You weren’t expecting that, were you?
This is the short version of a longer story that will go up as soon as I can post it. For the moment, though, we’re restricting the news to Facebook friends and contacts, rather than an all-out, full-public post.
So, here’s the short version.
Prairie’s boss at the Central Washington University Writing Center just accepted a new position at another school, leaving the directorship of the CWU Writing Center open…and last week, Prairie was offered the spot! It’s a huge boost for her career, so she took it, but it means some big changes for us.
First off, Prairie’s new position requires that she be in Ellensburg, and it starts with the winter quarter, beginning January 3rd. This means that over these two weeks, in addition to dealing with Christmas, New Years, and her sister’s New Years Eve wedding, we’ve suddenly had to cram in suddenly moving Prairie to Ellensburg, complete with finding an apartment for her. We’ve managed to get it all done, but it’s been a pretty crazy process.
I won’t be moving to Ellensburg immediately, as I still have my last quarter of school to go, and we won’t close out the lease on our current apartment until the end of April. So, for the next three months, Prairie will be living in a little one bedroom in Ellensburg and I’ll be living at our place in Kent; after March, once I’m done with school, we’ll take April to get all of our stuff either moved or put in storage, and I’ll join Prairie in the one bedroom in Ellensburg.
Her position is technically an interim position for the first six months, through the winter and spring quarters, as CWU is required to do a formal search. We’re optimistic that she’ll end up taking on the full position at the end of the search process, though, at which point we’ll find a house and get ourselves permanently set up in Ellensburg.
For myself, this means that rather than graduating and going into the job market, I’m going to be looking into the master’s degree programs that CWU offers on the main Ellensburg campus, and spending another few years as a schoolboy and getting a master’s degree.
It’s all pretty exciting stuff, and I’m thrilled to be able to let all of you know about it. There are a few more details in the full post, but we’re waiting on making the public announcement until next week sometime, after Prairie’s set up and has her new contract all signed.
I’ll still be making trips into Seattle from time to time — the monthly Norwescon planning meetings help with that — and I’ll do my best to continue to head out and hit the clubs from time to time when I do. Considering that school and life has had me busy enough that I haven’t been doing that much more than once every couple months as it is, though, this really isn’t going to be that much of a change…it’ll just mean a longer drive to get to Seattle!
So, that’s the big news that I’ve been itching to tell all of you for the past week. Wish us luck!