Doctor Who

Almost six years ago Michael started his doctoral journey and it all cumulated today with the defense of his dissertation. In between the beginning and the end were two masters degrees (one for each of us), two children, three moves – one of them abroad, one Fulbright, rich times, poor times and the better part of our 20-something life. And Michael celebrated, as only he can, with a bucket of chicken and Blue Bell ice cream.

These Choices

This generally tends to be a transitional time of year for our family since we seem to be forever wed to the academic calendar. I've been thinking a lot about choices lately; choosing to support a partner through grad school, choosing to have a child, choosing the hope of future successes doing what you love over short term security, choosing to leave a wonderful job to run off and live in Europe, choosing to have another child and, oh, have him in another country. I've often thought we never seem to do life the easy way but I honestly wouldn't change anything if I had it to do over again (other than leaving for the hospital about 23 minutes earlier).

The Big Fear about coming here to Denmark was that the philosophy job market would fail Michael and we'd be stuck on the exit end of the Fulbright without anything to go home to. Looking for work in academe is a cold, soul-crushing process that defies all other norms in real world job searches. Suffice it to say that it hasn't been an easy year in that respect. But there is a job waiting for us when we go back and it just so happens that we somehow managed to end up one small town over from the city we left last August in a job market were you go where the job is and hope you don't end up in the one place you swore you'd never live.

We have a plane ticket home and a place to go. Our adventure here ends June 10.

Good Fella

My Dad very kindly offered to do our taxes for us this year since he had all our tax paperwork and I strongly suspect he enjoys playing with TurboTax. Because of that we ended up spending more time than usual on the phone together over the weekend confirming details related to tax-like things.

Dad turned 60 last year but looks much younger. He's a humble man; I didn't realize until a few years ago when I was helping him put together a resume for a consulting job that he had been The Man in charge of a whole state's bank regulatory agency before he retired. I think he was so good at his job because he's such a natural judge of character. Dad has a soft southern drawl and the highest compliment he can pay is to say someone is a "good fella." He was the one who showed me how to give John his first bath and trim his tiny newborn fingernails (two things that are much harder than they look!).

Before we left for Denmark last August, I had been encouraging my Dad to check out all the free podcasts he could download on iTunes since he had just acquired my sister Rosalie's old Nano when she upgraded. Dad is reasonably technologically savvy but the podcast concept seemed a little foreign to him.

Then this weekend while were waiting for TurboTax to spin its wheels and give us our magic refund number, Dad commented, "I've been checking out those podcasts you told me about. There is a lot of really interesting stuff out there." He went on to detail the podcasts he discovered on baseball, genealogies, finances and every other topic that he finds interesting.

The next step is getting him to try putting those podcasts on the iPod.