DH just put in his 3 votes too.

I voted, smonster! You all were handily in the lead at the time.

I should not be wanting to go back to bed. A three-day weekend, and I've done almost nothing but sleep. I'm feeling better today, but I still want to sleep some more. I did accomplish one thing today - got a couple languishing bills paid and set up on automatic bill pay, and I went through a years' worth of spending on credit and debit cards and made a list of things I could change or get rid of to save money. Wanna know how it turned out? I'll save $1150 per year just by getting rid of monthly expenditures on things I don't need or want anymore (like, I don't need the eFax service anymore). I'll save $1302.72/year by dropping sattelite tv and not getting cable. And once I sell my old Chevy, my auto insurance will go down by $600/year. That's about $3050/year! I was shocked that I could save that much just by making some adjustments. And I don't have to give up my regular charitable contributions - heck, I can increase them now - nor do I have to deprive myself spend less at Amazon (because what's really important, right?). Man.

I had missed that you could vote three times so I just added two votes.

I went into the office and I was the only one there, and I was able to get four pages written today rather than my usual two.

I am so sick of this job search process. Of the eight schools that interviewed me, I know that two have hired someone else. I haven't heard anything from the rest. There are a ton of schools where I applied and the application deadline was back in November or December and, as far as I know, they have not interviewed anybody. What are they waiting for?

Maybe economics, Hil? Also, speaking from my two experiences on uni hiring committees -- they tend to operate at a GLACIAL pace.

I was about to say what Erin just said. Lots of schools have positions that need to be filled, but are also in the middle of hiring freezes, so it's a stalemate.

Thanks. I'm just getting frustrated. I get antsy when I don't have plans. Even simple things like whether or not to get a new pair of snow boots -- I'll need them if I get one of the jobs in Chicago or New York, but not if I get one of the jobs in Atlanta or Arizona, so I can't decide whether to make do with the pair I have for the rest of this winter or buy new ones, since new ones would be a waste of money if I'm moving to somewhere without much snow for the next several years. When I'm budgeting my money for this year, I don't know how much I should be thinking about spending on an apartment next year. I don't know if I need to be looking at non-academia jobs.

I tend to plan things ridiculously far in advance, and having this big empty space in my plans is driving me nuts.

I had dinner with my youngest niece last night, and she was expressing similar feelings. She wants out of her current job really bad, and wants to move to a different state just so she won't have lived in the same place her whole life, and she's getting no responses to her shotgunning of resumes. I don't even know what to say to her. It sucks.

Much peace~ma to your surrogate mom, bonny fides.