Things have certainly changed in the past two months. I’m still working on my thesis, and my final class (Vichy and the French Holocaust) started four weeks ago. (It’s very interesting, but meets on Monday nights until9:50. Not the best night for a class. Monday is rough enough as it is.) How do I keep up with class work AND my thesis work you ask? Well, that’s easy. Since Jeff moved away, I’ve got nothing but time and a quiet house in the evenings.
Jeff moved away? Oh yeah. A few weeks ago. In December he applied for, interviewed for, and accepted a position as the New River Valley UniServ Director with the Virginia Education Association. So the week after Christmas we headed out to the New River Valley, found a house, and started packing up. And in mid-January he left PPS for the VEA. He’s very excited about it, and enjoying his new job and I’m happy about that. But that does mean that for six months or so we’ve got to manage two households. We’ve got to try to fix up the house in Portsmouth a little so we can (hopefully!) sell it. And I’ve got to try to find a new job out in New River. I’m actually heading to a job fair this weekend, so maybe I’ll make some good contacts and get some leads on who will be needing Social Studies teachers next year.
I haven’t figured out where to run out there or anything like that yet. I haven’t spent much time out there at all actually. I’ve seen Jeff’s office, and a bit of Radford (which is where his office is located.) We actually wound up renting a house in Pulaski (named after a Polish Revolutionary War hero.) Most of our stuff is there, we got one of those PODS things, and I’ve got the minimum here to get me through to the summer. (And actually most of the stuff left won’t be going.)
I think it’ll go by pretty quickly though. I’ve got plenty to keep me busy in the evenings, and even working almost every night I don’t feel like I’m making much headway. I guess I am-I’ve got 75 pages of something written. Although my list of things to do/add/research further is still pretty long, which is disheartening. I’ve also got to get back to the National Archives in Maryland, and trying to figure out how/when to get there has been a pain. And I think Jeff is pretty busy getting settled into his new job and figuring things out. So hopefully soon it’ll be June and the school year will be over, my thesis will be complete, and I can head out to our new house.
