In my previous “day in the life” posts I’ve focused on workdays. For this month’s post I thought I’d highlight a weekend day… a very mundane weekend day. We were quite the social butterflies the weekend before this one so we purposefully made sure that at least one of the days of the weekend was open for nothing in particular. I’ve also mentioned before that I do my best to not work on the weekends or evenings, and this weekend was no exception.
Read MoreWe needed to get from Columbus, OH to Portland, OR by mid-September for my official start date. We closed on our condo in late August and our apartment move in date was at the beginning of September, giving us about a week to make the trek. There were a number of routes we could have taken in order to get from OH to OR. What helped us decide were family and friends living in a few cities along our potential routes.
Read MoreOnce we knew where we’d be living, how we’d be moving, and what stuff we’d be moving, we needed to figure out how to pack everything. We could have done this in a more economical way; however, we were too exhausted to go hunting for free boxes. Using the list of everything we owned from step 8 (which also included potential box sizes), I estimated the number and sizes of the boxes we’d need, and sent Mike to buy them (with the funds coming from our $7000 moving budget from my university).
Read MoreWelcome back to the never ending multi-part blog post about moving across the country with a baby and 2 cats! By my count I’ve got at least 5 more posts in me on this topic… so get ready for a wild ride! In all seriousness, I’m writing this so that on the off chance there’s another me out there who is googling how to move across the country with a baby and two cats, that she will find these posts and see that’s it’s possible! For everyone else, you can skip on over these posts!
Read MoreBack in February I got an email from Leigh of Teaching Academia. Teaching Academia is a wonderful resource that’s dedicated to helping people navigate and succeed in academia. Leigh asked if I’d write a guest post about being on the tenure track with a kid and I (of course!) said yes! Given a few other recent scheduling posts on the Teaching Academia blog (here and here), we decided my post would focus on a week in my life.
Read MoreWith housing squared away, one of our next steps was to figure out how we would move (ourselves and our stuff) from Ohio to Oregon. Mike and I had conversations about our various moving options, weighing the pros and cons of each.
Read MoreIt’s helpful to know exactly where you’re going to be moving to (i.e., your physical address) so that when you plan your move you can determine how much stuff is going to fit in your new place, the exact directions you’ll need to get there, if a moving truck can easily get to your place, etc.
Read MoreIn early March of 2016 I flew from Ohio to Oregon for my one and only campus visit. The rest of March and most of April passed by before I received a job offer. In all honesty, I assumed that I hadn’t gotten the position and that we’d be sticking around the Midwest for a little bit longer. At ~8 months pregnant, that seemed like a good idea. I could take a leisurely approach to finishing my dissertation, enjoying our new baby, and recovering. But of course, the minute you “settle” for one thing, life says, “just kidding!” In late April I got the job offer... a month before Ellie was due.
Read MoreThis will be my last post about our recent San Francisco trip/conference, I promise! In general, I’m not a huge fan of large conferences. All of the socializing is exhausting and a lot of the networking that happens feels fake (unless you’re getting connecting through people you already know). I think the most valuable thing I got from this most recent conference was having the chance to catch up with friends and mentors from my grad school days. I hadn’t seen most of these people since I graduated and it felt like one big reunion. It seemed like every corner I turned I saw someone that I hadn’t seen in years. After 2.5 years of living across the country from everyone we know, it was nice to run into so many familiar faces.
Read MoreI had the chance to write a guest post for Portland Moms Blog on a few tips that helped me get through the early days of being in a new position with a new baby in a new city.
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