woo-hoo!

Nothing definite yet, but it looks like my wife is going to be getting a full-time job at Rutgers, with full benefits. That will mean a slight drop in income, but there won't be all this extra mileage on the car, or our contribution to a mediocre health plan. With some free-lancing and minor P.R. opportunities, it might even work out to about even.

It also means she'll be getting experience and probably some field work in the field she has a master's degree in. She wouldn't have had this talk with her lab supervisor if I hadn't convinced her we just needed to up and up leave WCN.

On a lesser note, I got to tell my supervisor off today. (Not really. I'm being melodramatic, but I did politely and respectfully convey my disgruntlement in a nonconfrontational manner, and I got my point across.) The look on his face was priceless. I don't think it ever had occurred to him that other people might have been interested in the two posts they filled recently (associate editor and flagship managing editor), and that they might have angered or insulted employees by not advertising the posts before filling them.

Honestly, I don't know what the problem is with these people. I said last year in a meeting with the editor in chief and again with one of the owners that I was at a point of burnout and needed a major change. It's not something I've tried to keep secret, and I've made several suggestions of things I could do that would have been a better match for my interests and abilities than what I have now. (Naturally, as I went over some of my areas of concern/frustration today, Mark's whole suggestion was to spread the disease around by giving some of my writing responsibilities to the Cranford reporter.)

So now it looks like I might be able to give them two weeks' notice on Friday, about two weeks ahead of when I had planned to. And we'll have a stronger plan than we originally had hoped.

God willing, of course. The lab supervisor has to crunch the numbers properly and make sure she can give the job to my wife, but she seemed fairly confident of it when they spoke today.

Strictly speaking, I suppose there's no woo-hoo until it actually happens, but just the prospect has buoyed my spirits tremendously