updates

Ok, so here's the updates:
Andrea's trip to Chicago - A+
Turns out that after all her missed flights and whatnots, she arrived in Chitown around 2:50pm and had a great afternoon meeting with the people at the studio. They really liked her, she really liked them, and they said the would need to know if she will take the job shortly after she comes back from her interviews in new York (which she leaves for tonight). If she will commit to the position, they can wait until September for her to relocate. So, that's basically a sure thing if the offer is accepted in time. And at the end of her time there, she felt like she had spent just the right amount of time, not too little and not too much. So the whole airport drama was sort of not a complete loss (though wasting half a day at the Humphrey terminal is a special sort of hell, I know). At the very worst, it did not affect her chances at this job. So...basically we're almost guaranteed to be relocating to Chicago (or she is at least and me to follow as soon as possible...and who the hell knows what happens to Felix...ugh!) by September unless she actually gets an offer from the place in New York. And that's a whole other ball of sticky wax, because who knows what that offer will be or if it will even be as good (in timing, salary, etc.) as the Chicago offer. So, Chicago stuff all worked out well, so far.

Father's Day/Weekend - B+/A-
Well, despite my comments on being somewhat ambivalent about Father's day and my prediction that the airport fiasco would invalidate any honoring of thine babydaddy, we actually had a weekend packed chock full-o-father's day stuff.
Saturday was a hodge-podge if (ina/a)ctivity. We were all feeling wasted, warped, hung-up, and hungover from Friday's emotional rollercoaster. Felix was all crank-a-tank early in the morning (5:30am). We all took naps from about 9:45am to 1:30pm, which is a a LONG nap for Felix. After we all eventually woke up we gathered some supplies and went to the beach! It took us a while to get there since we were trying to stay off the highway. At about 4:45pm we got to the beach and Felix conquered the sand and surf. It was fun. The only part that was not so fun was that 15 minutes after we got there they had their "safety check" where everyone gets out of the water. This takes about 15 minutes to complete, I guess...15 minutes spent trying to keep Felix from going back into the water or dumping as much sand as he can onto the blanket. We had a great time, though Felix started getting cranky again as we were leaving, probably because he was hungry.
As a nod to father's day, Andrea went and got us dinner at Chatter box, so I was not required to make dinner. Felix went down at what seemed like a mostly normal bed t-

LATE BREAKING NEWS FLASH!!!!!
Hard decisions just made even harder!
So, despite all of Andrea's naysaying, what I had predicted has come to pass. In New York, EVERYONE wants to hire her. Both places she interviewed at today said, "Yes, please, come work for us, PLEASE!" And to make matters even worse, the studio she specifically went to NY to interview at even said, "Hey, no hurry, we won't need you to start until fall..." which, until we see some numbers, basically makes it a tie with the Chicago offer. Well, not REALLY, but it makes choosing between the two that much harder. In a way, Andrea was sort of hoping that her NY trip would be fruitless because that would make the decision for her. Oh no. That would be toooooo easy. Not one, but two studios in NY want her. She's 100% on her interviews-to-offers percentage. That's damn good.
That also says something, again, pretty clearly about Minneapolis. Here, she can barely get a call back. She was called an anachronism during an informational. She was told by one local studio during an informational, that design isn't even about design in Minneapolis, that it isn't even about advertising either.
It points the way pretty clearly: For Andrea to get the chance to do the work she wants to do and get the recognition it deserves, she's gotta leave this area. No joke. When internationally known, award winning design firms and studios in chicago and new york spend their time trying to sell HER on their projects and telling her "Please, if you are serious, let us know and we would totally hire you like yesterday." She's being wooed by studios in two different cities! Minneapolis can only be bothered to fart in her face and steal her lunch money.

SO, from this point on it only gets tougher.

I ave started hsopping my resume online and submitting to positions in both areas. I've also started getting calls from recruiters. Unfortunately none of them have been for jobs in the areas I'm interested in. But it is nice to know that my resume is coming up when people say "I need someone who is X". I'm feeling more marketable already!

I've submitted for a couple positions that actually sound like they would flow really well from what I'm doing now. Mostly change management/SCM type stuff, but a couple software deployment and a release engineer position. So, I'm starting to feel pretty good. I think, really, the only anchor around our necks is going to be this house. I'm wondering if we might just let it burn down. I know it sounds horrible, but I'd welcome a natural disaster right now, provided my family and important stuff is safe and secure when it happens.

Seriously. If the roof blew off and the walls fell down and the car got pelted with hail damage...that would be effing perfect.