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.

Travel has its costs

That is, besides the literal monetary costs.

When we were gone over June/July, my beautiful little meyer lemon tree withered and died. Now I'm currently morning over the death of more of my plants (They WERE being watered, but maybe it was too hot in the house while we were gone?) .
Goodbye beautiful little CA valley oak.
Goodbye salvias.
Goodbye little maple tree.
Goodbye redwood sprig.
Goodbye parsley (and good riddance, I never really liked you very much).

A few favorite images from the wedding

Our Vows!

Chris's promise to me
I, Christopher, love you Jennifer, and choose you to be my wife, my partner in life, and my one true love.
I will cherish our time together and love you more each day.
I promise to encourage and appreciate you, and to be patient, even when it takes you forever to take a photo or to choose the perfect rock.
I promise to journey with you into high mountains, snowy winters, and foreign lands.
To laugh with you in times of joy, and to comfort you in times of sorrow.
I look forward to growing together.
Together we will share each others' dreams and goals.
I promise to be a true and loyal friend to you.
I will trust you and respect you, loving you faithfully through good times and bad, regardless of the obstacles we may face.
I give you my hand, my heart, and my love.
These things I give to you today, and all the days of our life.

My promise to Chris
I, Jennifer, love you Christopher, and choose you to be my husband, my partner in life and my one true love.
I will cherish our time together and love you more each day.
I promise to inspire and encourage you, and to be understanding, even when we have to stop every 10 minutes to look at another bird.
I promise to journey with you into flowery deserts, tropical islands, and cloud forests.
To laugh with you in times of joy, and to comfort you in times of struggle.
I look forward to celebrating life together.
Together we will share each other's dreams and goals.
I promise to be a true and loyal friend to you.
I will trust you and respect you, loving you faithfully through good times and bad, regardless of the obstacles we may face.
I give you my hand, my heart, and my love.
These things I give to you today, and all the days of our life.


And the rings
With this ring, I give you my promise that from this day forward, you shall not walk alone.
May my arms be your home. And my heart be your shelter.
May you always feel deeply loved, for indeed you are.
I give you my heart. I have no greater gift to give.
I thank you and I love you.

Yay!

It's so nice to be back in CA with the "family." Dancing, music, singing, feasting. In the first two days back, we had Solstice dancing (and I got to dance out!), party, practice, and party number two (yay for Mark's birthday). But it also makes me nostalgic. Life goes on here without me, of course. I just wish I had more BerkMo throughout the year. Every few months is not quite enough.

In other realms of life, there's a wedding to organize. I've decided that there needed to be more crafting involved, so I've taken another project upon myself. Yay! And, bonus, it will require me to collect rocks!!

Many things to do. Running low on time. I love all my friends, and feel so privileged and honored that people are willing to help out in so many different ways with our wedding. Yay everyone!! and thank you.

Pick your own; poison ivy

Well, I've had my first experience with poison ivy! It doesn't so much itch, as is a bit painful and really yucky looking. Luckily it's only a small patch on my ankle. It's kind of hard to avoid the plant around here. It's everywhere, and doesn't stand out as much as p. oak does in the west. Oh well! Here's a portrait of the offender.

That was last weekend. This weekend the plants were friendlier. There's a large farm nearby that hosts pick your own things throughout the growing season. We're in the midst of strawberries! So we harvested our own flat (10lbs.). "One for the box, one for me. One for the box, one for me." Time to get baking! Coming up there's peach season, apple season, blueberry/blackberry season, pear season . . .

It's kind of interesting to me, this idea of eating "in season." I come from a place where most things are in season all the time.

Reuse Party Favors

Itty bitty (big enough for 2 See's Candies!) boxes from old calendars. Thanks to all who gave me their old pages! 130 down and 70 more to make.

Wedding Prep

Here are some views of where we'll be getting hitched at Wildwood Acres.
1. View of where the tables go. Different levels of brick terraces. Dance floor to the far right, at the lowest level.
2. Garden scene.
3. Looking up into the small bay tree- lined canyon. Altar, or whatever, goes here!

Ecuador!

Back from Ecuador. Another favorite South American country. Some photos (mostly for Jozz cause she STILL isn't on Facebook!!).

Let's try to connect to a Picasa photo album . . .

Lovely Springy Sunshine

I can't believe how lovely it has been this week. Sunny every day. Temps in the high 60's (and not humid yet!). The itty bitty purple crocuses (croci?) are popping up all over people's front lawns and along side the roads. Buds are starting to form on the trees. My little lemon tree is all decked out in luscious smelling flowers. I think I'll bring along some east coast spring to mingle with the west coast spring next week when I travel to my homeland.

Sadly, I don't think I'll be able to do much with gardening this summer. I realized that I could plant seeds and grow seedlings, build beds and set it all up, but will be gone so much out west that I wouldn't be around for preening, pruning, cooing, picking and enjoying the fruits of my labours.

What to do next year

"What are your plans for next year?" he asks.

I don't know. I guess I've been in denial that there will be a next year here. The thing is, I don't know how long we'll be here at all. That makes it hard to plan. If I do go through with the tedious and expensive tests that I still need (3 of them for CT), and get my credential here, is it worth it? Will we move in 2 years, or 3 years or 4 years? Do I want to go through setting up a classroom (the time, energy and expense) for just a year? or 2? Then have to do it all over again wherever we end up in the long run?

I can't stay at home being a craft mom/substitute for much longer. I'm getting bored. I'm going to deplete my savings at some point. There are days when I don't see any other humans except Chris.

Could I even get a teaching job if I tried? If I don't, then my skills as a teacher are also diminishing and I'm becoming less and less attractive to my future school settings. I'm just not at all invested in Connecticut. Any aspect of it. Waaaah waaaah.

Home Sick

Have been quite home sick for California and friends for the past few days. But I'll be there for an extended visit soon enough. It really helped to have dinner and play a game of Settlers with some new friends (a husband and wife who like mountains and traveling and crafting). Why does it seem that all people with whom I connect are from the Bay Area?

Today was a bread making class with two women from Chris' lab. I liked them too. And FINALLY maybe we'll get some decent bread (home made may be the ONLY place to get whole wheat crusty bread).

An excursion to the Bahamas

The hummer we were searching for. I got to be the photographer this trip! Fun! This little guy was a good model.
Fancy hummer in a lovely setting. The island we were on was amazingly colorful. The weather spectacular. The food delicious (when I could get things besides seafood). Here are a few shots . . .Really, Jozz, you should get on FB to see many more photos! These are only a couple.

Subbing Isn't Half Bad.

It's only 1/3 bad. Not much adult human interaction. Teachers, at least the ones here, aren't very interested in getting to know subs. Or maybe it's the plethora of little gold crosses dangling from most necks that puts me off so as not to attempt to get to know them. I don't know, but the actual subbing is much better that I'd expected. I kind of like that I don't have things to take home. I like that I can leave school at 3:45. I like that I can get up one day and say, "I don't feel like going to work today!" and not go, and not have any consequences.

Schools in CT seems to being doing something right. It sort of reminds me of when I went to school. Most districts are NOT using a (horrible, awful, uninteresting, cumbersome, ineffectual) standardized text for reading/writing/math. They actually still have P.E., music, computers, science, and recess, AND still have time/money to cover the basic academic cores. They even still have school nurses and libraries!

What is throwing me off (or should I say "uuuuuooff"), is the awful CT accent that even the littlest kiddies have already acquired. Too bad, they were so cute until they opened their mouths!