She lives and yes, stuff has happened!

We'll skip the part where I acknowledge that it's been awhile and make pathetic excuses and just get right into the good stuff... Ok, the beginning is a pretty dull nutshell summary, but read it anyway!!!

Not surprisingly, a lot has happened since I last wrote any sort of real update. I spent the winter semester working full time at the same job as a lab tech doing DNA barcoding that I started in the summer of 2006 while Aaron was finishing his contract as editor-in-chief at the Ontarion. Many hours were spent at a lab bench with a pipette or in my office writing email correspondence with PhDs and grad students who had sent us samples for barcoding, or analysing taxon ID trees to make sure nothing was horrible amiss with the results - and then troubleshooting when something was! Good times and great people, but unfortunately not something I could spend any extended period of my life doing, despite being all but begged not to leave.

My original plans for the immediate future, attending grad school, got pushed aside when I realised that I was entirely fed up with the academic environment and desperately needed a break before committing myself to two years in a Master's program. So I blanketed the province with resumes for an animal care/public education position while Aaron did the same for a reporter position. Ideally, we were both looking for permanent positions in the same area, but realistically I was willing to settle for a summer position and then volunteering in something wildlife related while working another job that paid the bills wherever Aaron got hired.

Before we knew it, Aaron had a job split between two weekly papers, the Huron Expositor and the Mitchell Advocate. He actually ended his job at the Ontarion two weeks early, in mid-April, in order to start at the Expositor. This meant a very long commute for about a week because the Expositor is based in Seaforth, Ontario - halfway between Stratford and Goderich. Which is only about an hour and half from Guelph, but twice a day everyday, it's long. So we went to Seaforth on the weekend and found ourselves an adorable little apartment at a really good price (rent in Seaforth is CHEAP!). So for six weeks, I was at our place in Guelph finishing up my contract, and Aaron was all alone in Seaforth with almost no stuff!

By mid-May, I'd pretty much given up on having the kind of job I wanted. I'd turned down an interview that would have had me moving to Ottawa because it was way too far from Aaron and everywhere else was either not hiring or hadn't called me. Then I finally got a call from the Muskoka Wildlife Centre, which had been my number one choice, asking me to come for an interview.

To be continued because I am starving...