The past few weeks have, of course been a little chaotic. I helped Jenny pack up the house and the moving truck and she and the kids moved back to Broken Arrow to be near to her friends and family. So far they're doing well, the kids have been driving everybody crazy and Jenny has gotten a sales job that she is very good at. The kids have started going to their new school, though I have yet to hear a report on how that is going. Jenny and I are still working out a regular schedule for me to video chat with the kids via Google Hangouts. The kids really like doing a video chat! :) I miss them all very, very much, but the Spirit has told me (several times) that this is what we needed to do.
Speaking of the Spirit, I really enjoyed General Conference this past weekend! I felt so much more peaceful and happy after listening to the four general sessions! There were a lot of good talks, though if I had to pick one that really stuck out to me it would probably be President Uchtdorf's Saturday morning talk. It's been harder for me to sit still and concentrate on one thing, so while listening to conference I either played Minecraft or knitted (with the knifty knitter, of course). An odd combo, yes I know. But I got a lot of silly things done in Minecraft that I look forward to showing the kids when Jenny brings them down with her for the Austin Film Festival at the end of October. :) I also did finish knitting a normal-sized grocery bag which I'm pretty proud of. It will be interesting to see what the grocery store people do when they see it. Okay, its not perfect, but it works, dang it! (I know because I tested it by filling it up with canned goods from my pantry.)
In other news my schooling is progressing well. I have completed rough drafts of my first four chapters of my dissertation, out of a total of five chapters. I'm planning to get started on chapter 5 later this week after I get a little more feedback from a couple of my committee members. But in any case, even with just four chapter drafts I'm already up to page 90, which is pretty good since dissertations in my field tend to end up between 150 and 250 pages. I plan to finish up writing the dissertation before the Christmas trips start this December and then defending it in the spring.
The other big thing going on right now is the job search. The first application deadlines for Assistant Professorships in Spanish Linguistics are coming up on the 15th of this month, and there are a lot fewer positions being advertised than there normally are. Fun. But I have already gotten my curriculum vitae, cover letter, and teaching philosophy written and proofed, and I should be getting more feedback on them later this week. Then I'll have a mock interview to help me get ready, and then it's show time. I'm hoping that I can get a good position that is close to Jenny and the kids. When I pray about it I feel peaceful, so I know things will work out, now I just have to wait and see how. So the question is, what am I going to knit next?
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