After a solid month and half of traveling for interviews, I got four job offers and accepted a position with CH2M HILL in Portland....plus they had a position in the same office that was perfect for Jeff so we'll be working in the same company. Hopefully it'll be as fun as when we were in school - we did have almost every class together for four years although every other quarter of co-op provided a good buffer. The only downside is that Jeff needs to start now (April 14) so he's moving next Saturday. I'll be left to fend for myself for the next five months while Jeff hangs out in our cool new city. I guess I'll have to remember how to cook and generally take care of myself again.

Alright, lets get this information out of the way so everyone can save their questions about when I'll be done and how's the writing and are you finished yet and I'll finish when I finish so quit asking me these damn annoying questions (but of course I still love everyone that asks :) I intend to start my first job in the real world on my 30th birthday (September 25) so I can tell my kids that I was in school until I was 30 and not a day longer. This means I'll be finished at the beginning of September. I'll be in the lab until May 15 when we leave for our Italian vacation thus celebrating not the end of my PhD as planned but the end of my lab work. I then have three months to write my thesis before I defend.

A PhD defense involves the student presenting a summary of her work to the general public and to the group of professors who will decided if she passes and ultimately gets to become Dr. Menniti (AKA, the PhD committee). After the presentation, the general public are cleared out so the committee can drill said PhD student for as many hours as they deem necessary before granting the coveted pass (PhD students rarely fail if they've done reasonable work so I'm not worried). Once the defense is done, I'll need to make any corrections to my thesis as requested by my committee and deposit the finished thesis with the university thus ending this 7 year adventure I call graduate school. After I defend and deposit, I fully expect all my friends to join me in excessive drinking and merriment where I will happily make a fool out of myself for your amusement. There may also be excessive drinking involved in the PhD completion process depending on how stressed out I get in the mean time. I'm dang good at working myself into a frenzy but I have such exciting things to look forward to, hopefully it won't be too bad.

A tourist stop we made on an interview trip to Seattle. We had our choice between Seattle and Portland with CH2M HILL and we really thought we'd pick Seattle since we've always wanted to live there. We thought we'd pick Seattle that is until we saw Portland! Its the perfect city for my personality, coffeehouses everywhere, the biggest independent bookstore in the county, perfect weather (yes, I like it when it rains), its scooter friendly, it has lots of neighborhoods filled with old craftsman bungalows, I don't have to drive on the interstate everyday if I don't want to, I could go on.....our other choices we San Diego, Orlando and Charlotte. Not bad choices but we fell in love with Portland and our jobs were really great!