Home Sweet Home (4 months later)

So...Dan and I have lived in our "new" place for almost 4 months. And after many promises to post pictures...I have recorded a walking tour. Of course, I waited until we cleaned for Dan's birthday party. Note we did get some new stuff this weekend at IKEA, so I will have to post new pictures, once everything is situated. W finally got a washer and dryer, so no more lugging laundry around and most importantly no PAYING to do laundry anymore. Here is one of the ottomans we got to extend our couch, so we both can lay down. Also I am not sure how good the video of the tour is...I tried!!


We had a great JANUARY! My birthday, my best friends came from Chicago on a surprise visit, Dan's Birthday, and a lot of Karaoke =].


My knitting habit/obsession as taken off. I love it and so far I have made two scarves. As you can see below, mu first scarf was the green one. Dan says it is very rustic...but I have improved a lot (as you can see in the purplish one).


The video would not upload...I will try again tomorrow!

Team Conan

HNY

Happy New Year!
Last night I actually had a great time, not that I was doubting I would, but I have never really liked New Years. Mostly because it is right before my birthday and everyone always was partied out and didn't feel like doing anything on the 3rd. Anyway, we went to a friends house and hung out with good friends and rung in a Happy New Year. I also slept in in past 1 this afternoon, because when we went to bed I realized I had been up for 21 hours...


We had a great time in Iowa for Christmas, catching up and visiting with our families. I think I gained about 15 pounds from all the food I inhaled! We were both sad to have to come back to Ohio, maybe someday we will be closer to home.


Here are my goals for 2010! Dan can blog about his later...
1. start working out again, and to acquire a treadmill
2. become more crafty (like sewing and making stuff)
3. master knitting, stamping and making my own stationary
4. to cut down on my sugar intake
5. read more books
6. keep in better contact with friends and family
7. limit my screen time (tv, computer, etc.)
8. purchase a washing machine and dryer
9. visit/explore other parts of Ohio
10. blog more =]

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

December-Time to Break out the Sweaters...

Yes, I realize this is two posts in one night...It will probably never happen again.


Enjoy! Awesome Sweaters!

December? Really? Really.

Ok...so Dan and I are not good at blogging. And I guess what we aren't good at getting Christmas cards together either! I think we were a little worn out from sending "Thank-Yous" so I think we will wait until next year to have our McCurley Christmas Card debut.


November was a good month! We had a great Thanksgiving. We had a few friends over and played some Xbox 360 =]. We had lots of great food including a peanut butter cup pie from Perkins. I am thankful we have great friends to spend the holidays with, as we are unable to get back to Iowa as often as we would like.


I started my new position at work today. I am assistant manager in another department at the firm. It is great! I have a great co-assistant manager and a great manager. I will a lot from these ladies. The people in the department are great too. I am really excited. It is hard to start out and not quite know exactly what is going, especially since I had my other position mastered and made into a well oiled machine...but change is good!


There really isn't a whole lot else to report on. We are FINALLY settled into our new place and are welcoming visitors! (Wink)





Also I decided I want to become more crafty. I was in a bookstore the other day looking at craft books and was like I want to do that. I am not very good with scissors or any of my fine motor skills, but hopefully things will turn out ok. I am teaching myself to knit and want to start making my own stationary, which means gifts and cards may appear more frequently, in the mail...because who doesn't love mail! Let me know if you want anything!


Last but not least, I read a great book over Thanksgiving called the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I read it in a day. It was probably the best book I have read in a long time. It is a young adult book, but it was much better than the Twilight series. The Hunger Games is also part of series and only two of three books are out. I have yet to read book two, Catching Fire, but I have only heard great things. I totally recommend it.
Any other good reads out there?

new job

Hi, it's Dan. Amanda suggested that I write in a different color on this blog so you know who you are reading. For today's entry, I have chosen this maroon color. I might also use a serif font to increase my ease of readability.

Recently, I accepted a new position, effective Jan. 1, as an Academic Advisor in the same department in which I already teach. I applied for the job while we were sitting in O'Hare on the way to our honeymoon, so despite my initial reluctance, I was glad I brought my laptop on the trip. I submitted all my materials online then went to Iceland, putting the job on the back burner of my mind.

Once we got back to the US, I had to start teaching again right away, but I kept checking the status of my application on the job website from time to time. Since the university where I work is rivaled only by the Social Security Administration in terms of bureaucratic prowess, it took a few weeks for the status of my documents to change from Application Submitted to Application Received to Application Referred. Then, the departmental committee assigned to find a new academic advisor reviewed the pile of Application Referred candidates. Finally, about three weeks ago, I was contacted for an interview via email by our department's HR rep, whose office is probably about 60 meters from my own.

It was a committee style interview, but thankfully I had worked with and knew all the members of the committee, so it made the interview much more comfortable than some I have done in the past (over-bearing problem kid middle school Spanish position last spring). At the time I felt like it went pretty well, and obviously it must have, as I was offered the position a few days later. I gladly accepted.

Since I got to this university, I have been teaching undergrad Spanish courses, and working with the students has been the part I have most enjoyed (apart from travelling all-expenses paid to exotic locals like Quebec, Boston and Champaign, IL for minorly relevant conferences). In this new job, I will still be working with undergrad students, but with a few differences. First and foremost, I won't be regularly teaching in the classroom anymore. No more lesson plans, no more working on Sunday nights to figure out what the hell I am going to do at work the next morning. Secondly, the students I will be working with will mostly be Spanish majors and minors, as opposed the potpourri of general education level students. Thirdly, I am pretty sure I will have my own office.

The job itself mostly deals with advising Spanish major and minors about their concerns with scheduling, study abroad and other stuff like that. It's an administrative job, but since the department has 800+ Spanish majors/minors, the faculty doesn't take on undergrad advising duties, leaving it instead to academic advisors (there will be two now). Here are the main job duties, copied straight from the job description in the posting:

Summary of Duties
Serves as an undergraduate student advisor in Department of Spanish and
Portuguese; advises Spanish and Portuguese majors and minors with
respect to Honors, transfer credit, and study abroad; assesses individual
major and minor programs, performs transfer credit evaluations; prepares
and disseminates information to prospective and currently enrolled majors
and minors; participates in ASC Arts and Humanities and departmental
committees; maintains open relations with other university advisors and
coordinators; conducts outreach including student recruitment, event
planning and publicity; performs assigned teaching duties according to
department needs. Reports to the chair of the department.

In all, I think this job will be a great fit for me. I got into post-secondary ed/academia because I wanted to work with and teach undergrad level students, but I got kind of turned off of becoming an Ivory Tower research jockey when I burned out of grad school. Since then, this is the kind of job that I have been looking for and applying to, so the fact that this one is in Columbus and at the same school where I already work is a dream combination (all the other ones were in Boston or Vermont...ie. moving far away). And because Amanda is already in a pretty good work situation here, I think this will make it easier for us to stay in C-bus for a while, without me looking for and dreaming about jobs far away. Eventually I think we still want to get back closer to our homeland, but for now Columbus will be a good fit.

Also, this new position has full benefits, so if any siblings/nephews/nieces would like a 50% tuition discount at this university, all he/she would have to do is move to Ohio, establish residency and legally change into our guardianship.

That is all. Hopefully your questions about my new job have been answered. Also, I will try to participate in this "blog" more often from now on.

Comment Section Fixed...

Mom, I think you can add comments now. =].