End is in Sight!

Paul spoke with his advisor earlier this week about whether she thought he could graduate in August. The bad news is that it's not definite enough that he can apply for the tenure track physical chemistry position at Millersville because the deadline is March 24, and he won't know at that point if he can graduate in August. That is disappointing because it's rare to find an opening in physical chemistry in PA, and Millersville is the type of school Paul would like to teach at (one which values good teaching higher than research). Millersville would have put us about the same distance we are now from Paul's family, but it would have meant we'd be living quite a bit closer to my parents. There is no guarantee he would have gotten the job, but the door is being closed a little sooner since he can't apply. The good news is that it has now been very clearly defined what he needs to accomplish in order to graduate. She said that if he gets results from the simulation he just started running a few days ago and publishes an article from those results, that will be enough to conclude his PhD. So that is encouraging! He's still aiming to graduate in August, but knowing his difficulties with meeting deadlines, I'm assuming he'll graduate in December although I'd love to be pleasantly surprised by an August graduation! It costs a fortune for him to drive to PSU five days a week. Either way it seems very likely that my husband will have his PhD by the end of 2012! That's wonderful news! He started in August 2008. Now I need to start praying for a tenure track position in physical chemistry for August 2013. He'd really like to live within a reasonable distance of his parents. Hopefully that will be possible. He's probably going to apply for a one year general chemistry position at a university that is only 20 minutes from our house which starts this August. That would seem to be ideal since it would mean we wouldn't have to move in both 2012 and 2013. I'm praying about that possibility as well. I think one year of teaching experience as a "visiting professor" would really strengthen his resume and hopefully help him get a tenure track job next August.

Knowing that we probably aren't going to be moving in the next few months is helpful for me. I had been wondering if we should put our house on the market because sometimes it takes awhile to sell a house. Now I know we can wait about a year before we put our house on the market. I had just recently started doing some purging (ex. if I haven't worn those dresses in umm at least 8 years why am I still hanging on to them?). Now I know I can wait a bit on those efforts. My main priority right now is the promotion committee. Thankfully that job will be DONE by the end of the month. I spent two hours in the library yesterday before my office hours and class and plan to do the same tomorrow. The end is in sight in terms of that project as well. There are other decisions that will be easier to make (ex. should we stay with Directv?) now that we know we're not moving in the next 5 months.

One thing I am not taking off my to do list is to sell our dining room table/chairs and curio cabinets. The dining room will become Paul's office, and the room that is now Paul's office will become the baby's bedroom. At some point we'll replace our kitchen table (which is 16 years old) with one that has more leaves so that we can expand it a few times a year when we have a family gathering for a holiday or birthday. Our dining room table gets used about 3-4 times a year on average. It doesn't seem necessary to have a whole room for that purpose. We bought the dining room table in 2004 because our second house had a dining room. We didn't have kids then so I hadn't thought of using that space as a playroom or schoolroom. I'm thrilled that in 6 months we can make use of all four bedrooms as bedrooms! Today I am 10 weeks along! The ticker says that baby's hair and fingernails are developing!