possible once my hatred of all things warcrafty wears off (I leveled the druid way too quickly and under too much pressure. the whole game annoys me right now). But in the meantime, I can at least get back into raiding with the druid.

Also, I started playing D&D with my cousin and some of her friends. Only two of us have ever played before (my cousin and the DM), but none of us has ever played 4th edition. And the DM has never DMed. So far we are all learning the basics of how the game works, but I think we will get better quickly. I've purchased dice and a D&D player's handbook (OMG I'm a real nerd now!) and am LOVING finally being able to play. There were guys who played when I was in high school, but they never let me join them, and I've been dying to get into a group ever since.

ANYway. aNYway. anyWAY... Sorry. High school inside joke.

I need a real job. And to move to California. And then life will be absolutely perfect.

[Poll #1167961]