As you all know, I pretty much pop in here just to give updates on the current job and the future of my world as I know it situation. Here's the latest, and it's looking good at the moment. Or at least hopeful.
My mother called me up recently and told me that my uncle is pretty much waiting around for me to buy my grandparent's house. But, I know absolutely nothing about buying a house. I do know that he's willing to sell it on contract, and he's had a couple people tell him they think the most he can expect to get for it is almost 25 thousand less than what he told me he'd assumed its value to be.
My mother says, "Make him an offer!"
To which I said, "OK, mom, how does 100 bucks sound?"
"No. That's not how it works," (Oh really, Mom?) "Just decide how much you can afford."
"Right now, a hundred bucks. OK, no, I'll be reasonable: a thousand, how about that?"
"Onlymayday..."
"Mom, I don't have any idea what we could possibly afford because we don't have a job there. I've looked, I tried, I can't find a theatre job there and the house probably isn't worth a regular job. Well, it isn't to The Boy, anyway."
I mean, how do I project a house payment based on a prospective income I don't even know for a job I don't even have? What we're living on now is no basis, because we're living on student loans and TB's graduate internship pay and that's not quite enough for what we pay now. I don't know what I could offer because I have no idea what we could afford.
And when I was talking to her, it seemed totally pointless simply because the theatre we'd been talking to last summer had, well, stopped talking to us. That had been my little thread of hope.
But, I happened by the website for the theatre again a few days ago. The girl we'd been talking to appeared to be history, but, hey... I know this chick.
One of the names of one of the folks involved is a girl I went to high school with. She was two years behind me and put up with me pretty well (because I was Debbie Downer in high school, I admit that now). So I sent her an e-mail, and she sent it to someone else who wrote back and said, "Oh yeah, that other girl's history, she never mentioned you, but yes, let's talk."
So, we're maybe going up there this next week. Soon, anyway.
And, when I went in to work to get the schedule for next week to see what I'm working this week (maybe a couple hours Wednesday morning, as of right now, January's a slow time in the portrait business, apparently), I happened to get to talk to the manager. They've been saying from the beginning that they were going to keep four of us out of the bunch of us they hired. I have been incredibly paranoid that I'm going to be out of a job here in a few weeks.
However, I was talking to Manager Girl and mentioned that I was probably going to be going up to talk about the theatre job, and we were figuring the end of this week or MLK Day, so as long as the schedule stayed the same...
And she says, "Oh, yes, definately, if you need to travel, now's the time to do it because it's so dead right now. And it's impossible to get jobs in theatre."
"Pretty much. I mean, as much as I love this," (because I do like the job) "it's just not what I really, really want to do. And if TB ends up in a little university town like this one, there's not a lot of theatre to be done, so this looks fantastic. It wouldn't be until at least next summer/fall anyway, after he graduates, but if they'd hire both of us-"
"No problem. That'd be really good for both of you. It'd suck to lose you, but, yeah."
Which I take as a sign that they're going to keep me, so, woo-hoo there!
As far as TB's job search goes, he's applied a couple places, one of which is our undergrad. It's a nice town, it's a great department, it's close to home, but there's nothing for me to do there. There are five or six places we're looking at, two of them in the middle of nowhere with great looking departments, the rest in larger cities.
From my point of view, I want to go wherever I have the potential to do theatre. I honestly could care less about the actual job that TB is looking at, I just want to live in a city that's on the map. I don't want to do this again.
TB just said tonight that he doesn't want to be stuck in my hometown because it's a bad place to be stuck. Which I followed up with the fact that he would be just fine being stuck in the town that our undergrad was in.
He doesn't like the idea of living so close to my family in a job that isn't a university job. He's looking for job security. If we buy my grandparent's house and the theatre folds, I'm not going to be willing to move and go someplace else. He's probably right. But I'm also not willing to stay in Undergrad Town and work retail jobs just so we can stay in the state without actually living in one of the cities our parents are in. Because that's the big one; he doesn't want his mother upset that we moved to be close to my parents, which is how she'll see it regardless of any logic.
My father laughed and said, "There are other states, you know." And he's right, if the choices are my hometown or, say, Virginia, which should she prefer? The only trouble is since he's applied to the job in Undergrad Town, that would put us two hours from my hometown and 45 minutes from TB's.
There would have to be a compelling reason to pick My Hometown over Undergrad Town. I argue that if I could get hired anywhere, that should be the deal breaker. A theatre job for him, or a theatre job for both of us: which sounds like the better choice for *us*? If a theatre job for both of us is only possible in my hometown, that's where we move- the house is just a bonus. TB sees the logic there, but insists that his mother won't, and no, she probably won't.
So, hope is restored. I would love to have way too many great options for places for us to go.
TB was looking at maybe going out to do tech crew for the inauguration, but his adviser talked him out of it. It's an awkward time to try to trek 800 miles across the country for a couple weeks, especially as it's the beginning of the semester, he's assisting teaching a course, writing his thesis, and expecting to take time off to run to interview for jobs. The awesomeness of that on a resume is considerably dimmed.
Of course, my love for Iowa may be dimmed if we get to driving out someplace where there are mountains. Or oceans. Real oceans; rocky, cliffy oceans, none of that tropical sandy crap.
And potential job places include Virginia, Boston, Connecticut, Colorado, California, Pennsylvania... I figure if he gets called for interviews every place we're looking at, we're in for one heck of a bunch of road trips, and in spring too.