The Personal Blog of kristinlm

Yesterday I grabbed my mail as I walked in the front door. On the top of the stack was a wedding invitation. The first thing I noticed that it was addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. [misspelling of Hubby's middle and last names].” Never mind that hubby and I have different surnames, and that I use the title “Dr.”… or that our zip code was off by two digits. I turned it over and discovered it was from an uncle by marriage and his bride-to-be (both over the age of 70 years; pictured at right).

[The background: I am not fond of uncle's bride for various reasons. First and foremost, she came to our wedding without actually being invited. We'd never met her until she came to our wedding. On the actual day of the ceremony, without invitation or prompting, she stood up at our overseas wedding reception and proceeded to sing a few off-key lines of an old song about the city in which it was held. Then, she thanked my dad for all his hard work putting on our wedding when it was my mom-in-law who did all the work and my father-in-law who paid for almost everything. Second, at our post-wedding reception in my hometown, she stood up and announced her engagement to my uncle. Unfortunately these weren't the only embarrassments she caused during the wedding events, but they are good exemplars. Overall, she's just a stupid person who thinks she's smart. She's also pathologically obsessed with being the center of attention, even when it's extraordinarily inappropriate.]

I opened the outer envelope to find an inner envelope that was not addressed. The inner envelope was lined with purple metallic paper.

I took out the invitation and started to laugh hysterically. They are 70+ years old, and invited us to their wedding on Cinderalla-themed invitations, printed in raised orchid-colored ink. Naturally there was a major typo in the text of the invitation, which began “Once upon a time there was a prince and princess….” and ended “…and they lived happily ever after.” <Gag>.

As Hubby was away for work, I had to call my brother immediately to ask if he’d received his yet. He hasn’t, so I didn’t spoil the surprise. If he hasn’t received it by the weekend, I’m going to scan and send it to our entire family. We all need laughs, right?

The wedding is in early June, but alas Hubby and I cannot attend the event. We will be in another city that weekend for his little half-sister’s christening (darn!), and I’ll be in my hometown the following weekend for another wedding.

Knowing the bride’s personality and having seen the invitations, it almost seems too good to pass up (i.e., it will be so tacky and awful that it would be a shame to miss it).

I have to admit that the catty part of me also wants to attend simply for revenge opportunities. For example, I’d wear white and make an absurdly false announcement during the reception (e.g., “Guess what! We’re pregnant!). I’d never do it, but the thought brings a smile to my face.

So, we didn’t take any of our own photos… here is a selection of other people’s photos of WVU and Morgantown, WV.

The Campus (starting with what will be my new building):

Morgantown & the surrounding countryside:

It’s official… I have received a job offer from the department of Child Development & Family Studies at West Virginia University. It looks good, so after a little more negotiating, I’ll accept it and we’ll start making plans for this summer’s “big” move (total distance = 70 miles/112 km).

Jan Erik and I will drive there this weekend to look around Morgantown and start checking out houses. I’m taking my camera and will post pictures here after the trip.

We didn’t have time to send proper Christmas cards, so we’ve made an electronic one instead (click here to read our Christmas Letter; it’s a pdf file so you will need adobe acrobat reader to view it).

Cheers!

Kristin and Jan Erik

As of Sunday, Hubby is once again a big brother, this time to a half-sister 30 years his junior.

Baby Madeleine was born by caesarian section on 2 December. She is 50cm long and was just under 4 kg (approximately 21 inches and just under 10 pounds).  Mom and baby are both doing fine following the lengthy labor and delivery.

I’ll post a picture once I have one. We won’t get to take our own for the foreseeable future, as the family lives in Switzerland.

I suspect that Hubby is still pretty weirded-out by this whole event, as he has been since the pregnancy was announced earlier in the year. I can’t go so far as to say that we’re excited about Baby Maddie’s arrival, but are doing our best to be supportive in order to keep the peace in the family.

Apologies to all that I’ve not been so bloggy over here lately. Life and work have both been crazy. To put it into perspective, it’s 7.45 a.m. and I’ve already been at work for 30 minutes. I doubt I will get everything done today, regardless of whether I spend a few minutes writing here or not.

Job Search. I’ve blogged more on my other blog in the past two months, but it’s mostly been about my job search and how much various aspects of it suck. I’ve had a bunch of phone interviews, but only one has led to anything more substantial so far. In fact, I have a practice job talk this afternoon, in preparation for a video research presentation next week, which is a follow-up to a phone interview I had a month or so ago. I’m not terribly excited about the job, as it would involve quite a bit of teaching and less time for research, but it’s still employment.

I blew a phone interview terribly last week, and have been upset about it ever since. I really wanted the job, which is at a small, research-oriented liberal arts college in the northern midwest. It’s entirely my fault for blowing it, although it was an accident. I wrote down the wrong time in my PDA, and was ready 2 hours before the interview was actually scheduled to take place. Once I realized I was mistaken, I started working again and got so hyper-focused on my work that I forgot to take my 3 p.m. dose of ritalin until 3.15. I took it right away, but the noon dose wore off before the 3.15 dose kicked in, leaving me with a major coverage gap right at the time the search committee called for the interview. I had trouble stringing together sentences at first. I’m trying not to beat myself up over such an accident, and to take it as a learning experience about scheduling interviews & setting reminder alarms for medication in my PDA or phone. I’m still heartbroken, however, because the school is located in an area of the country heavily settled by Norwegian immigrants. It would have been an awesome fit for Hubby and I in that respect. I could have taken language classes, for example. It breaks my heart, but I guess something else must be out there for me.

I had a good phone interview at another small, research-oriented liberal arts college about 2 weeks ago, and that has other selling points even if it’s not in a Norwegian-friendly area of the midwest. I hadn’t expected to be so impressed by this institution, and came away from the interview feeling much more positive about it as an option. It’s on the east coast (hooray for a potentially easy move instead of a cross-country nightmare!), and the airport situation would be great. We’d be able to take the train to New York easily, and there’s a Norsk Sjømannskirke there. At least there’d be something new & fun nearby, and we’d be able to get our kids christened in Hubby’s church once we get around to having them! We’d be able to afford to buy a house there, too.

My next-door office neighbor has been doing way better than I’ve been doing for various reasons, which makes all of this harder. I’ll freely admit that I spent last night’s phone call with Hubby in tears. I don’t want to stay here for another year. I suspect it would have negative effects on my mental health.

Health. A few months ago I decided to try to take the mini-pill instead of lexapro in order to treat my PMDD. It turns out that it works ok but isn’t perfect; I feel better but not “normal” during my bad two weeks, BUT have gained 10-13 pounds in 3 months. This is not good! The weight gain with lexapro was far, far less, and even at very low doses lexapro worked better to treat my PMDD symptoms. So, I think I’m going to drop the mini-pill and just go back to taking low doses of lexapro for 2 weeks each month. I started this morning, and hopefully will start to feel more normal again soon.

My ritalin dose isn’t working as well as it should anymore, which isn’t making anything any easier at work.

Life. Things are up and down. Hubby’s doing well at work, but is very stressed whenever he’s at home. He’s not his normal happy self, which makes me sad. He also crashes on the couch by 8 p.m. most weekend nights, which is rather lame.

My friend with the high-risk pregnancy had her baby about 10 days ago. Unfortunately, after the baby was born via an emergency caesarian, her team learned that her heart condition was far worse than they’d anticipated. Apparently she didn’t just have a single-ventricle heart, but also the worst leaky heart valve the surgical team had ever seen. My friend and her husband decided to take their baby girl off life support last Friday morning, and she died in their arms shortly thereafter. My heart is breaking for my friends, who struggled to get pregnant and were so happy once they’d finally conceived, even after they’d learned about their baby’s condition.

That’s about it on my end for now. I’ll try to be better about posting, and hope that things will improve on all fronts sometime soon.

I am officially back among the living. I have survived/completed? the job application process, and life is getting back to normal.

I ended up submitting 32 applications to colleges and universities scattered across the country. It’s a rather hetergeneous mixture. Some colleges are small and midwest; other universities are mid-sized or quite large and are in the south or east.

I’ve had two phone interviews so far, and have another scheduled for tomorrow morning. I already know that I haven’t been invited for an on-site interview for the first position. It will be another 1-2 weeks before I know about the second or third positions. It’s early yet, so I’m still able to limit my anxiety level and control my ruminative thinking about “What if I don’t get a job?”

I’m actually feeling quite encouraged about the 3rd one, as it would be quite a coup for somebody in my position. It’s with a “Research-One” university. The fact that they’re even bothering to talk to me when I’ve never had a grant and have a less-than-stellar publication record is pretty amazing. Strictly speaking, my area of expertise doesn’t necessarily *fit* the advertisement, either, so we’ll see what happens tomorrow in the interview. For all I know, they are only calling me to knock me off the short list!

My publication record has kept improving while I’ve been working on the applications. I’ve had two papers come back “revise & resubmit” (translation: it’s not good enough that we can publish it as it is. Make these changes that these reviewers want you to make and then we’ll reconsider our decision), and have another paper that was “revise & resubmit” ready to go back to the editor by the end of the month. I’m revising an old one and I can see it improve as I work on it. Last but not least, I have two more in the queue, which I hope to begin after Halloween, and another old one that I’ll start to revise again around the same time.

It would be a lie if I said I wasn’t busy. I am. But I’m also being productive, and feel like I’m moving forward in everything instead of spinning my wheels or moving backwards.

Our photos are moving from the wedding website to HP’s Snapfish. We started a group just for the wedding, which is located at http://kristinandjanerik.snapfish.com/snapfish.

If you would like to add your own photos, join Snapfish, upload them to an album, and then join our group. The room code is “langelinie”.

One of my good friends from grad school is pregnant, and the baby is due next month. This couple struggled to get pregnant, and we were overjoyed when they announced their good news a few months ago. Since then, it’s become clear that the pregnancy is high-risk. The baby has a single-ventricle heart and will require a series of surgeries after she’s born next month. The parents are still optimistic, as the baby’s prognosis as good as can be expected in these circumstances. We are trying to be optimistic and supportive, and want to send a nice present to our good friends. The problem is that we don’t know what to send in these circumstances.

I’ve knitted their baby a blanket already. I’d also planned to send a newborn-sized summery outfit for a little girl that could be worn with a long-sleeved onesie underneath (they live in part of the country with a warm climate year-round). A recent email from the mom revealed that the baby won’t come home until she’s 3 months (January?), which sent me back to the drawing board.

Our friends are both intelligent, worldly professionals. They live in a multicultural city, and have traveled quite a bit over the years. My friend’s hubby has done quite well in his career, and they are financially comfortable.  I’ve known my friend for 8 years, and we’ve known them as a couple for almost as long. I am confident that they would appreciate meaningful, practical presents.

I don’t think my friend will be able to breastfeed, so a nursing pillow is out. I’m guessing that they already have a stylish diaper bag. I’ve considered a sling, but would end up having to send two sizes (a small one to fit mom, and a medium or large that would fit dad).

Any ideas? Parents, which presents have been particularly useful during infancy?