To Long Beach or Not to Long Beach

That WAS the question.

Chris had a job offer for a position at CSU Long Beach this week. We had something like 24 hours to decide if we were truly interested. Not enough time to think about such an important life decision. We made lists of all the positives, and all the negatives, finally coming to the decision to decline the offer. Here are our thoughts.

Pros:
Life--it's in California
Long Beach sounds like a decent place to life, as far as Southern California goes, with farmers markets, bike paths (though they are very urban and car-filled), great festivals
There are two (!) morris teams nearby
Many fabulous National Parks within driving distance
Job--It's a pretty good job for Chris (in charge of a museum collection! teaching, some research, good colleagues)
I already have a CA teaching credential, and LB schools seem to be not too bad

Cons:
Life--It's in Southern California. It's likely car-centric. I've never been a fan of SoCal.
LB is surrounded by LA. I'm not a fan of crowded places.
Job--The salary isn't all that great since it's on the CSU pay scale
The job is teaching-heavy, very little time to do non-local research (except in the off-semester times, which are not convenient for most of the species Chris wants to study)
With little research, Chris won't collect much new data nor have time to publish fancy papers, which are needed to get a different job later on. Also, once he's in the CSU system, it's not as prestigious as a Research Institution, and a lot more difficult to leave. We'd really like to end up in someplace like Oregon, Washington or Northern CA eventually.

It was a very very difficult decision to make for us. As soon as we made it and he sent his letter to the dean, we started having doubts. Is this a good choice?
The Future: He has funding for another year on this post-doc. That means there's another year of job openings next year that we can apply for. Who knows what will be open? It could be better, but it could be worse. We could do another post-doc (potentially in Boston, which would be fun). The future is still open.

Then there's the final interview of this year: UC Riverside. We'd probably take that one if it's offered. Riverside has many of the same cons, and maybe some of the same pros (besides that it's inland and has no morris). But it's a research school, so maybe easier to move up from later? I don't want to live in SoCal for the rest of my life. It's not my style.

Baby Blog

I started a blog about Elliot and our adventures.

Here's the link:

http://apageforelliot.blogspot.com/

For my mom on Mother's Day

My Belly at 23 Weeks

From the above view (my personal perspective), it seems bigger than in the photo!

Oh boy!

The most recent ultrasound revealed a prominent penis. Looks like I won't be knitting any cute little dresses anytime soon. But I'm excited!
Now we have to figure out a name. We have a couple of ideas, one we both like a lot, but its traditional/historical meaning isn't so great (I kind of hate the meaning, though love the name). Does the meaning really matter? I think it probably doesn't matter at all, especially since we'd be naming him after something in biology and NOT due to the traditional meaning of the name . . . what name is it? you'll have to wait!
We'll have to save our perfect girl's name for next time (if there is one!).

Life's Getting More Exciting

An image from yesterday.

Tahoe in December

The snow is fluffy and prolific. The mountain chickadees were friendly. The company is wonderful. The weather is lovely.