A very new sensation

Well...I've just had the very interesting experience of finding my blog linked from another blog...thanks gfd...of course, the only reason that she had linked to me was because I had linked to her, but that's neither here nor there...(I do love reading woman under construction...I think it makes me a much better husband to my wife).

I've gotta admit, I didn't get in to writing this blog to have other people read it...I'm not really sure that I say anything so fresh and unique as to warrant attention. Having said that, however, I do like the thought that people can get a little glimpse of my life. That's not to say that I'm an exhibitionist, actually, rather the opposite is true. It's more about feeling that I have an outlet for all of the thoughts that I usually keep stored away in my head never to see the light of day...and trust me, right now, the days are long in England.

All of this is prelude, however, as I'd like to thank anyone who does come here to read my thoughts. It's interesting, I was never the diary-keeper kind of person, but I really enjoy blogging. The biggest reason for this is that I work with computers, so any time something comes to mind, I can write it really quickly, which is much easier than trying to write it out in longhand at the end of the day. Also, the thought of sharing my life with other people is kinda cool. Granted, the fact that I don't really know anyone who visits this site makes it much easier to actually say what I would like to say without thinking about consequences, but, my guess is that most anyone who read this understands what I'm trying to say.

Has anyone that reads this blog ever had an interesting interview experience? I'd love to hear about them...especially if they could help me in case I do get the interview...

I still haven't told my wife about the job that I applied for. They were supposed to start reviewing the applications yesterday. I'm not sure how long I should hold out hope that I'll hear from them about an interview. I'd be perfect for the job, and I don't lack for qualifications or confidence, so I know that I could do the job. The problem is that I'm not sure if they've only advertised the job for legal reasons, and they already have someone in mind. That kinda would suck, but since I've been on both sides of that fence, I'm not gonna hold it against anyone. I figure that I'll give them until Friday to contact me, and if I don't hear from them, then I'll call and see what's going on.

On another note, I received a very nice send off note from a previous interview. I learned that I wouldn't get the job the same night that I interviewed, but only because I knew one of the people at the University, and they called to inform me. Well, anyway, that was a couple of weeks ago, and I hadn't heard anything official...I'd thought about sending one of those smarmy "thanks for the interview opportunity" emails, but as each day went by without doing it, the process became more and more unlikely to happen...anyway...today I get a letter from the head of the search committee (I'm sure it was a form letter) that told me how proud I should be for getting to the latter stages of the interview process....keep my chin up....they'll keep me informed if anything else comes along...they'd love to have me as an associate (just not this time)...yadda yadda yadda...

Actually, I'm not doing the letter justice. I was very nice, and made me feel a bit better about not having gotten the job...looks like I won't be able to hold off of sending that smarmy email after all...

Walking

During my trip to Manchester to turn in the paperwork for my trip to China I must have walked 5 miles. If I was smart...(long pause to think about how dumb I am sometimes)...I would have gotten a cab at the train station and been at the Consulate-General in two minutes...instead, I wanted to enjoy the nice day and walk. Of course, when I made that decision, I didn't know that it was nearly three miles. This, added to the fact that I didn't really know where I was going, gave the whole experience a surreal feeling...walking through ethnic neighborhoods with no real idea of where my destination was...woulda been a great experience if I hadn't been nearly two miles into what would be a three mile one-way walk.

But, I got the paperwork in, and can pick it up on Monday...I think I'll have my wife drive me there.

Sorry to take a few days without a post, but I've been busily preparing my trip to China. I've had a bit of trouble, seeing as you have to have a visa to visit China, and in order to get a visa you have to have a passport that will be good for 6 months from the time of your visit. This caused a couple of problems, as my passport was set to expire in October, and my trip to Beijing is scheduled for June.

So, I had to send my passport to the American Embassy in London to get it renewed, then I had to wait for it to be returned (which it was, yesterday). I now have to go to the Chinese Consulate-General in Manchester tomorrow to drop my passport, paperwork and travel itinerary off. It will then take 3 or 4 days to finalize the visa, which my wife will have to pick up early next week.

In other words, it's tough to visit China, and if you're going to...you better make sure that you have your paperwork in order.

I knew that I should have had my passport renewed before we came over here. I realized that it was going to expire while I was here, but it never occurred to me that I would have a time crunch in order to get it renewed. If not for the China trip, I would still be blissfully waiting for it to become problematic.

This reminds me of my list trip to China...which was a huge difficulty. I don't have time to post it now, but I'll make sure to write it up tomorrow. In the meantime, let me know what your worst travel story is. I bet I got it beat...

Having posted the previous statement, I'd be interested in what the visitors to this blog think...which is more important, a relationship or a job?

Don't go on my situation, base this on your own experience. I'll be interested to hear what people say (precisely because I don't know how I would have answered that same question during previous relationships).

So here's the deal...

It's not that I don't like my job here in the UK...actually, I rather enjoy it. I like the people that I work with. I like the work that I'm doing. I like the fact that I make my own schedule (or as close to it as I can). I like the fact that I'm making a difference in the education of lots of students (by the way, this is one of the quandaries that I found myself with when I was trying to decide whether to become a classroom teacher or an administrator of some sort...classroom teachers have very close relationships [not that close, though] with a limited number of students, but administrators have almost no relationship with large numbers of students...sometimes I still struggle with trying to understand which is the better situation to actually make a difference). And, I like lots of little things about my current situation.

On the other hand, the one major thing that I don't like is that my current situation has made my wife miserable. She and I had decided, with much excitement, to move to England while our son was still young. We figured that we would be able to do lots of traveling, and where better to start from than England? The thing is, we aren't really doing that much traveling, and my wife is VERY (I cannot emphasize that enough) homesick. She wants to be around her family (which I can understand). She wants to be near her friends (some of which I can understand...others she's better off without).

All this being said, the tradeoff is pretty clear. All of the things that I like about my job are nothing compared to my relationship with my wife. This makes the decision pretty easy.

With the goal of going back to our previous home town (Tidewater Virginia - I know, it's not a town, but it's the location of the town). I've applied for a job as a Assistant Director of Information Technology Services (Instructional Technology), and a relatively small and new University in the area. I'm not telling my wife yet, as I don't want to get her hopes up, but I'll keep you informed of the outcome.

Interesting Recent Experiences

I've recently been able to do the following rather mundane, yet oddly interesting things:

- Interview a woman that looks exactly like the wife of a very good friend.
- Purchase airline tickets for a business trip to China.
- Have my wife remove stitches from my surgery because I'm too lazy to go to the hospital for something so small
- Watch my son throw up for the first time (of course, he's spit up before, but throwing up is an entirely new ballgame).
- Read, with trepidation, that my favorite basketball team has come back from two games down in the playoffs.
- Hurt my back while standing still (I'm not even sure how it happened)
AND
- Find out that my brother's wife is pregnant.

There are several reasons that I like the new look of this blog...the most important, however, is that the layouts and templates (including posting a new blog entry) work the same on both my PC and my Mac.

I've got to admit, I work on a PC at work - because it's the norm, and the University for which I work has decided that they will not support Macs, but at home, and in every other situation, I prefer the Mac OS. It's so much more intuitive and simple...you've gotta love a company that puts style as a priority, while not losing any quality of product.

Now I'm Happy

I prefer this look to the blog, as it is a more accurate indication of my tastes. I love the old world classical look.

Don't think I'll be changing it anytime soon.

Testing the new stuff...stay with me...

Those of you who have been paying attention (and my counter says that there are a couple of people who have stopped by) may have noticed that I have taken out some of the more obvious indications of who I am. I didn't do this out of any fear or dislike of people who might be reading these posts, but rather, I did this because I want to be able to say things here and not really worry too much about how they might impact my non-digital life.

These comments are intended as an outlet for my thoughts. If I start feeling like I have to censor myself out of some sense that people who read them will make judgments about me, then I will have lost much of the freedom that blogging has allowed me. Of course, I'm not naive enough to think that people won't make judgments about me from reading these posts, but I can, at least, feel separated from these judgments to a degree.

That being said, anyone who does stop by, I would love to hear what brought you here, and what you might be thinking.

Interesting Experience

My current post has an interesting side-effect...that being, the closest restroom is unisex. For those of you who don't know what that is, a unisex bathroom can be used by either men or women. Having never used one before, and not really thinking it possible, the first time I used it, I was slightly on edge...and, quite honestly, I've not really gotten over that feeling.

The most awkward event is when I am either entering or exiting the restroom, and have to pass a woman who is going the other way. I'm never quite sure what to say, especially since most of the time, it will be a woman that I work with. Oh...what I would give for a men's room.

A Voice from the Past

Have you ever had the experience of hearing from someone that you had been tangentially involved with in the past? Not someone you've had a romantic relationship with, I'm talking about someone that you might have been acquanted with - maybe a coworker, or a classmate. Not someone that you had a true friendship with, but someone you would recognize and say hello to.

Well, I've recently received an email from just such a person. Angela was a coworker in BC Public Schools. She worked in the technical support department, while I worked in the educational uses of technology...so we had a tangential relationship. We would see each other sometimes in the office, and we were always friendly. She was, however, about 10 years younger than me. She had lived her entire life in a small town, and had the limited social and cultural vision that comes with that.

During the time that we were acquantences, she had the opportunity to study in England for a short time. I remember distinctly having conversations with her about this. She was unsure about doing it...it scared her to think of being away from her comfort zone. I tried to tell her that she would have a blast, and would end up loving England, however, I knew that she wouldn't really believe me (regardless of her tacit agreement) until she had lived through the experience.

Anyway, she returned from England, and the change was obvious. She talked incessently about returning to England. She had found "love" - whatever that means for a 19 year old woman, and she had gotten a taste of worldly culture. The transformation was completely predictable. Within a year, she had moved to England, gotten a job, moved in with her love, and was planning a wedding.

When I decided to move to England with my family, I remembered that she was over here, and had a vague sense of where she lived, however, I didn't really have any interest in looking her up. After all, we didn't have too much in common, and she definitely had to grow up a bit - something that is better accomplished without the crutch of connections to the former life.

I've recently gotten a couple of emails from her, as we share a mutual friend who is also living in England. She is pregnant, now, and desperate to return to the States. Desperate to be around family. Desperate to be back in that comfort zone.

I would have probably forseen this outcome if I had taken even the slightest effort to think about Angela at all since we last talked. I wonder if she'll be the kind of person that will occassionally pop into my life...the kind of person that you never completely shake and confine to the cobweb section of your mind, but the kind of person that will always be an uncomfortable reminder of what my life (and her life) used to be...

The Great Wray Scarecrow Festival

This past weekend, my family and I went to the scarecrow festival in Wray...pretty interesting. It's a small English town (which had a faintly "hobbitty" feel to it), that had a pretty violent flood in 1967. The small stream that runs through the middle of the town rose 20 feet in 20 minutes and wiped out a good chunk of the town nearby. Since then, every year on the anniversary of the flood, the town has a festival to commemorate. I'm not sure where the scarecrows come from, but each house (or, at least, most of the houses) build and display their own scarecrows. Some are weird, such as the numerous "I'm a celebrity, get me out of here!" and David Blaine, Master Magician scarecrows, and some are nostalgic, such as the Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland scarecrows, but by far, the best are the truly inventive ones...the two that I will always remember are the Bender (from Futurama) and the Chicken Run scarecrows.

A good time was had by all.