Got out of bed around 9:00 AM. (On a Saturday, shocking!!)

Walked a beagle.

Cooked an actual breakfast. I used a pan and the stove and everything.

Performed surgery on my laptop (had to take the entire thing apart to replace the touch pad and to clean out dust).

Took all of the accessories off of the Shadow. Because I then..

Washed the bike, and gave it two coats of polish.  I hadn’t washed it last since sometime in the late fall, probably.

Reassembled the bike and admired its shinyness.

Made pizza dough.

And I did all this while rocking out to a shuffle of songs on the iphone that would have made The AntiDJ circa 2002 very happy.

Later tonight there will be pizza baking, possibly a movie.

Tomorrow I may go all folksy and ride to Vidalia for the Vidalia Onion Festival. I’m not sure how great a whole festival planned around the might sweet onion will be, but I live in fucking Georgia—what else am I going to do on a Sunday?

The trip out here to Vegas was fun.  Many things went well, a couple of things did not.   One of those things that didn’t go well was my flight out, but you’ve already heard about that. The other thing that didn’t go well was that whole ‘Poker Playing’ part of the trip.  It’s not that I didn’t get enough time in at the tables.  No, no, dear reader, the problem was the results of my many hours at the felt.  There are plenty of reasons for my poor performance, but lets just say I made some mistakes here and there, and I also have a couple of crazy bad beat stories to add to my poker experiences.

Some of the neat things included getting some good food at various places, attending  KA last night, and today’s trip out to the Hoover Dam.  My original idea was to rent a Harley for the day (as there are 2 Harley rental places in Vegas) and ride around, with the dam being one of my two wheeled destinations.  The problem with this plan though was the excessive heat that’s been hitting the area, with temperatures today reaching 115 degrees or so.  I love riding and all, but riding in 115 degree weather probably wouldn’t make for a really great time.  I also went through the obligatory Star Trek: The Experience attractions (they were in our hotel, after all), which were kinda cheesy but also sort of neat.

All in all it was a great trip, but I know that I’m going to be really happy to be home as soon as I get to my apartment. As for right now, I think it’s time to watch a DVD to kill some of this wait.

I was supposed to be on the 9:35 PM flight out of JFK on JetBlue,
however, since my flight to JFK was stuck on the tarmac for an hour
and a half after landing, it became impossible for me to make the
connection.  I landed here at about 8 PM, and will be here until the
next flight to Vegas leaves at 6:55 AM.  Not exactly how I wanted the
big trip to start, but it will have to do.

My laptop battery was good for one DVD  to help pass the time, but now
is almost dead.  In another hour I’ll be able to check in and then
I’ll try to catch some sleep at the gate.

The good news is that if I can grab enough sleep between gate time and
on the plane, I won’t even have missed much effective vacation time.

_______

Update: It’s 4:10 AM now, and I’m finally past security at the JetBlue terminal.  “Check In” opened at 2:55 AM, but they didn’t open the security line until 4.  I’m in the free wifi area, and have an outlet charging up lappy.  Shortly I’ll head over to the gate, and try that whole ‘sleeping in the airport’ thing.

I guess what I would want to have out there for all to see is this:  Angela and I were together for about 14 months, and it was quite a time.  There were lots of great times, and also a couple of really bad patches in there, but all in all, it was good.  I am glad to have spent that time with her.  And while, this time around, she was the person to break it off, a couple of weeks of distance has really allowed me to see that it was right for our relationship not to continue.

I also have to acknowledge that I’m still trying to come to terms with everything, and I think it’s going to be a little while before I’m feeling completely resolved.  But the main message is that this is good, it is what needed to happen, but I’m still glad to have had all of the positive experiences with Angela that I did.

All that being said, it’s clearly the time to Get the Fuck Out of Dodge.  Luckily, I’ll be doing just that on Sunday.  I’ll be headed off to Vegas with Alan, and I’m sure that will be a blast.  And now before you leap to any conclusions, you all should know I’m not exactly ‘drug and alcohol infused bender involving strippers’ type, so there’ll be none of that.  What there will be is a whole lot of time inside of the various card rooms trying to win some cash playing some solid poker.  There will also be a trip or two to Quark’s Bar.  Oh yes, there will definitely be some Trek-tastic experiences.

I’m sure my camera will be on hand, and you know I’m not going to be able to resist sharing some notable poker hands from the trip with you (sorry, non poker folks!), so there’s sure to be word from me while I’m there.

For even more fun, I’ll be heading to my first Buc’s game of the year tomorrow with a coworker and her friend.  This is probably good for the Pirates, as they’ve never lost with me in attendance.  We’ll see if the streak holds.

As for tonight, it’s Shadyhouse poker night!  The crazy thing is that this is probably the last time I’ll play there as Jeremy and Lily are moving, which means our primary venue will move as well.  Here’s to a good night at the table!

That’s it, kids.  I need to get my bike sorted out, as I’ve decided to pedal my way around tonight… another thing I’ve been doing just too little of.

As I have mentioned through this medium before, this spring I started a job hunt. I figured that after 3 years of being a Resident Director at Pitt, I was ready to move on. As with my search three years ago, I concentrated on using the Placement portion of the ACPA (which was joint w/ NASPA this year) Convention as the main conduit for my search. I applied to about 18-21 jobs for which various schools were interviewing in Orlando¹. This resulted in me taking 12 first round interviews at the conference. I had to turn down a few interview requests from schools to which I applied, as 12 was about as many as I could take at the conference with my other obligations while there. Out of these 12 first round interviews, I ended up visiting 4 campuses.

Contrast this with my search from 3 years ago. I applied to 70-something schools, which yielded only 12 first round interviews (versus this year’s 20 – 12 ratio). Out of those 12 interviews I only received 2 invitations to campus, and ended up with a job at Pitt.

Needless to say, I was feeling really good about my search going in to the campus interviews. My ‘cone’ (the term I apply to my numbers of applications->interviews->campus visits->job offers) was much ‘wider’ then it was last time, and I was feeling really confident.

<tangent> Amarok just popped on the 1998 Rhys Fulber remix of Skinny Puppy’s “Warlock” from the Remix DysTemper album. I had mostly forgotten about that track, and how much I think it rocks. It’s a great take on Warlock. </tangent>

My campus visits were scheduled for the very last week in April and the first week of May. I visited Hofstra University, Chatham College (now University), Carnegie Mellon University, and Duke University. Each of the schools (and positions) had their high and low points, but I felt that I could be happy with any of the four positions. I left each interview feeling pretty good about how the day went, and felt that with 4 campus interviews that I felt were solid behind me, that I’d be sure to have at least one offer coming my way by the end of May.

It’s funny how things don’t always work out the way we want them to.

As of Friday afternoon, I’ve heard back from Duke, CMU, and Chatham, and found out that each of them have gone with other candidates. In 2 of the cases I was told that it came down to a decision between me and one other candidate. I’ve yet to hear from Hofstra, but seeing as how they were my first interview over one month ago, that they haven’t called to check my references, nor returned my calls requesting an update on their search, I’m pretty sure that I’m out of the running for that position, too.

All of this is a really big letdown, as I was really excited to move on from my current position for next year. After 3 years as an RD, I feel there’s very little challenge left in it for me, and it’d be nice to get past the sort of ‘life on hold’ feelings that living on campus inevitably raises for me. The positions each offered some really interesting opportunities to further my career at a time when I feel it’s important to stay challenged in order for me to keep my interest in student affairs as a career.

What now? Well, I have my current job; it hasn’t gone anywhere. Staying on at Pitt for another year has always been the fall back option. However, this week I’m going to take a look through the listings on higheredjobs.com and other similar sites to see what’s out there at this point. If I see some interesting postings, I’ll probably throw my resume in for consideration, but I don’t feel that I have the energy to start a full-on search again. The again, the thought of having to go through the whole process again next year, which would be necessary if I stay at Pitt², is not appealing either.

There’s been a whole boatload of other things going on for me lately as well, but I’ll get to those some other time.

________________

¹I was contacted by about 30 other schools requesting interviews with me, but almost universally these were RD level positions, just like my current job. The few mid-level positions for which I was contacted out of this bunch were from schools in geographic areas I had ruled out.

²Staying here for a 4th year is one thing, but doing a fifth year as an RD is simply NOT an option for me if I want to stay sane.