”Hallelujah! Holy Sh*t! Where’s the Tylenol?”

This is probably the first and last time you will ever hear me admit to this, but after the busy weekend we had, I am grateful that it is Monday! 

The Boy gave his last final for the semester on Thursday and headed north on Friday morning. I was greeted with wine and cheese when I got home from work on Friday night and we stayed up late updating the map. We also made our game plan for Saturday. We wanted to register for wedding gifts, do all of our Christmas shopping (since neither of us had started!), AND start looking for something for Justin to wear when we get hitched.

We were up bright and early on Saturday morning and headed out the door, coffee mugs in hand. Kohls opened at 6am, but I’m not that kind of crazy. We didn’t hit the door until a little after 8am. Our first priority was to register for gifts, but we also picked up a few presents.

We then spent WAY too much time in Toys R Us, but I couldn’t pull The Boy away from all of the toys! Next up: Bed, Bath, and Beyond. No Christmas shopping here, just adding another gift registry! The stores were starting to fill up so we took a little longer than we had planned to get through the entire store. SOMEBODY got a little trigger happy with the registry gun when we hit the gadget wall. Don't be worried/surprised if you come across a few random gadgets on our list. 

 As soon as we were out the door, I told The Boy that he had to feed me or I would collapse and die of starvation (I’m not dramatic AT ALL). I was really craving soup and salad, but there wasn’t a Panera anywhere close to where we were. Instead we stopped in at Olive Garden for some unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks (and wine, duh).

When we finally decided we were full, we headed off to the mall. After circling the parking lot a bazillion times, we found a parking spot and headed in with the masses. We only had a few things left on our Christmas shopping list and we found most of them at Target (which is wonderfully attached to the mall).

After we finished up all of our shopping and registering, we stopped into a few places to look for a suit for Justin to wear at the wedding. He tried on oh so many suits, but finally found one he loved (at Banana Republic...of all places!). They happened to be having a HUGE sale this weekend and everything was 50% off. We couldn't pass that up so we ended up buying the pants for all of the groomsmen so they could take advantage of this deal! 

To reward ourselves for surviving the day, we decided on a late dinner at Saga so that Justin could indulge in his favorite food ever – Hibachi. We didn't get seated until after 9:30 and I was way too exhausted to remember to take a picture. Trust me though, it was fantastic!

Then it was home and in bed so we could get up bright and early on Sunday morning. We had one more gift to go buy and then spent the rest of the day baking cookies and wrapping presents.

Who’s finished with their Christmas shopping already?

What is your favorite Christmas movie?

Introducing: THE MAP

I haven’t talked about The Boy in a few posts so I figured I should give you an update on what he’s been up to down there in Kentucky.

He’s [FINALLY] starting to wrap up his PhD program at UT while teaching at Centre College. When he’s not busy researching or teaching, he’s starting to apply for jobs! His application process is unlike any other job application process I’ve ever heard of. For those of you who don’t know, The Boy wants to be a college professor [#NERD] and has been busting his butt these last few years to become the best Econ professor in the world!

Source: yes, you can actually buy this... 

In this strange world The Boy is living in, you start applying for the 2015 academic year in the fall of 2014. That means he started applying for jobs back in September. The average Job Market Candidate applies to over 100 schools while job searching. To keep track of all the schools The Boy applied to, we hung up: THE MAP.

Although it started with one little blue star, the map slowly started to fill up as Justin sent in applications all across the county. We are excited that there are tons of schools in PA and near KY that have job openings for 2015. 

The Boy is still submitting applications, but we’re now partially into Phase II of the process: waiting for interviews. The average Job Market Candidate (what they call students searching for jobs) will get 6 or 7 interviews. These interviews take place at the American Economic Association Annual Conference every year in January. Although it is still early in December, The Boy has already begun to receive calls for interviews from a few schools! We decided to mark the interviews with green stars on our map :)

The next few weeks will be pretty stressful for him as he finishes applying, accepts interviews, and preps for the AEA conference (and continues to teach and research). I’ve got my fingers crossed for a few schools closer to “home” to call him for an interview (home meaning Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Indiana…or pretty much any state in the Midwest…or Florida or California…).

By the time the New Year rolls around, we’ll know all of the schools that The Boy has interviews at and we’ll be heading to Boston for the Job Market so that he can get his interview on. After the first round of interviews, there will be a second round, and then [fingers crossed] the job offers will start rolling in.

Stay tuned for hopefully LOTS of silver and gold stickers in January and February (aka second interviews and job offers!). This process has been quite the adventure for the two of us and we are looking forward to finding out where The Boy will eventually be teaching.

If you could pick any state to live in, where would you live?

Is anyone willing to admit that Economics was their favorite subject in school?