Some good news for today. I have a job offer from the school in VA to consider now, and the school in NC let me know that they've made a decision, submitted it to HR for approval and hope to call early next week with a decision (they were down to me and one other person). I hope to have things sorted out in the next week or two about where we'll be going and when we'll be heading out there. East coast yeah!

As a bleeding heart liberal (yeah, I said it) I can't bring myself to remotely like Hilary Clinton. Go Obama. Rise above it.

Hey, here's a news flash for you. I am mildly bipolar (cyclothymic is the proper term). For myself and those who know me well, there is absolutely zero shock to this diagnosis/announcement. I get to start a new drug today that originated as an anti-convulsant but was later found to help with bipolar treatment. Yay me. This brings me up to having six "disorders" now: OCD, cyclothymia, panic disorder, eating disorder, anxiety disorder and bipolar disorder. Sometimes I wonder how I can function normally at all. Is there really any surprise that my life is a train wreck?

In other news, I have to travel AGAIN this week, leaving Sunday and returning Tuesday for an interview in PA. This time, however, I'm driving instead of flying since I actually make most of the trip regularly (as far as Pittsburgh, I'm going a little past to Indiana, PA for this). Looking forward to the mountains again, and to hopefully getting some perspective and direction on my life in the near future. Decisions should abound shortly as I'm a finalist for the two positions I interviewed for in the last couple weeks, and we'll see how this new one will pan out.

I had a really great time at the Blogger meet up last night. Who knew we all weren't just a bunch of nerds? Great to meet everyone. The blogroll has been updated again to include the folks who came last night that weren't already on there.

Here's to warmer weather so we can do this in a beer garden!

Please welcome (and visit) the newest additions to the Maladjusted Blogroll to the right....

Illini Pundit (broke the Chief story... great job!)
It's Matt's World (fantastically awesome outlook on many topics)
and...
Back Talkin' (Gnightgirl's newest endeavor).

And it looks like Monday night, February 19th we're gearing up for another local blogger plus meetup at Crane Alley around 7pm. I will be doing my best to get there considering it's the only Monday I'm home in a four week period. Can we have a sign or all wear a certain color or something so we don't miss each other this time? It seems that each meetup there's at least one person who goes and doesn't find the others who came. As usual, be there or be [ ].

Conspiracy Theories

So I returned to the frozen tundra safely Wednesday night to an absolutely fascinating news week between the retirement of the Chief announcement today and the uproar on campus about asking personnel to take a vacation day due to the incliment weather and University shut down. The conspiracy theorist in me LOVES that the Chief announcement that has been awaited for literally years came out shortly (and somewhat unexpectedly) after hostilities toward the University's request for snow day treatment of time off began to be vocalized. What better way to get staff who are upset and angry about their treatment at work preoccupied with something else? Retire the Chief and make a big publicity statement about it! Tricky!

On the good news front, it looks likely I'll receive offers for both jobs I've gone to interview for so far, or at least one (one is checking my references and the other asked basically what it would take for me to come there). I have one more trip for a third interview the Monday after next then I'm looking forward to making a very positive decision about where we will be living by this summer if all goes as planned.

Well, my flight from here to Philly this morning was cancelled before I even got up this morning. They had rebooked me on a later afternoon flight but the word from Philadelphia is that nothing is going in or out today at all, though afternoon flights haven't been officially cancelled yet. So, I came to the airport this morning and sweet talked the airline folks and am now booked Atlanta to Indy for the time being, with Indy still somewhat in question apparently.

Few hours to kill here in the airport and am super happy to have my laptop and connection to pass the time. By the way, in two round trip flights in a two week period of time, I've been patted down and my carry ons searched, poofed in the bomb sniffer and my suitcase was selected to be gone through. All supposedly through a "random" selection process. I gotta call bullshit on that. I think my name is on the TSA list as a troublemaker or something.

Sucks spending Valentine's Day away from the family and wondering where I'll be tonight. Just hope I make it there safe and sound eventually though.

Hope everyone in C-U is staying safe and enjoying the snow day. I'm totally agonizing here in eastern VA in a hotel room because when I left yesterday to come here the kidlet was running a wicked fever and you were getting ready to be blasted with a 8-12 inch winter storm warning (upgraded this morning to a 10-15 inch and locally higher between Springfield and Chambana blizzard warning). Now the question remains if I'll get home tomorrow as planned, since I am flying Philly through Indy, both scheduled to be hit pretty hard as well. I sure don't want to be stuck in an airport alone until this all blows over. I just want to get home to my family and make sure they are safe and sound.

But here I sit, unable to do much about all of that. In the meantime, I'll keep calling home and checking the weather. Cross your fingers tomorrow that I can get home safely.

OK, so tomorrow I have to go again on a plane for another interview. We've had precious little snow all season so far, so of course it has worked out that we had a big snowstorm when I had to fly last week and now are scheduled for another (possibly worse) one this week as I'm flying again. I thought I was making a good decision flying out of Indy but the travel in the snow has made that thought a mistake for sure. I absolutely cannot wait to live in an area where snow is a rarity. Stupid snow.

Warning: rant ahead that does not take into account "guilty until proven innocent".

OK, I just have to vent about how absolutely sickened I am by this whole Urbana teacher sexual assault case. The "system" really seems to have failed the kids on so many levels and at so many points in time. It's already obvious I think that the Urbana district did not do any kind of background checking, or at least none beyond verifying employment of this man at previous schools. They appear to have totally missed as well that he was taking young girls into his room on a regular basis and also seem to have ignored parent's reports on things their kids said were going on. It's been said they have been aware since at least November, yet they allowed this man to continue teaching. As a parent, I don't give a damn if there is an investigation going on. If someone teaching our kids is accused of molestation or assault, get their asses out of the classroom until a conclusion is reached. I don't want them around my child in the meantime, if ever again.

This morning the News Gazette is reporting on some of the issues that came up surrounding this man in Normal before he came here. Turns out there were also multiple complaints filed there over the time he was employed, and in 2004 he was found with porn on a school computer and was suspended with pay. Then at the end of the 2004-05 school year he was also placed on paid administrative leave for making inappropriate remarks to a student. It also says that he taught at Brigham Elementary there, which is where my daughter would have been around the age of the kids he molested if we hadn't moved to the CU area. I can't tell you how absolutely sick to my stomach this makes me. How the hell do you put a teacher on MULTIPLE instances of leave for inappropriate conduct of some sort and NOT tell the next school system he's moving to? How is this not public record to begin with? This is gross failure on the part of all school systems involved, in my opinion.

I just don't understand how multiple school systems, at best, could not have communicated well enough to pass this information on when he came here. But I think, at this point, in my heart that I am certain that there was a massive failure on the part of many school officials in all of this that's going to become apparent and if that's the case, I'd personally really like to see some heads roll. These children (damn near babies) are going to have to live the rest of their lives with what this man has done and I for one blame not only the individual who actually committed the acts, but the system we put in place to "protect" our kids when we cannot be there to do so.

I just hope that there are some major changes coming to prevent this type of nightmare scenerio in the future on the part of the school systems, and I hope that the kids affected by this asshole can find some kind of peace in the future.

Well, I made it back alive and wouldn't you know it's cold and crappy here and it's warm (63 degrees) and sunny where I came from. We of course got in late last night on the plane and then had to drive back home from Indy, took almost three hours (ugh) and the roads were AWFUL. How on earth the city/state/towns can see something like the storm we had coming and NOT be proactive in getting the streets salted, and then plowed once it comes through baffles me.

I can't wait to live in the south again.

So I made it to North Carolina okay (though there was far more turbulance than I'd have liked for my first terrifying plane ride in 10 plus years) and my interview went pretty well today. I think I could be quite happy living here. The area seems awesome, the weather is phenomenal and it's so very close to the beach, which calls my soul every day. The campus is pretty, the people are warm and friendly and the food is amazing.

Hoping I'll be able to return tomorrow ok, since I now see that a fast moving snow storm is expected. I sure don't want to come back to the cold and snow, but I miss the kidlet and the hubster and am ready to have them back in my arms.

As I was heading down to dinner in the elevator in my hotel tonight, I got on with three of the tallest men I have seen in a long time. They giggled at my ogling their size and asked if they were tall. I said yes (duh) and they explained they were basketball players (again, duh) and that one of them was actually one of the shorter guys on the team. I asked what team and if they had a game tonight, and assumed they were here to play college ball against the local university. Out of curiousity and boredom I looked up the name when I returned and found that I had actually been chatting with "professional" basketball players. And apparently they just hired the tallest pro ball player ever (7 foot 9!!!!). Made the evening a little more interesting at least. I wonder if there will be any food at the continental breakfast tomorrow morning after they get done?

Tomorrow morning I will be driving my happy ass to Indianapolis to board a plane heading for the great state of North Carolina. While I used to fly regularly and loved it, something changed post-kidlet, and as my OCD got worse, so did my fear of flying. I'm a control freak and I'm the first to admit it. So, as you can imagine, getting on a giant aluminum tylenol and jetting across the sky at supersonic speed where if something did happen to go wrong, it wouldn't matter because there would be nothing I could to about it is not exactly a thrilling prospect for me. That said, it's all for a job interview which could mean that I could live in a part of the world that I LOVE and want to live in die in (it will be about 55 degrees tomorrow when I get there! and my hotel is close to the beach! and I can eat fresh seafood!).

I'll be back Tuesday night as long as everything goes as planned. :)