My 27th year

Yesterday was my 27th birthday. I turned 27 on the 27th, so I expect that there are going to be some great things in store for me this year!

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26 was a pretty good year, and it brought along some new experiences, such as:

• I tried real sushi... and I LOVE it! In fact, I would eat it once a week if I could!
• We didn't move! It was the first year since I was 18 that I didn't have to pack up my stuff and change living locations.
• I presented at my first national professional conference. I should find out in the next few weeks if I will have the opportunity to do that again this year.
• I joined a gym. We have had a couple of spurts of consistent attendance, but I hope to get back in the pattern (and maintain that pattern) this year.
• I attended a ceremony to spread the ashes of my grandfather. I am still blessed to have both of my grandmothers still living.
• I won an award from my office for being an excellent advisor. I was nominated by students and chosen by some of my coworkers and other campus faculty and staff. Because of that nomination, I was nominated for a national advising award this year, and I should find out in the next month whether I won that or not.
• I helped host my first bridal shower and bachelorette party. Both were really fun and really fit the personality of each of the brides.

A couple of the new experiences that I know age 27 will bring are:

• Getting my first professional massage! It's scheduled for Saturday and I can't wait!
• Standing as part of the bridal party for 3 of my best friends. Before this year, I've only ever been in my own wedding!
• Moving into a new place...although we're not sure yet where that is going to be...

Some of the new experiences I hope age 27 will bring are:

• Presenting at least one session at the national conference in October
• Traveling to Colorado for the first time (it's where the national conference is hosted this year)
• Running a 5k (if I can get over the terrible shin splints I get when running)

We'll see where life leads me this year!

"And many more!"

DVR has changed my life

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Really, I feel like I don't really have much of anything exciting to update about. We moved into our rental house and have been working on getting everything unpacked and organized around here. The problem is that we don't have much storage space in the house, but we are trying to be creative. We definitely have much more space overall than in our apartment (and it is SO much nicer to not have neighbors right on top or underneath us!).

One of the changes we did make after the move was in our cable service. Our house is in an area that is actually serviced by two different cable companies and it ended up being cheaper for us to switch from our old service. In addition, we also picked up DVR service. Now, some of my friends had talked about how great DVR was before we got it, and I was just like, "Yeah, whatever, it can't be that great." Boy, was I wrong! Because J and I tend to go to bed pretty early and all of the great shows come on at 10 p.m., we no longer have to choose between staying up and getting to watch the shows we want! It also solves the problem of the terrible TV programming before 8 p.m., so we can watch a show we want instead of just settling for a show that isn't the worst.

I already have all of my shows for the fall set to record the series. Yep, I am definitely a convert!

Current favorites and things I could do without right now

Favorites:

1) First-year orientation. It is great to be a part of welcoming all these new students to campus! (And it gives me something to do 4 days a week!)
2) Rita's Ice. See previous post about that one. Yum!
3) Preparing to move in 2 weeks! I cannot wait to be out of our current apartment and into the house we are renting!
4) Carrboro Farmer's Market. They had blueberries, blackberries, and corn last week. Where I come from, those are August foods!
5) Summer talent shows: SYTYCD, America's Got Talent, Top Chef Masters


Things I could do without:

1) Mosquitoes. I cannot even eat lunch outside without becoming lunch for these pests! And these are much more fierce than Ohio mosquitoes... the bites swell even bigger than I am used to.
2) Slow weeks at work.
3) My lack of hairstyle. My hair ends up in a ponytail or messy bun almost every day. This has got to change!
4) My apartment complex. It is time for this relationship to be over. Too bad they have ridiculous policies and we can't end our lease 8 days early!
5) Really hot, humid weather.

The requisite year end review

Here we are, sitting at the end of another year in my life. I have encountered blessings beyond belief and trials to make me realize how blessed I really am. Because I have no other creative way to give the run-down, chronologically it is.

January: We rang in the New Year's at Derek's house with a little too much alcohol and cocktail shrimp. The first month was full of lots of weekends spent traveling to Toledo and the surrounding area for speech tournaments with my hubby and some cool high school kids. My last semester of grad school started and I limited my commute to BG by setting up a practicum at ONU once a week. Jared, Derek, and I continued to do our weekly WOW (worship on Wednesday) service at the church in LaRue, despite waning attendance. I served as the New Attendees meeting coordinator for the annual OCPA conference in my hometown and got to meet some new student affairsy types.

February: More speech tournaments, more WOW services, more snow, more preparation for BG's Alternative Spring Break to NC (of all places!). As far as I can remember, nothing too exciting happened in February.

March: March marked the month that I began seriously applying for jobs. My resume had been written, reviewed, revised, rewritten, printed, and PDFed. I started with a position that looked okay, but really wasn't what I was looking for/qualified for and was promptly rejected. It was a feeling I would learn to hate over the next few months. I traveled to NC with 42 BG students and 3 grad students for a few days of hard work and relationship building. I am proud to say that the SheetrockStarz completed almost an entire house in the 3 days we were weilding hammers. Two of the speech boys qualified for the national tournament, which meant that we would be going to the Entertainment Capitol of the World in June! I attended a conference in Atlanta at the end of the month where I interviewed for some jobs and was "professionally developed". My birthday came and went and then my first nephew was born! On top of it all, I was still doing the grad school thing and the dreaded comps were right around the corner.

(March aparently was a busy month!)

April: The first weekend of April I spent in a computer lab, writing and writing and writing as much as I could think of for my comprehensive exams. As has been usual for me throughout my education, I was one of the first finished, which always makes me a little nervous. But, despite only studying for about 10 hours total (while some of my classmates studied for months), I passed with flying colors. Thank goodness! Now back to the job search... which was picking up significantly. Phone interviews either yielded on-campus interviews or rejections. My credit card bill still bears the mark of the on-campus interviews. I was offered my first job, but it wasn't the right fit at all, so I politely declined (which I think they saw coming). Forge ahead to...

May: Graduation! Quickly overshadowed by the fact that we had a plane to catch at 6:00 a.m. the next morning to fly to the Emerald City for a mini-vacation and job interview. We both loved the area and long to get back there someday, either for vacation or work. We'll see how that works out. Regardless, it was a great way to celebrate finishing my master's degree! A week after that fabulous trip, I flew to Long Island for another interview. Jared's job for the following year had been elimiated in a RIF, along with our friend Derek's, so we spent a lot of time just waiting to see where life would take us.

June: And we survived year one of marriage! We spent a (very hot) week in Las Vegas vacationing and being speech "parents" to the boys. They were cheated out of another round of competition (in our humble opinions) and were disappointed to find that their speech from last year advanced much farther than they had, but we had a great time. Derek happend to be there at the same time that we were, so we met up with him, too. I still didn't have a job by the time we returned, so I went back to work with the I CAN Center a couple days a week. If nothing else, that job helped me see more of the college campuses in Ohio than I did in living in that state almost my entire life!

July: As far as I can remember, we didn't do anything too exciting for the 4th. I still didn't have a job and that was becoming a tense subject around our house. We ended our WOW service since Derek was leaving for Alaska anyway and we were hopefully moving somewhere else. I led a tribe for VBS to help out a friend and a classmate from AU passed away. I had given up all hope at getting a job and then this happened. The rest is basically history.

August: Jared got my employment for his birthday and we moved to NC. I started a new job and Jared started losing weight (of which I am still jealous) and gained employment.

September, October, November, December: We lived through our first hurricane and only had a blown-in window to show for it. Jared left me to drive to Ohio for Dan and Kim's wedding, OSU lost some football games, UNC won some games. I spent a lot of time at the dog park. Jared worked a lot. I have seen more of my cousins since I moved here than I did while I was in college, which I really enjoy. Liza and I had standing weekly lunch dates, and I introduced Marti to the state farmer's market in Raleigh. My parents came to visit for a weekend. We cooked our first Thanksgiving meal together and drove to Ohio for Christmas. We are still establishing ourselves down here, trying to find things that we like doing and the time to do them.

Which leads us to now. Jared and I met 5 years ago tomorrow and I can't wait to start yet another year with him (even if he will be going to bed early to get up for work at 7 the next morning). I have a stable job, a loving family, and great friends. With all of that, I think I am ready to move forward into 2009.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup of kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!

"And we're rollin'..."

I started my job search seriously in March. Being one who likes to have my life planned fairly far in advance, I figured this would be a good timeline to have a job lined up shortly after graduation at the beginning of May. I sent out resumes and cover letters, I interviewed at a conference, I had phone interviews. I even had a couple on-campus interviews and was offered a position that just was not the right fit.

Graduation rolled around and then it was "summer." No more school, just lots of time to look for and apply for jobs. I applied for more and more positions and didn't hear anything.
Three weeks ago, in a conversation with Jared on Wednesday night, I told him that I had no chance of getting an interview at UNCCH because I hadn't even been considered for other positions at less-well-known universities.

To my surprise, Thursday evening when I got home from work, I had an e-mail from UNCCH saying that the search committee would like to interview me and to call as soon as possible if I were still interested in the position. I called Friday morning and found out that they wanted me to come to campus the following week, either Thursday, Friday, or Monday of the next week. None of the days were ideal, as previous engagements prevented me from flying in the night before any of the days, but I went with Monday. So, 9 days ago, I boarded the plane at 6:50 a.m. in CMH, flew to RDU, had my interview and flew back the next day.

The search committee said they wanted to have a decision made by Friday. I was one of 10 candidates being considered for 4 positions. I felt okay about my interview; some of what I said really seemed to resonate with the search committee and other things seemed to flop. I wasn't really sure what to expect.

Friday came and went. No word. I tried not to panic or stress too much and waited out the weekend. Monday morning came. Nothing. Monday at noon Jared and I got into a big fight about the whole process. Feeling like I had just been rejected yet again, I tried to occupy myself with some cleaning and laundry.

At 2:00, the phone rang. From the beginning of the conversation, I thought I was being declined nicely. After another minute or so, though, I realized that I had been offered the job. I HAD A JOB!!

I will be an academic advisor for undecided students in the General College and for upper-class students in the division of Natural Science and Mathematics in the College of Arts & Sciences. I will have a newly renovated office and will be learning the ropes of UNCCH with three other new advisors.

They want me to start August 11.

In case you don't want to do the math, that is two weeks from when I got my phone call. We are moving three states away in less than 10 days. We are sorting through and packing up all of our belongings to load into a moving truck by next Wednesday. We found an apartment online and will be moving into it, sight unseen, a week from tomorrow.

CRAZY!

The short timeline does not leave much room for goodbyes for local friends, unfortunately. We do have an extra bedroom in our apartment and will begin taking reservations once we get settled a bit more. :) Our plan is to come home around Christmas sometime, so perhaps some sort of reunion could happen at that point.

Thank you all for your continued prayers, well-wishes, and general good thoughts as this process continues to unfold!

North Carolina, here we come!