Another phone interview

I just was invited to do another phone interview! As Sally Field famously said (actually she didn't quite) "They like me, they really really like me!" I have been going through alternating phases of optimism and pessimism regarding the job search. Sometimes I think that I am just the most awesome applicant ever and they would be dumb not to have me. This tends to come after I talk to a certain professor who is a great cheerleader of my accomplishments. Other times I think that there are just too few jobs this year and too many great applicants, so I have no chance. This has been more the norm recently, since I still haven't heard anything from the majority of places I have applied to. But I tell myself that I would just get a temporary or adjunct position somewhere until I find something else, which would be fine.

Back to this particular job... it is in a rather cold and rural location, so that would kind of stink. However, it would be leading a new astronomy degree (currently it's with physics) and helping with plans for a new on-campus observatory. Very fun! And my resume-building leadership positions and university experience might actually be useful, who'd have thought?!

In closing, even though this is a blog about me I feel like I'm talking about me too much. So, last night we had the craziest storm here in Austin! I didn't know one was coming, then all of a sudden the winds were so strong that my sliding glass doors were literally rippling. Talk about scary! I grabbed my laptop to look up news and moved away from the windows, but it turns out there weren't any tornadoes nearby (they were up north). Then came the hail (very little rain at all). Back in the east hail just came with cold weather as far as I can remember, but out here it will be well above freezing and hail just means "all kinds of craziness is happening in the sky!" Fortunately the whole thing passed in about 20-30 minutes... Until the middle of the night! I was woken up at about 3:30am by more crazy winds. I am not trying to mess with tornados, so I again got up and checked all the weather stations. That turned out to be nothing, so I went happily back to bed. Today it is just lovely - blue skies and 75 degrees. That is some of the weirdest weather I've seen, even for Austin. And for future reference, high winds and hail make cats very hyper and edgy!