Just a Sci-Fi Kid Like Me

 The car is packed. Tomorrow we'll get up at ass'o'clock in the morning and drive to Illinois. 2 humans, 2 dogs, 2 cats, 1 car, 16 hours.

Here we go.....

Live in Illinois: According to a future colleague, literally everyone they contacted for my tenure review said "sure, happy to look, but I can't get back to you until December"--which, legit because middle/end of term in most places. However, this means they can't get me an offer letter until January so I can't start until March.

But this ALSO means that without an offer letter in hand we don't feel comfortable putting an offer in on a house just yet, despite finding a house we really like and two that would do nicely. We talked with our realtor who suggested that we could do a contingency offer which would be totally reasonable but those expire in 60 days, so we'd have to wait til the end of the month. Which isn't the worst thing, it's just...not the kind of closure I'd prefer, you know?

Anyway, we fly home tomorrow afternoon. It's supposed to snow tomorrow, and my friend who is dogsitting for us called basically asking if she could leave early to avoid the worst of the snow. I had to tell her we weren't landing until the evening, and if we got delayed we'd be later still. I feel bad for her--we're going to touch base tomorrow afternoon, and at least right now the weather service predicts that the main part of the storm will pass by 4pm, so hopefully we will all be well. Fingers crossed for us all!

Went to GA for the weekend. Was delayed over six hours Friday night, so instead of getting off the plane at 6 and meeting myhusband for dinner I disembarked at midnight. Blah. Oh and I had taken two books to read and finished them, and yeah, thank goodness for my iPod so I had something to occupy myself with.

Saturday was errands and exploring the area. Scott's in an upscale 'burb that reminds me a lot of Columbia--all the chi-chi chains and stores and things, bikepaths, etc. We went to a bagel place for breakfast (mmmmm....real bagels) and then to a nearby aquarium store to gawk.

Dude. That store. First off I have never been in a fish store that took care of their fish so well. Each of the smaller tanks had maybe 1-3 fish in them so they were all healthy and brilliantly colored. And they were mostly fancy fish. Like, seriously, in one tank there was a Hawaiian Dragon Eel for $899.99.


This lil fella needs a home!

After that we went to find a used book store, because did I mention how I ran out of reading material and still had another leg of a trip? Anyhow, we found a nice shop called Books for Less that had a truly splendid Scifi section that encompassed a quarter and possibly a third of the store. (They were also a Christian bookstore, but their selection was among the best I've seen in a while, and didn't seem to effect their holdings so much.)

I bought Pamela Dean's Tam Lin which I had heard good things about, and oh my, it's lovely. I read about half of it today. It retells the story fo Tam Lin from a liberal arts college in the early seventies. Something about her writing really reminds me of Madeline L'Engle's stuff in the dialogue--the way characters will talk about books and movies and music, but not in a self-conscious way, just the way that people talk about those things. The dialogue and banter of the characters is very realistic and I guess what I really like is thus far it's been two hundred pages of people just being people: riding buses, talking about classes, geeking out, eating mediocre cafeteria food, dorking around. *looks shifty* I know nothing of this. *coff* Anyhow I'm totally going to be looking up the rest of her stuff through ILL.

Saturday night we got to visit with Karen and Shelby, who are among our favorite people in the world, and who we hadn't seen since, holy shit, 2008? Criminy. WELL WE'LL BE SEEING YOU GUYS A LOT MORE NOW. *S*

Sunday we went to a bbq at my sister's. She and my brother aren't talking to each other again--not sure what it is this time. Sigh. If I'd known in advance I would have tried to find time to visit him, too. It's times like this when I have to wonder at the fact that I'm the baby of the family and have a million phobias but I can generally be a friggin' grown up most of the time.

Huge props to the Familia Samuelson who looked in on my kitties. They are spoiled as ever and wanting cuddles. (Varamathras is currently in the way of my computer screen. Any typos? blame him.)

Anyhow. So now I'm home for a few weeks and can maybe sort of catch up on, oh--Life. Movers are coming next week for Scott's stuff and I'll be taking the day off to supervise. I think the back room will become a study of some sort. I dunno. There will be odd holes around the house with a bunch of stuff in Atlanta. This Friday Carla's taking me out to get my hair done (birthday treat!) and I may go dark red again, as I'm starting to hate the gray hedge witch look. Don't get me wrong, I like being a hedge witch, it's the Looking the Part that gets me.

Stay tuned, folks.

More later,
me.

We're trying to get moved into the house and get things sorted. Hopefully will have our own internet within a week (this is from Scott's office). Slowly getting past jet lag and general moving exhaustion. I swear, the next time I move cross-country I'm paying big burly dudes to do it.

Yesterday Andrew, Ann, and James (huge huge thanks to them!!!!) came with dollies and willpower to help us move our stuff. And y'know what, Scott and me have a hella lotta stuff. Oh. My. God. We barely have grown-up furniture (y'know, the kind of table that doesn't fold up, ditto chairs, etc) and yet our worldly goods managed to stuff our rental truck to the gills. We were going to stop off in GA to pick up some stuff, but, um, no room. Which is sad, because I was looking forward to picking up a non-folding table, and my framed Serenity poster, and my copy of Harry Potter that I will apparently be THE LAST PERSON IN THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD TO READ.

Grr.

Mom had to change her travel plans too, so we mised her, bypassed Toccoa, and tonight crossed the border into Alabama and Central Standard Time, which I will have to now remember will be one hour behind every one I know for the NEXT THREE YEARS.

Luckily the truck we have is pretty manageable, and we've named it Galactica. We've mostly been eating the food we brought so we haven't been hitting the travel stop fast food joints too much. Though we stopped at Arby's mid-afternoon for a milkshake break, and I don't think the register person had had orders for "small" anything before. Why is travel food so depressing? It's always super-fried and greasy. I would like fast food that is vegetables that are not potatoes.

Also depressing: hotel room TV. CNN is the best they have and I am reminded why CNN annoys me when their AM program features 10 mintutes on Alberto Gonzalez, five minutes on Dow Jones, and 8 minutes on Oscar the Cat Who Can Senses When People are Going to Die. I wish I was making this up, but no I'm not.

Anyhow, the current plan is drive into Texas tomorrow, load our stuff into storage Saturday AM, and then sort of hang about College Station and get our bearings for a couple days before we go to Houston and thence to JAPAN (can you tell I'm excited??).

More later.