Overwhelmed Too

Nine days ago, I was still an out of work engineer.
Yesterday was my last day working at Brookfield Zoo.
Today, I'm in Dubuque, IA.

So yeah, it was a hectic week getting ready to start working out in Dubuque. My last week at the zoo went pretty well. My managers knew that I had a lot of stuff to get done so they let me go as early as possible on most days. Friday went by pretty quickly and at the end of it, I got to go to an employee only sneak peek at the sting rays. That was pretty cool. Overall my job at the zoo was pretty good. There were some things that were lousy about it, such as dealing with cranky people that thought they were more important than every other guest at the zoo, but I liked most of the people that I worked with. It was also nice to work outside on beautiful days. Overall, I'll miss working there, but I'm excited to be back working in my field. It's been a crazy week, and it's strange to be checking into a motel room and knowing that I'll be staying for a month, but now that I'm here, I'm looking forward to things slowing down a bit. Of course when starting at a new job, things usually aren't slow, but at least the moving is over...for now.

Overwhelmed

*sigh*

As Pat mentioned in his last entry, he was offered a job in Iowa. He starts on Monday. It's a bit overwhelming to have everything change in a span of a week. Not like we haven't been planning for this for a while now. I don't remember when exactly Pat started looking into options outside of the Chicago area, but ever since then we've known this could happen. Been hoping for it. But now that it has, it's just . . . well, I think overwhelming is the best word to describe it.

I mean, it's only Iowa. More than that, it's only Dubuque, which is right on the border between Iowa and Illinois. Right about 3 hours, according to Google. And I've put in a request to work to not work weekends anymore, so that I can actually spend those with my husband when he's home. Honestly, it's not the long distance thing that's got me worked up. Yeah, that part of it sucks, but it's nothing we haven't done before. It's just worrying over all the details. Me being without a car once he's gone. Trying to figure out when exactly I'll join him out there. And the prospect of starting the job hunt all over again . . . sucks. Ideally I could see about transferring to a Borders out there, but "ideally" hasn't worked out for us so well in the past.

I'm trying to keep my mind busy with other things and not think about any of this. Clearly, that's not going so well.

I can has job!

After a waaaaaay too long dry spell, I was offered an engineering position this morning. The picture above is pretty much how I felt all day. That's right. After living with the in-laws for exactly 4 weeks, I will be moving out to Dubuque, IA. I will probably be living in a hotel for the first month and then move to an apt after I get the lay of the land over there with Charleen following me out there a few months later. We'll see how things go. A lot is still up in the air, but for now I'm just tremendously relieved to finally have a job in my field. I'm looking forward to getting our lives back on track.