Glissette gets a sister

After I got Glissette, I quickly realized that one sugar glider was not enough.  I should probably get two for the sake of Glissette so that she has someone to play with all night while I'm sleeping.  So I started my search on how I could obtain another one, and lo and behold, there is a breeder right here in my new hometown.  Upon contacting Erika, the owner of the Sugar Glider Adventure, she let me know that she had a little white-face blonde cutie that would be able to go home around the second weekend in November.

I visited the little girl, born Adelaide whom I renamed Lavender, a few times before she came home, and Glissette got to talk to her from behind bars while she stayed at Erika's place while I was traveling.

It was a little bit rough the first couple of weeks that Lavender was home.  I thought it would be more of a walk-in-the-park compared to Glissette since Lavender was hand-raised as opposed to Glissette's upbringing without human contact, but no... While Glissette never bit me so hard that I bled, Lavender loved biting hard.  And she also seemed to hate the sound of my voice.  I would be talking on the phone, and she would just start crabbing up a storm.  To conquer this, I decided to record myself reading a chapter of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies aloud, and every time I went by her cage I would start the recording so that she would get used to my voice.

By the time Thanksgiving came around, she was a bit better with me, and I decided to 'introduce' the two girls.  Everything went well, and my gloves were not needed.  I put them both in my bathtub in the middle of the day when they are normally fast asleep, and they sniffed at each other a bit.  However, Lavender does not wake up easily, and she just stayed still the entire time.  Glissette, on the other hand, woke right up and began jumping off the walls, quite literally.  She has become a good jumper (I've seen her jump a good 8 or more feet) and she kept jumping out of the tub onto me.  Eventually I took them both to their cage and they snuggled up together and fell asleep.

That first night they were play-wrestling a little bit, and it looked like one or the other would grab onto the other's face and make a smooshy face.  I tried to get a video of this, but every time the camera (or rather light) went on they would break it up and look like little angels.

Now, 3 weeks later, they are still getting along well.  Even though Lavender is a good 3 months younger than Glissette, she is at least 20 grams larger.  I think that Lavender will be the one that stays larger, and Glissette will be tiny, but only time will tell for sure.  Now, during out of cage time, Glissette runs around and enjoys her freedom, and Lavender is still a bit more conservative.  Glissette will jump on Lavender and run around and it seems like she is always playing a one-sided tag with her.  Since Glissette is now 'bonded' with me, she easily jumps on me and has given me quite a few face hugs.  All I have to do is stick out my hand and the majority of the time she'll jump right to me, it's kinda cute.  Lavender is still getting used to me, but she has started to groom me, which is a good sign towards her making me one of her family.  When I pet them while they're sleeping, Glissette just snuggles right up into my hand, but Lavender hates being woken up and she is vocal about it.  I doubt that will ever change!

And one last thing - people are always asking me what they eat.  I have Glissette and Lavender on what is called the HPW Complete diet.  It involves a staple food, which is the HPW Complete (it's a bit like a honey/egg/other-nutrients soup), and then I give them a variety of fruits and veggies.  Because I'm a dork, the HPW Complete isn't just frozen into ice cubes when I serve it, it's frozen into a butterfly ice cube tray.

Yum yum yum :-)

Glissette doesn't go to PR or DC

But I do! Back in October I went to a conference for work that just happened to be in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I'll share some highlights. First off, the conference itself was really well done. I went to a lot of workshops and learned a lot, and basically became excited about all of the possibilities out there for what I can do for study abroad outreach at my university. It was a bit overwhelming, really. So, to relax in between sessions, I went to the beach.

And I explored Old San Juan.

And I enjoyed the gorgeous view from my hotel.

And I met with one of our students currently studying abroad in Puerto Rico. And our little group rented a car to go visit the Yunque rain forest.

A couple of weeks later, I went to DC for another conference and got bombarded with even more information. I decided to extend my stay and spent Saturday in the city. I took advantage of this by going to the Cheesecake Factory, visiting my old retreat at the Smithsonian American Art and Portrait museum, I bought a dozen pains aux chocolate from Paul (yay for Americanized French bakeries!), found a nice little tea shop nearby, and spent a while reading. I was able to meet up with an old buddy from my time in Spain, Amie, and had supper with her. It was nice being in this city once again that I had called home for a summer.

And somewhere in there, autumn arrived in North Carolina. I didn't actually think it would happen - all of the trees were seemingly going from green to brown overnight without much color in between, and then for about 3 glorious days the maple trees let their true colors come through.

Glissette goes East

Relief at last! No more applications, no more interviews, no more rejections, only one acceptance and I finally got it! It's amazing that it took this long - I really did not think it would be so difficult, but I'm oh-so-happy that I'm doing the type of job I want to do, and I get to help college students when they decide to spend a semester overseas!

So, I'm off to North Carolina.

My last few weeks in Missouri were rushed with packing and tying up loose strings at my two jobs. I'll miss those guys, but I'm so grateful that I had the opportunity to work with the folks at the courthouse again and also with the great staff at MSU. In my final days in Springfield, my mother had me return some items to the mall, and I got sucked in to a traveling kiosk selling exotic little creatures called sugar gliders. I had heard about them before, but this was my first time seeing them and they were adorable! I left the mall to 'think' about getting one, telling myself I should do research and it would be best if I waited to get one in North Carolina so that I didn't have to travel cross country with one, but then my mind kept going back to the what ifs of if I couldn't find them there. So, I went back and adopted Glissette on a whim. When I told one of the handlers that I wanted to adopt one, he shouted over to another guy and he stopped his sales pitch to walk me through handing over my money. He didn't seem too enthused to tell me a lot of information, and my attempts of small talk about his experiences with them didn't go far either. He asked me whether I wanted a male or female, and then he led me over to the females' cage where he lifted up a black cover to reveal over a dozen of the little girls huddled together. I picked Glissette out of the crowd because she was the first one to look up. The handler put her in a 'bonding' pouch, gave me her starting cage and other supplies, and I was out the door.

I got back to my apartment with her, and I let her out of her bonding pouch and into her cage. She was an unhappy little creature, making a crabbing noise that to me sounds like a squeak toy on lsd. I didn't know what I had gotten myself into, and she certainly didn't seem happy about her new circumstances. I now realize that her only interaction with humans prior to me was probably being taken from her parents, being poked by a vet, and finally being taken from the circle of warm bodies surrounding her.

I took her back to my mom's while I finished up my last few days of work in Springfield and finished up moving my limited belongings out of my apartment, and before I knew it I was packing up my little beetle bug to begin the long journey East. Glissette took the priority seat on the passenger side of my vehicle, my plants took the floorboard, and the back seat and truck were crammed full of my items that would get me through my first few weeks in North Carolina. I'm really gonna miss all of the people I've been working with in Springfield, but it's going to be an adventure being somewhere else, too!

I said my goodbyes and see you soons, and left home. I planned to stop on my way through Springfield to drop an item in the mail and grab my last Springfield-style cashew chicken. As luck would have it, I had my first ever fender-bender right after I dropped the letter in the mail.

A truck merged over on me and harmed my front passenger side fender. Luckily no one was hurt, but still, it's annoying. At least Glissette stayed silent!

I took his insurance info, called my family, and shook a while until I was okay to drive again. I got my last cashew chicken and ate it before hitting the road for good. While in my case everything turned out all right even though we didn't have a police report, I also now know to always call the police, even for a non-injury accident! It's a must.

I made it to Nashville and decided to stop just a little bit on the other side of the city. I was tired, and just wanted a room. Well, the original hotel I tried to get into spotted Glissette and told me that no pets were allowed, and pointed me down the road to the only hotel that permitted pets. It was a true roach motel with all sorts of insects all over the place, but I just couldn't bring myself to drive any farther to find somewhere a bit more decent.

Glissette got the bed by the door, I kept the tv on all night to serve as a distraction from the buzzing, I slept not-so-soundly, and was up at the crack of dawn and out of there. My second day of driving I went through the mountains and it was a gorgeous drive, but there were never really any areas where I could get a good photo and I didn't really want to stop along the way.

We arrived to our new home in North Carolina, and stayed in a hotel for a couple of nights until I could move into my apartment. My new place is quite nice, and I enjoy my new job here.

Over Labor Day Weekend I went back to Missouri and my mom and I brought a U-Haul full of my items to North Carolina. The big truck wasn't as scary to drive as I thought it would be, but I was still happy to have a fellow driver with me so that we could trade off on driving. I'm also very grateful that I was able to get several students at the university to help unload the truck, and I enjoy having all of my stuff here, even if I am going relatively slow at unpacking.

I have been able to do a bit of exploring here, went to the beach one weekend, and even saw a speech by Michele Obama on campus and went to a Bill Cosby show.

Overall things are going well, and Glissette is getting more used to me by the day. She has a brother betta fish named Gradient (Grady) who lives at my office.

I've done more research about care for Glissette, and I have made a few changes for her, including a little sister who will be coming home in November. I think she'll be happier when she has a friend to play with at night instead of barking for my attention, and I even found someone here in town that breeds sugar gliders (which maybe means I should have waited on getting one, but I love having Glissette around!).

Time for a Change

Since starting to work, I've officially driven 13,000 miles. That's over 250 hours of driving, or more 10 days straight (and that's a very generous estimate!). That's a lot of driving for less than six months, and it's exhausting! So, it's high time to switch things up.

I guess I've been stubborn - I've been staying with my mom since I got home from teaching English in France last May, and I've figured that I'm spending less in gas money driving 120 miles per day to work than I would be if I got an apartment closer to my jobs. I'm extremely grateful to my mom for letting me stay with her for this time! Being a country-hopper from 2008-2011, it has been wonderful to have a home base where I can crash between jobs. And I may be crashing with her again in three months, but for now, I've decided to get an apartment closer to work.

For me, this has been a big decision. I love staying with my family (although I'm not a huge fan of the location, including it's distance from Springfield), and in a way I feel like I'm still on the metaphorical road waiting for that next job to catapult me into another year-long work contract like I did for three years. Since I'm looking for a permanent job, though, that likely won't happen. I'll eventually get the position that I'm looking for (and that is looking for me) and I'll be off again, and I won't have the time constraints of a contract. I'll be in the 'real' American work world, and I won't be able to come stay with my mom for extended periods between work contracts. Things are constantly changing, and I need to be able to change with them and know that even though I might be moving on soon, I'll still have a place to stay.

I'm being optimistic and thinking that I will land a 'real' full-time job soon, so I've decided to get a three month lease. I'll start moving in tomorrow, and the move will shave off at least 2 and a half hours of driving every day. I'm hoping that some of my exhaustion will dissipate soon. I'm sure I'll squander away this extra time, but it will be so nice to have extra time in my day to pursue some of the things I've been slacking on, like practicing those languages which I worked so hard to become more proficient with while I was abroad.

Beyond the next three months, who knows, but at least for now I will have less driving to worry about!

Limbo Land

They say that when it rains, it pours. I've been incredibly fortunate to have found 2 part time jobs! Both of them called me within 5 minutes of each other, and I started in October. With a 60-mile commute each way, a lot of my time has been eaten up with driving, and on my first day of work my car surpassed the 100,000 mile milestone. She's still going strong, and here's to another 100,000 miles!

Now, what are these two jobs, you might ask? Well, to be honest, I was getting desperate to find something related to International Higher Education. At the end of the summer, "real" jobs weren't being posted as often, and then after a lot of research about the tough job market, I thought about offering myself for free in order to gain some experience. I contacted several universities in my area asking if they would take on an intern, and one of them said yes. I went through an interview process with them, and they called my references. One of these references was from my old job at the courthouse that I held during college, and it sounded like the conversation turned into a discussion about how they could share me. So, I ended up getting a part-time job at both the university and courthouse, and I'm greatly enjoying being back in the working world, even if I still long for a real, full-time, grown up job. While the greatest upside is that I'm learning everyday, I also feel that the distraction that working brings is very welcome as well. Some of the 'new-ness' of working is wearing off, and there are starting to be more positions available out there, and now instead of just waiting for a call back every day, like I was in the summer, I'm getting out there and actually contributing something to a workplace. And I can't forget to mention that I'm working with the best co-workers in the world, who even celebrated my birthday with me only about a week into my employment!

I've been creating a theory about searching for a job. It brings to mind what I think on-line dating would be like. You send a message out into the world, knowing you're not likely to get a response. If you do hear something, you feel elated, like you really are worth it. This continues and after the first phone interview, you start to fall in love. If they contact you again, you are all but packed and ready to go, checking about housing wherever the position is and learning as much about the place/company/people as possible. But then, after you have an interview in person, you don't hear anything. They won't return your calls. You check your spam email to see if somehow you missed their message saying that they are continuing with someone else. But no, no one will tell you anything. You are in Limbo, waiting for what you hope is the call that will change your life, but when it doesn't come it turns into bitterness for a while. Time passes, and you give up hope, and eventually they might let you know that they've hired someone else, if you're lucky.

To me it's just amazing how emotional of a roller coaster ride job-searching is: from realizing that someone sees something special in you to feeling like you wish they hadn't contacted you in the first place because of all the heart ache it can bring. But in the end, all of it will be worth it. It is a learning experience, and I know I've learned a lot from every interview I've had, and every application I've sent out into the abyss. And, as I mentioned, I am so grateful for the opportunities I have been given in this moment, and I know that somehow, someway, they will help me to get into a career, even if it takes a while.

So, here's to living in the moment. I am trying to be optimistic about the future, but it's easiest to live in the here and now, and not think about tomorrow. I know that today will bring new opportunities and that I will be making a difference, and I know that there is hope for where I will be in the future.

(To be a little wacky, I will leave you with a photo of a Christmas display set up in the Historic Courthouse here. Isn't it fun/creepy? And such a great idea is you need some inspiration for taxidermy!)