We aren't going to reside in Cincinnati in just 10 weeks? Are you serious? Oh. Oh yes.

So says Timothy at dinner tonight. To celebrate me finally making it home after a L-O-N-G day of traveling, waiting, and traveling, we went out for sushi after watching a video on how to make sushi, which then rendered us completely incapable of eating anything other than sushi. Damn. Sushi!

So the interview! My first job interview in three years, and it was a doozy. I'd first say that I have never talked about myself so much for 7 straight hours. While meeting with my 10th interviewee (there were ONLY 11 total in 7 hours), I had to apologize for talking so fast and for the sinking feeling that I was just feeding her soundbites from my previous interviews. Thankfully, she was just lovely. Ahhh.

Only four interviews were on-on-one, which means I had one interview with three gentlemen and a lunch interview with four peers, all of whom were extremely intelligent and loving their current careers. It was intriguing (a word I found myself using over and over in the interviews) how passionate these people were about working with alumni/volunteers. I should say that I felt what most prepared me for these multiple person interviews was the mock press conference exercises in both chet's PR and the Arts class (your lead for Scrooge was arrested last night for having relations in a public park with an underage male. GO!) and camp wellstone (your candidate's vietnam injury story is being attacked by your political opponent. GO!).

But it seemed that the culture of the office focused heavily on autonomy (a word used over and over by current employees), and the directors of the department were energetic and...hmmm. intriguing? extremely energetic. passionate. basically, i came to the interview with no other information other than the two paragraph description I had read when i had applied and several hours of internet research, and by the end of the day had increased my understanding of the position by 250%.

Anyway, at 3 p.m. (that's 12 hours after waking, driving an hour, taking a plane, changing in an airport bathroom which will never be attempted again, and arriving one and a half hours early), i walked my pretty new shoes down to my hotel room, turned on gilmore girls, and fell asleep. i got to hang out with kaye, my good good friend that works for the org I interviewed with and also happens to be a fellow board game enthusiast, and i tried a beer with 10.5% alchol by volume. it kinda tasted like beer, but with vodka poured on top. not really recommending that to anyone.

Well, I woke up at 6 a.m. this morning and met "my car" at 6:45 a.m. Only then did i realize that my flight actually left at 7:30 a.m., and since about 200 flights had been canceled at O Hare due to safety checks, i was really nervous I wouldn't make it on another plane. But of course it worked out. And since my interviewing org was playing travel host, I had a large breakfast and waved and smiled at a baby for a couple hours. not too bad.

So we are back to where we begin. I am having another glass of wine left over from our dinner (a BYOB sushi place none the less, lovely!) and dreaming about the new digital camera I will be buying this weekend. Mmmmm. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated...