Avalanche of awesomeness? Back in touch with Aunt H..

So, around a year ago my favorite aunt, Aunt H, sent me an email asking me what's up. I wrote back all about how I was getting married to B, he wasn't jewish, etc.

I never heard back from her, so I assumed she was upset about me getting married to someone not jewish. Or something. I don't know what I thought, but I spent the past year being somewhat miffed that she would just ignore my email and never write back like that, especially since her family are more to the left than my family (still modern orthodox, but she wears pants, doesn't cover her hair, etc), and she was always the one arguing with my charedi cousins about how they are being too extremist (part of the reason she is my favorite aunt).

Well, now I think it's possible the email never even reached her!

See, a couple of weeks ago I was checking out some pictures on my cousins's webpage (her daughter) and noticed my Aunt H had joined facebook! I was still a little upset from never hearing back from her last year, but I decided-what the heck, I'm going to try to friend her, and if she rejects my friend request then it'll be on her, not me.

But about a week later she DID accept my friends request and sent me a facebook message asking me how I was doing! I wrote her back a really long message and asked her some career advice, since she is the only woman in my family besides me who has a full time career (another part of the reason she is my favorite aunt). So I figured asking her about career advice would be a good way to get her to write back, if she was hesitating about that. Got this back:

So good to hear from you Abandoning Eden! It has been entirely too long!! I want to reply to your email message, however, for purposes of privacy I would like to do so from my yahoo account. Please forward your email address to my account at EMAILADDRESS

So I sent her an email from my school email address (the same one I sent her the email from last year), and no reply. A few days later I sent her a facebook message giving her a different email address, and YES instant reply to that email! Which started like this:

Hi abandoning eden, I just received your email. It was so good to hear from you. Congratulations on your wedding. I hope that we can see you soon and meet your husband.

wooo!

So now I'm thinking a) she might not have ever gotten that previous email, since she didn't seem to get the email I sent from that same email address this week
b) uh oh, I hope she knows that my husband isn't jewish, since I didn't mention it again (although I did say something in the facebook message about my parents possibly meeting B for the first time at my graduation, and my grandmother/parents/other cousin knows he's not jewish, so someone must have told her, right? Unless they are really secretive about it, also possible).
c) awesome!!!! I'm back in touch with my favorite Aunt, and she wants to meet up with me and my husband.

In other awesome news, I had an interview this week for an assistant professorship at a lovely small private college that is about an hour and a half from where my parents live. While I was applying for jobs I was especially applying to tons of jobs in the midwest, since I figured my half of the family would never talk to me again, and B's half of the family is all over the midwest, so I would love to be close to some family that actually acts like a family to us. Unfortunately none of those midwest jobs panned out for me, and the one interview I've gotten so far was at this school that is closer to my half of the family.

But now it seems at least some of them are coming around. I doubt we will ever have a really close relationship again, but I really liked the school I interviewed at, so it's nice that they are coming around a bit. I don't know if I got this job or not, but I hope I did- I really liked the department, and so far it's my only option. I also will be hearing back from a couple of postdocs I think I have a good shot at in the next couple of weeks, some of which are in the midwest. It's getting to be late in the year, and I'd love to know where the heck I'm going to be living 6 months from now.

Oh and the best part of the interview? The chair of the department was a huge deadhead- had dead and jerry pictures all over his office- and we ended up spending like 45 minutes talking about him going on tour with the dead in the 1970s! I'm hoping that little connection will give me an edge in this job. They are interviewing 4 people, and I was the first, so I might not hear back from them for like a month though.

Also this:


is my block this morning. Me and Barkley had a grand time beating a path to the coffee shop for croissants and orange juice= he kept trying to follow up previously beaten paths into people's houses...around here, as you can see, a lot of people have porches, and he climbed onto at least 5 during out walk.