It's Been a While

It has been a while now since I posted a blog so I thought I would update everybody on what we're up to.

We've been working hard to finish up our theses for the last couple of months.  We're getting much closer and hope to finish up by early October.  After that we're not totally sure where we will end up, but most likely it will be San Antonio.  Since both of our families live in the area it makes a lot of sense to us to be near them while we look for jobs.

There are a lot of decisions to be made in the next couple of weeks about where we will go, what we will do, and when we will do it.  It's actually quite a daunting task, but we're not stressed and are actually looking forward to a change.

On a completely different note, after over a year without a home computer, and over two years without a laptop, we have purchased a new MacBook!  It's a really great purchase for us because it allows us to work at home on our respective papers and not have to fight for parking on our crowded campus.  This is a really big thing for us because it simplifies things a bit, and we're really enjoying it.

That's all for now, we'll keep you updated as we make decisions.

Love,

Jennifer and Nathan

Holding Pattern

Sometimes I feel like we're in a holding pattern. I feel like we're simply waiting for the next thing to happen. We're perfectly happy, but it feels like we're nonetheless hovering in limbo as we have one foot still in school and the other in the world of careers, house buying, and family.

Maybe it's just my anxious, impatient nature, but I feel like we're ready to move on. We've been saying we're ready to move on for months now, but I think it's finally sunk in. As long as we're still in school it feels like we're still little kids who should already be in comfortable jobs and in more grown up living quarters. We haven't hit that dreaded 30 wall yet, but it seems like that age represents some sort of cut-off. Like you should be settled at that point.

Don't get me wrong. Being a grad student has its advantages. You more or less get to make your own schedule, you get to learn all the time, and we're getting degrees that will help us advance our careers down the line. On the other hand, school has lost a little of the glamor that it once seemed to hold, and I find myself constantly explaining to people that I'm not just a 26 year old who works in a bookstore. We're under no illusions that having a career is glamorous either, we're just ready to be done with one phase and move on to the other.

I guess that's really the whole point. We've been in school for a majority or our lives, and we're ready to leave that world and plant our feet firmly on the other side, never mind the shade of the grass.

Jobs

Like I mentioned before, school is our number one priority right now, but people always ask us what we do for cash.

Between the two of us, we have four jobs at the moment. I work at the campus bookstore in customer service and athletic book scholarships. It's not the best job I've ever had but it's easy and they are really flexible with my schedule allowing me to have time to work on my thesis. Nathan is working for the Texas Agrilife Extension service compiling a database on private hunting operations in Texas.

We're both working on a project for the University and the Lower Colorado River Authority. We go to Austin almost every weekend and conduct interviews with recreational boaters on the Highland Lakes. This means we spend 8 hours in the hot sun for two or three days in a row. This can be draining but it's good experience for us and it pays pretty well. It's also fun to get to go to Austin since that is our favorite city in Texas.

Since we don't plan on doing this forever, we have both begun to look for jobs. We hope to be finished with all of our business in College Station in September so we want to have jobs by then. It's a little overwhelming at times because there seems like so much to do between finishing our master's degrees, finding jobs for both of us, finding a place to live, and moving. We're optimistic that we'll get it all together, and just figure things out as we go.

-jennifer

We finally decided to do it.

Nathan and I finally decided to do the blog thing. We wanted to be able to keep up with our family and friends as we move on with life after the wedding. We'll use this blog to update you on what's going on with our family.


Since the wedding, we went on our honeymoon to Vancouver, British Columbia. We had an amazing time, and absolutely fell in love with the city. I guess Vancouver and Whistler isn't your normal "tropical getaway" type of honeymoon, but I think it's more "us." We actually got a little snow and we're savoring that memory as it's already 96 degrees in June. We got to do a lot of exploring, shopping, and sight-seeing while we were there. That really is our type of vacation because we love exploring new cities together. You can see a picture of us in Whistler village (co-host of the 2010 Winter Olympics) above, you'll just have to bear with the fact that we took it ourselves!

After our wonderful honeymoon we returned to Texas and back to our normal routine, which for us is work and school, school, school. We're both trying to finish up our theses so we can move on to the next adventure after grad school. We've been slowly but surely sorting through our wonderful gifts and trying to find places for everything. We're still not there yet, but things have more or less returned to normal.

We're discovering that marriage is an adventure unto itself. We knew that going in, but knowing something intellectually doesn't always translate into practical knowledge. We're loving every minute of it and are becoming closer everyday. We've been best friends for a while but I learn new things that I appreciate about Nathan all the time.

That's all for now, but we'll keep you updated on our activities as we go along!

-jennifer