Sunday, May 30, 2010

Bound for the Coast!


If you haven't heard the news, I am happy to tell you that Gearry recently accepted a full-time faculty position at the Culinary Institute of Savannah and, therefore, we're of course moving to Savannah, Georgia! Happiness is the main emotion surrounding this big change in our lives, with a little bit of sadness and anxiety thrown in for good measure. OK, a lot of anxiety on my part, not so much on Gearry's part ;) While we are very sad to leave behind family and friends here in Indiana, we feel incredibly blessed that Gearry happened to find his dream job in an area of the country that we happen to love.

Gearry has been wanting to make the move to teaching culinary arts full-time for some time now. He's been teaching a class each semester at Ivy Tech, as well as recently taking on the role of Progam Coordinator for their culinary arts program, for the last couple years and quickly realized he had both a passion and talent for instruction. Not only is it a field that he loves, but it is also so much more conducive to family life (i.e. actually getting to see each other) than the restaurant/resort field. He'll be making more money while working less than half the hours a week that he works now, and he will have weekends, evenings, and holidays off, as well as fall, spring, winter, & summer breaks... Hard to beat that!

We randomly came across the job opening way back in early March and, seeing that it was in an area that we both love, Gearry applied. We thought it was probably a long-shot, as the position was bound to be very competitive. However, a few weeks later in April we were happily surprised when Gearry received a call inviting him to interview. He flew down in mid-April to interview and teach a demo class, and he thought it went really well. However, days began to pass, then weeks, and still no word. We kind of resigned ourselves to the fact that it wasn't going to happen. Then, suddenly, while Gearry happened to be on a business trip to Chicago for the resort just last week, he got the call from the Dean that they wanted him. It was kind of a no-brainer.

We just listed our condo on the market and are in the process of hammering out all the many, many details that come with a big move. We know a few things... After many stressful hours on the telephone and internet, we finally found a temporary lease today. We wanted to rent a place for a few months so that we can house hunt (or long-term lease hunt, if we don't find anything we want to buy right away) and it proved very difficult to find a short-term lease, let alone a short-term lease within our budget, as we wanted to take on a lease with the idea that we will also still be carrying our mortgage (although we are hoping our condo sells quickly and that won't be the case!).  We happened upon a little duplex in a nice part of the city, on Talahi Island, about 10 min. from the beach and 20 min. from Gearry's job. Our little temporary (4 months) home is indicated on the map below with the red dot:



It's just a one-bedroom, so we'll have to keep a lot of stuff in storage while we house hunt -- assuming that we sell our condo. We don't want to carry two mortgages, so we'll rent as long as we need to, but we both enjoy owning our own place and are looking forward to the house-hunting process.

Let's see, what other details should I share? I have begun the teaching job hunting process, e-mailing various people, sending resumes and such. The public school system there is in sorry financial shape, just like those here in Indiana, but they are still doing some hiring and there is a very large number of private schools, several of which also currently have jobs posted. I'm hoping to get either a teaching or asssitant teaching position lined up this summer, but as a lot of hiring happens in the couple of weeks before school starts in August, I may have to be patient and hoof it out on foot, resumes in hand, in those days just before school begins. Everything else has seemed to work out for us so far, so hopefully this will too.

Gearry is moving down on June 14th, beginning his job on June 16th. However, I have a summer job commitment that I don't feel right backing out on and I would like to be here to try to get the house sold anyway, so the dogs and I won't be moving down until August 2nd. It's going to be a long month and a half apart, but we'll make it work.

Okay, tired of typing for the moment, but I'm sure you're also probably tired of reading ;)

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Back at it!

I've decided to start keep up with the blogging again. I always go in spells... This last long "off spell" was brought upon by the fact that most of the people who read the blog are now Facebook friends and I felt I was keeping everyone pretty well updated that way. But, as I've had several people ask me to start posting again, I am going to make an effort.

Yesterday, while looking for a picture that had been erased from my computer but I knew was posted somewhere on the blog, I started reading some of the past entries from the three years the blog has been in action. It was such a cool experience to re-live some of the best (and even worst) moments from the last three years and I realized that the blog is not just for others... In some ways, it is even more for Gearry and me, like a diary, a record of the various chapters of our lives as we saw them at that point in time.

So... Look for more posts soon.