Lots of changes since the last time I wrote. Let's start with the basics.
We moved..again. The house in Birmingham STILL has not sold and around Christmas it became obvious it would be another 4+ months before we had any movement on that front...and we had enough money to pay maybe 2 of those months. So we contacted the mortgage holder and are working at a DIL surrender of the house. Not the best option, but about the best we could do at this time. Anyway, with this happening there was absolutely no way we would qualify for a home loan so we let the lady who owned our house in Cookeville know. She was VERY understanding and even refunded our earnest money since we left the house in good shape.
We found a place over in a nice part of town. The house is a $300,000 house that needs about $100,000 in repairs. The owner of the house apparently picked it up on foreclosure and does not tend to the house the way he should so things need repairs...but he does not want to make repairs since renters 'do not respect' the property. Makes things difficult for us because we want to be proud of the house and we do love the size etc, but hard to be proud of the house with all the little problems with the setup.
How about us?
Paula tried as hard as she could to find work last year but by about October it was pretty clear that no one was hiring someone with no experience. Don't get me wrong, Paula was a wonderful secretary but if you are looking at places beyond law firms they want you to be a secretary AND something else....and Paula just did not have a something else.
As far as work goes, she ended up getting a seasonal job at Kohl's to get us through the Christmas season so that was a big help but after talking, and thinking and talking some more Paula started taking classes this Spring at Tech. At first she was looking to major in Accounting - why someone who hates math would choose Accounting is beyond me - but she recently changed her mind and decided on Marketing.
Anyway, she is taking 16 hours and trying to learn what it means to be a "full time student". In addition to course work she has a paid internship through the School of Business (it helps to have connections after all) where she works 7-8 hours a week and she works at Kohl's usually one day a week so she is rather busy.
Xander continues to be the bright spot in our days. He is having problems with 6th grade English and honestly with his poor reading habits that is to be expected. But he is still fun loving and kind and really an all around good kid. He still has problems understanding we can not buy him everything, but thanks to the internship and Paula's work at Kohl's we have gotten him a few little things and he is happy.
Now we get to me. ... Where do I start?
Basics first - I started my dissertation research. Ended up with about 130-135 nursing students going through the first part of the study. It went well though I have a lot of video to look through and a lot of numbers to crunch before I can call it a success. Add to that I still have to do the second half of the study and you can understand how crazy this all is.
As for the lab, things are ...weird. Dr. Soni decided to merge my lab with the Business Media Center here on campus and call us iCube. Just about everyone hates the name but we can get by. The BMC has a lot of contacts that will prove useful and a supply of interns I can use to help generate content for the lab so those are big plusses, but there is an elephant in the room.
At UAB we ran the lab as a research lab. We assisted other departments with their visualization needs on occasion but always with the understanding that we set the deadlines and they were fluid because of the research. Here, because there is no one with a PhD to be the primary investigator on grants we are trying to be a production lab...and I am not sure where I fit in that structure.
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