A few moments…

…snatched while T is out at a networking event (on his way home, actually, so I may get cut off in full flow) and the kids are having ten minutes vegetating in front of the TV after swimming/dance classes/homework and before bed. I swear, they do more stuff than I do – which wouldn’t be a problem if I didn’t have to drive them everywhere.

So, news from here is that T has a job. Well, we hope so. He has been offered a programming/research role at a bluesky technology company, with some possible crossover into games if he wants to go that way. He’s not entirely delighted – the four months’ redundancy has made him consider his options in all sorts of ways, and he now wants to restart his career in academia. He left a university lectureship to go into industry twelve years ago because the money was terrible and he hated all the students, and I’ve reminded him of this until I’m blue in the face, but I fear that the grass will always be greener.

However, he has accepted the programming job, with the personal caveat that he’s going to carry on forging contacts in academia and trying to develop research interests with the long-term aim of applying for suitable lecturing jobs as and when they come up. Obviously he hasn’t told his new employers that, but frankly I don’t give a hoot what he’s doing as long as he brings some money in.

We’re not celebrating the daylight at the end of our long dark tunnel just yet – I’ll crack open the champagne when he gets home on the first day (June 1st), because we’ve been here before. Over the last four months he has been offered two other jobs, accepted them, and then they were canned, cancelled or otherwise fell through at the last minute – so we’re not counting any chickens until they’re hatched, fattened, plucked and roasting nicely in the Aga. (Don’t know why I wrote that – I’m a vegetarian, ffs. The things I’ll do for a good line.)

I’m still working steadily on ESL theses and waiting on a big project for a well-known European scientific institute – if this one comes off I could be in line for lots of repeat work, and it’s fairly high profile so it would look great on the CV, but the project is stuck somewhere in the funding allocation process and may or may not come off. I’ve also received copies of two books which are the first ones to credit me as editor, so I’m quietly chuffed about that.

So it’s mostly good. When T goes back to work I hope to be able to blog more regularly, so I may be hanging around here a bit more. Until then – manana, chums.

~ by Hawthorn on May 19, 2009.