Job Fairs and Shingles and Gallstones, Oh My!

There was a big career fair at Purdue this past week and Matthew spent A LOT of time handing out his resume and chatting it up with many different companies. He was called in for four interviews this week (Enova, Bloomberg, Sandia, and Nielson) and two more emailed expressing interest in him (Epic and MIT Lincoln Lab). In addition, and totally unconnected to the fair, NASA contacted him and set up a phone interview in response to an application he submitted a while ago. Matthew learned a lot and the entire experience was very positive for him. It will be very interesting to see what comes of it all. He's got about 6 weeks to finish his dissertation and set up his final defense. We're really getting down to the wire and I can hardly believe how fast time is flying! 

Once the career fair stuff was over, my hardworking husband was back up roofing. He's finished the main section above the house and now has the parts over the garage and porch left to do. A good power washing and some new paint on the shutters and garage door and I think the outside will be as good as it's going to get.

I had an appointment with a gastroenterologist on Monday. He pulled up the images from the ultrasound they did back in December and showed me several gallstones, some of them quite large. He has no doubt my gallbladder needs to be removed. I have been a little concerned about some new symptoms that cropped up since my attack in July, and he said that while they are not abnormal, they are atypical. Just to make sure there isn't something else going on, we've scheduled an endoscopy for this coming Thursday. With any luck, I'll be gallbladder free in the next couple of weeks.

Not much else to report. I'm still working on packing and cleaning, a slow process with kids around. I often feel like I'm taking two steps forward and one step back... or that our things are multiplying in the night. How do we have so much stuff?!? With dad gone past bedtime several nights in a row, I had to get into my "single mom" groove and after only three days wondered how I ever managed when he was in Europe. I guess we just do what needs to be done, but sheesh, life is sure a lot nicer when you're not doing it alone.

Here's a nice glimps at our trashy house... there's still SO MUCH WORK left to do on it. And a peek at how grown up Mercy is getting. She's become quite interested in toys, as evidenced by her lunging for Iron Man.