*warning: The following entry is a little disjointed. It is more of a stream of consciousness style entry so beware crazy tangents. *

This has been a true whirlwind week for me. Some of you know a bit about what has been going on in my life in the last two weeks, some of you do not, so here goes.

With my masters degree wrapping up, I have been considering the correct course of action for the next few years of my life. Shall I continue on to get my PhD, or go back into “the real world” and work? If I get my PhD, I’ll be in school for another two years (sweet!), but I’ll be forced to live far from Barbara for that time as well. We have been together for a long time now (about 5.5 years), and a large majority of that time(3-4.5 years depending on how you slice it) has been spent with each other on the phone, not in person. I think it’s been long enough. In a perfect world I could have it all, but something has to give and for now, I’ll take my masters and run. It is too bad though.

With that in mind, I started posting my resume online to a few places and heard very little response for a while. At first I was upset because it felt like no one was interested in my background/qualifications, but then one day about two weeks ago, things started going crazy. It started raining head hunters offering to represent me for different jobs. Many of them were not in Dallas, where B is, so I flat out turned them down despite there being many interesting opportunities in the lot.

While flipping through the days batch of emails/phone messages about jobs early last week one popped up that intrigued me. The company is called [Molecular Imprints](http://www.molecularimprints.com). They are a nano-tech company. They make lithography tools for creating nano-size structures. This includes the production of Integrated Circuits. My background matched what they were looking for very closely (except that they were looking for someone with 10 years of experience). Like with all good things there was a catch: this job was in Austin not Dallas. I toyed with the idea for a while and decided it couldn’t hurt to respond to this one.

Here’s where it got crazy. Next thing I know, I’m interviewing over the phone. Three or four hours after we hang up, I get a call asking me when I could take a flight down to austin for an interview. I schedule the flight for Tuesday.

Now for the breakdown of this week to date:
Saturday: Birthday party for Nox’s wife Rachel in the early evening. Swimming, food, and good times were had by all. Thanks Nox! After that, I ran over to the cool french ladies house (Joclyne) to arrive at a huge (150 people or so) party for DJ Carry’s Bday. Good times had by all. I got to spend a few minutes with a friend of mine from JTown (Danielle) whom I coaxed into coming out. Party goes on into the night, I go home around 3 am.

Sunday: Waste time during the day, hang out with Sean and Carry some because I’m delaying making slides for my thesis defense. Talk to barbara until late in the night and finally put together the slides sometime Monday morning early.

Monday: Thesis defense! Dr. Weller is late because he’s stressed about personal things. He arrives and I give my defense. Things go very well. I get a few difficult questions, but nothing I can’t handle. Thesis over, I pass, all my professors congratulate me.

Tuesday: Fly out to Austin. Have trouble getting the car that they rented for me because I’m not 25. Have to rent my own damn car. They will reimburse me later. Meet up with Diego at Hula Hut. Have a great time talking with one of the few friends I have in that area. Find my hotel and go to sleep.

Wednesday: 7 Interviews, 45 minutes a piece. 6 are technical. I think I do pretty well over all. Looks interesting. Fly back to Nashville.

Thursday: 9 am, get an offer from them. They need to know if I want it pretty quickly. I decide to verbally accept.

Friday: Here I am. Contract in hand. I feel happy that it’s worked out, but nervous about leaving academia. If only this job were in Dallas, all would be well with the cosmos.

So that’s it. Now you know what a whirlwind tour this last week has been for me. Chaos, total Chaos. Where am I going? As NPH says, “Where ever god takes me”.