Typical Weekend

Today is a pretty typical Saturday. I'm getting ready for our next trip by looking up train schedules, packing, booking reservations, etc because we leave for a 3-day trip to Amsterdam on Tuesday. Chris will be in lab all weekend working on the papers that he needs to get published before we leave in July.

Tonight we're meeting our friends Dario and Majd (Chris' labmates) for Chinese food and then going to a pub where Jun (another labmate) will be playing (drums and piano). I like that we now live in a "My Space" age because I was able to listen to the other bands that will be performing tonight. I discovered that I really want to hear an Irish duo named Fola who are performing directly after Jun.

http://www.myspace.com/folamusic

I've also been trying to sort out car rental insurance for our visit home in May and our move home in July. I've become increasingly frustrated while trying to figure out what our options are, partially because I'm searching from the UK so all my Google hits are UK related. There are lots of great options for UK residents, but from what I can tell we're going to be stuck with using the insurance offered by the car rental company which costs an arm and a leg.

Visa offers decent coverage if certain measures are taken, such as declining CDW insurance offered by the car rental company, however it's very basic and I'm not sure that Chris and I should rely on that. Particularly if we're going to be driving from the Midwest to California in August.

We're nearing the end of February, which is Chris' self-imposed deadline for obtaining a faculty job. So far none of the schools that expressed interest in him by asking for references have asked him to interview. Therefore it's onto plan B which is a second post-doc. There are many schools that's he's interested in, with quite a few of them being in California. I'm trying to be patient but I really want to know where we're going to be living in 6 months!